It’s that time of year again.

Time for finals, the three days of each semester that students dread the most. During this time, studying for each class is crucial. Although finals cover material that was learned from August until December, many students are convinced that they understand just about every detail from all the lessons they learned. In reality, they have forgotten most of it.

So much goes on during the school year between clubs, sports and non-school-related commitments that once people get more involved with extracurricular activities, they let what they have learned slip to the back of their minds.

In reality, not every student completes their review guides because they feel that it is too much, and they deny that they ever learned some of the topics on the guide, when they really did. Their minds simply do not recall because they either were not paying attention or did not truly learn the lesson.

Once December comes around, the first thing that pops into students’ minds-besides winter break-is finals.  More often than not, students do not study until the actual week of finals, which means they have Monday and Tuesday to study for all seven subjects because finals are Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

Cramming two days before important tests can have a major effect on final grades because students are not able to actually retain so much information in so little time.