Exam Season at Strake Jesuit

Anthony Schneider getting some "puppy love" to relax a little before finals.

As Thanksgiving fades into the rearview mirror and the blistering Houston heat retreats into a long-awaited hibernation, a great fear begins to grip high schoolers nationwide. For Strake Jesuit students, though, the time of reckoning known as “finals” takes on a slightly different mood. Of course, cramming students often line the hallways in the days and weeks leading up to exams, but the pervading attitude rarely approaches anything resembling fear. The surprisingly positive, upbeat mood comes as a result of numerous Strake traditions that provide not only much-needed relief but also offer a glimpse into the school’s warm, unique community.

As any Strake student knows, it wouldn’t be finals season without dogs. Just about every semester, service dogs are invited on campus to get some well-deserved attention and provide springs of joy for the bleary-eyed crammers. I don’t think even the most anxious person on the planet can resist the therapeutic euphoria of a puppy hug, and a library full of happy people playing with happy dogs is an incomparable sight.

Senior Jacob Stockton carrying out a last-day-of-school tradition to wear a Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses. 

With the arrival of the spring semester’s finals week in May comes another, more offbeat tradition. On their last day of classes, the entire senior class prances around campus in Hawaiian shirts and sunglasses, blasting an awful Spanish techno song on portable speakers. The sound of “Vamos a la Playa” (“Let’s Go to the Beach”) coming from a few hundred different locations certainly creates quite the experience, but the contagious merriment of the day relinquishes any thoughts of confusion or annoyance.  

In addition to alleviating mental distress, Strake Jesuit makes an effort to lift the academic weight upon students’ shoulders. “Dead Day,” despite its somewhat alarming name, is a day saves lives (and/or GPAs) by providing students free rein of the campus in which they can speak to any teacher about anything at any time. For those of us who aren’t too keen on asking questions during class, this opportunity can breathe new life into floundering grades and perhaps even create some much-needed “Eureka!” moments. A good number of students simply spend the majority of the day chatting, sharing notes, and playing games in the quad, while others take advantage of the optional attendance by catching up on their beauty sleep.

No matter how you look at it, Exam Season is anything but the most wonderful time of the year. With that being said, though, the Strake Jesuit community does everything it can to make this time more tolerable for its fellow members. From dogs in the library to bad pop music in the atrium, we treat finals a bit differently here at Strake, and I’d say that’s worthy of at least a little bit of early holiday cheer.