On Friday, students left for the holiday weekend feeling a mix of emotions over their semester exam results: triumph, stressed, and also carefree.

Math teacher Brian Francetic was over-the-top excited about how well his classes did. He said, “Financial Algebra was able to present projects with different choices on what to present, and they presented different things that really enhanced what had already been taught or took it to the next level. In Mathematical Modeling & Reasoning, we did group activities, and I think it really benefitted the groups that worked together.

Francetic says he was “blown away” by how hard his Financial Algebra class worked during the four days he gave them to prepare. He said, “It really showed when they got up there and presented these excellent presentations that really showed each student seemed to understand what the expectations were, and the delivery was fantastic. With MMR, they had been working in groups all year on all the activities, so it just seemed like the right thing to do to give them a midterm activity that was in line with other activities that they had done.”

Junior Adelyn Nicholson felt sick during midterms and had to stay home, but her teachers in both core classes and Excel TECC were understanding. She said, “My friend even brought me a donut I was supposed to have during my AP Lit exam – it was delicious! As for Excel TECC, it’s self-paced, so I didn’t miss any important instructions; the universe picked a good year for me to get sick during exam week.”

Senior Kyle Kotlan thought midterms started off fast and intense. He said, “It was like a train route that started off with a bang, and then slowly lost speed before crawling into the station.”

According to junior Komal Pradhan, midterms went very well despite feeling nervous. Pradhan said, “Chemistry was the one I struggled with the most because I forgot some of the earlier material. French was okay because we pretty much did what we usually do in the class.”

Nicholson said that being sick bought her some extra time to study and prepare for midterms. She said, “Once my head was done feeling like it was going to explode, I was able to study for midterms.”

Freshman Dominic Geisinger says that he would have rather had midterms spaced out more evenly and before break. He said, “I liked how we only had two on Thursday, but I disliked how we had three [on] one day. Two a day would have been nicer, and having them before break would have been better because we would all have been ready for them.”

Sophomore John Konst says that midterms went “swimmingly well.” He said, “I guessed all my answers.”

One complication for Pradhan and all students in Excel TECC was they couldn’t attend their programs because of semester exams. Pradhan said, “I guess it wasn’t a big deal in regards to the exams, but on the other hand, I’m kind of worried about how that counts as skipping. As you probably know, if I miss a certain amount of days, I could get kicked out or fail the course, but besides that it didn’t affect the testing process.”

Francetic says he can’t even mention just one group that stood out to him because there were so many great ones. He said, “I wish I could have recorded all of them because I could play them back and show my future classes that this is what a presentation is supposed to look like.”