Bolles History is in the making! Second semester, 2017 marks the first year of a new age: alternative exams. Rather than endure a full week of countless bubbling of A’s, B’s, C’s, D’s, and rarely E’s, some teachers have decided to lighten their students’ load by proposing projects for final exams.

Said teachers aim to ease the stress of exam week and apply their semester curriculum in an interactive and creative way. Students like Darren Wang (‘18) and Josh Zimmerman (‘19) agree that alternative exams will greatly benefit students.

Wang was assigned two AE’s: one in English and History. The parameters for English hasn’t been discussed yet, but his task for History is to link a topic they couldn’t cover this year to events in recent history. “If you’re taking lots of exams, it takes stress off,” says Wang.

“It gives me an extra day of studying, and one less subject to study for”, says Zimmerman. Zimmerman has an alternative History exam. He’s been assigned a presentation on a topic his class learned this semester. But, he cautions teachers about all converting to alternative exams. “If teachers all them, it would be exactly like a regular exam week”. He suggests teachers alternate what years each subject can assign them.

Noah Silverstein (19’) has an English alternative exam involving the creation of representation masks that connect with major literary themes his class has discussed this semester. He agrees that the AE’s will lessen stress, but thinks they should be limited to English and History. “Math and Sciences”, he says, “are just calculations. There should be no alternative because it’s the only way to test on those subjects”.

Soon graduating seniors, Molly Todd and Mary-Caroline Gillam are “good for the most part”. Gillam says having time in between exams takes pressure off the exam week as a whole. They both think alternative exams would’ve been helpful when they were freshmen and sophomores.