There are many reasons as to why students graduate from high school and choose to continue their education at a university.
Getting better job opportunities, possible free t-shirts, participating in sports, the possibility of getting a free t-shirt, furthering their education…
Did I mention the possible free t-shirts?
We need to bring back free t-shirts.
Getting back on topic, one of the main reasons students choose to go to university is to learn skills to advance our future careers. We choose our major, and possible minors, in order for us to educate ourselves on the prospective careers we may someday join, throughout our years in class.
Saint Xavier University is full of amazing professors who are willing to answer questions and help students to achieve desired results. However, many do not allow even a single retake on quizzes or exams. The policy of having no retakes is one that needs to be taken out of education.
We come to university in order to learn, but in the school’s culture of memorization with no second chances — where is the room to grow?
There are many reasons why students may perform poorly on an exam. Perhaps they didn’t learn the material as well as they thought, or they were focused on other tasks — maybe they just had a bad day and their score reflected it.
No matter what the circumstance — it is not right to only allow one take of quizzes and exams. We are meant to learn the material and yet we are given one chance to test our knowledge and that’s all.
This not only puts a lot of pressure on students to memorize everything — it also discourages growth. If students only get one chance to test their knowledge… Why would they spend the time learning the mistakes they made?
The following week moves on to new material and the bad grade is put into the books with no way of changing it. Instead of being able to look over the material again and correct their errors — they’re thrust into a new week without having even mastered the previous week’s work.
This is the antithesis of what school is all about. We are here to learn, but how can we without being given the chance to? Due to this logic, I believe for each exam and quiz — there should be at least one retake allowed.
SXU Senior Victoria Gonzalez offers her take on retakes stating, “In my opinion, I feel like students should be given the opportunity to retake an exam or quiz because it could reduce test anxiety.”
She added, “A lot of times having one chance puts pressure on students, and that can affect their ability to take an exam or quiz properly.”
As most are done online via Canvas, it would be easy to allow, as a lot of teachers already allow more than one attempt.
By having this room to grow, it gives students the chance to regain their footing and relearn the material. Instead of simply seeing they got a bad grade and hastily moving on to the next section — they’d be allowed to look over the material again and learn from their errors.
If we can’t be allotted the room to make errors without our grade faltering — then what is the point of university? Without the ability to retake failed attempts, the school is focusing on grades rather than making sure students actually learn.
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