‘Tis the season—the season of intense studying, extended hours in the library and attempts to finish every assignment and paper in time. BYU students are getting ready for the finals. Some classes are easy, some require an intense preparation and a lot of effort. Here is a list of five classes that have the most difficult finals according to BYU students:
1. Mathematics 119
Freshman year can be tricky for many students. Many people have stories about their first finals week and how difficult it was. Andrew Ray, a marketing major from Atlanta, Ga., said the worst final he has ever taken was Math 119 during his first year in college.
“(I) bombed the other midterms, but then at the final I sat there for four hours not knowing what to do, just staring at this test,” Ray said. “I haven’t studied a lot during the freshman year in general. But this MATH 119 class, I gave up on it. I thought, ‘If I get a C in this class, I will be happy.’ It destroyed me, this class. And it was unnecessarily hard, the average in the class was below 70.”
2. Economics 110
Sometimes taking too many difficult classes at once makes students’ lives more complicated. It can be challenging to take two difficult tests in one day. Tyler Murphey, a history major from Spokane, Wash., took accounting 200, Econ 110 and P.D. bio all in one semester. His accounting and economics final tests were scheduled in one day.
“They are three hours or more each,” Murphey said. “I literally walked out of the Testing Center, bought a juice at the vending machines and a snack and walked back. It took me seven hours to take these two tests. It was hard. I struggle with math. If I see number on a page and they are not dates, it’s immediately freaks me out. Accounting was alright because the math is pretty simple, but Econ 110 was incredibly difficult.”
3. Chemisty 105
Not all tests can be taken in the Testing Center. During finals week, the Joseph Smith Building is open for taking tests too. The big auditorium is filled with rows of chairs and small desks. Often times students can’t find a free seat or end up seating in a small chair trying to balance papers, calculators and tables on a little desk. Cameron Lundin, an exercise major from Lake Havasu, Ariz., had to take Chem 105 in the JSB.
“It was hot in the room, and I got stuck at the very edge of the row. So every time someone left or came I had to move my desk over and let them walk through. And for my test I needed a calculator, scratch paper, periodical table and then a bubble sheet and the test. I had two things on my lap and the rest on the desk. I was there for four and a half hours taking the final. I didn’t look at the grade; I was so sick of everything by the time I got done. That was pretty rough.”
4. Chemistry 107
Usually one-credit classes are supposed to be easy, even if it’s chemistry. Michael Jeppesen, an exercise major from Rexburg, Idaho, had to take Chem 107 for his major. According to Jeppesen, a lab class that was only one credit worth took him a lot of time and effort.
“You have to memorize procedures and colors of about 40 different compounds,” Jeppesen said. “I thought it was unnecessary to memorize that stuff. These are things I would never use. They could have made it more conceptual test or procedure test rather than specific things I would never do again. Tons of work, tons of time and all about the things I would never use again.”
5. Spanish 333
And then there are finals that are just difficult in every possible way. This is how Alexander Rice, a linguistics major from Provo, felt about Span 333. According to Rice, it is still the worst final that he has taken so far.
“It was a timed three hour test in the humanities testing lab in the JFSB, on those wretched Mac computers with buggy software and a maddeningly-frustrating, inefficient user interface,” Rice said. “The exam itself was stupid, having three portions, each meant to be done in under an hour. The third portion was the worst of all. We had to write another 800-word essay about how the class we just took was important to us and how it was going to make us a better person for the rest of our lives. I honestly did not like the class that much, and it felt meaningless to me. And by this point I had 10 minutes left to write another 800 words about something I didn’t agree with, again. Definitely the worst final I’ve ever taken.”
