With the first semester behind us and another Demonstration of Learning week under the collective belt, I feel confident in saying that the current system is, at best, a waste of all our time. While I understand the intentions behind DOL, the implementation over the two years of its existence leaves much to be desired. Many of the 90-minute class slots, carefully spread across a week to minimize full days off, are filled with a whole lot of nothing. This past DOL, I only had one cumulative exam that could actually impact my grade, and most of the remaining time was spent doing absolutely nothing but sitting in a classroom, twiddling my thumbs. Clearly, something has to change.

While the DOL system offers the possibility of cumulative finals, few classes end up taking that opportunity. Because teachers have a narrow window for grading in between DOL and when semester grades are due, the classes that do have finals are often science, math, or history—subjects that are easily tested via multiple choice and thus quickly graded. Language teachers may not have the time to grade accurate cumulative assessments on all of their students during DOL unless they begin them before DOL actually starts, something that is difficult to coordinate as DOL occurs so close to the end of winter break, and time is needed for review. English teachers also encounter the grading issue, as the nature of most English work makes it difficult to grade in a timely manner, especially in large volumes. Many electives, such as any given art class, also face issues when trying to create and grade a final. With these challenges, it’s no wonder that so many classes opt out of having a final altogether, even if it results in so much wasted time.

Granted, the time isn’t always a waste. Many people do utilize this extra time for work and such. But for many more, it’s just time spent messing around on their phones, mindlessly passing time. And even if you do use the time for work, wouldn’t it be easier—and more comfortable—to do that work at home? Wouldn’t you rather have that time free, rather than constrained by the limits of a classroom? The way I see it, we have very little to lose by changing the DOL system—and a whole lot to gain.

I see a few possible solutions to individual problems. Keeping a normal schedule and having finals split into parts would minimize time wastage, but wouldn’t solve the grading problem. Simply having DOL a bit earlier in the semester could solve that, but then the remaining time in the semester might end up feeling pointless.

However, I believe the ultimate solution would be to allow teachers to create and administer finals at their discretion. Really, there’s no clear reason why we need to have a set finals week for every single class at once, forcing teachers to either contort their lesson plans around it or let the time go to waste, when you could just…not do that. We already have a solid three week span in between the end of winter break and the end of the semester, which would be a perfectly serviceable period to fit any number of finals into. 90 minute periods wouldn’t be necessary if we simply kept the normal schedule, because if a teacher wants a longer test, they can simply break it into multiple parts spread across multiple days.

Honestly, I have no idea how they landed on the DOL system in the first place. It was seemingly created to fulfil a purpose that already had a very clear solution (just allow teachers to have cumulatives when they want), and frankly is not working as intended. I am of the opinion that we can, and, for our collective sake’s, should change it.