With spring term coming to a close, I realized that final exams here aren’t as traditional as one might expect. One might think that untraditional finals would be 100x better than a traditional paper exam, but Loomis students beg to differ. 

My first final for spring term is biology. Usually I would expect a test or even a project on genetics, cells, or evolution—but tell me why Ms. Sal Monella wants me to invent a new ice cream flavor? I wouldn’t be so confused if we just had to think of something new, but the catch is I have to include all the ingredients from an eggs benedict. Using the eggs is the easy part, but what on earth is my flavor going to be when it has to include bacon, an English muffin, and hollandaise sauce…? To make matters worse, I can’t just name my new ice cream flavor “Eggs Benedict” either. It has to be something completely original. Some examples of this final project from past students are “Fliffledump,” an ice cream with french fries, “Zibbloof,” a cheese-pizza-flavored ice cream, and worst of all “Nazberosh,” which consists of flavors from pork nachos. The ingredients I have to include are unfortunate, but not as dreadful as my friend’s, who has to use ingredients from a Sloppy Joe sandwich. But the test really lies in the taste. Ms. Sal Monella has to eat the ice cream and rate it out of ten. Anything less than a five  means that one would  have to retake the entire biology course for another year. That’s why over 40 students are in my biology class (including 30 seniors). Not because they don’t understand the content, but because the ice cream flavors they created were disgusting. Last year Ms. Sal Monella even threw up because the flavors were so revolting. I love Ms. Sal Monella, but I really don’t want to be stuck in biology for my four years at Loomis! 

Another weird final that I have is for English II. Basically, everyone gets assigned a country, and we have to open a shop in that area and sell 100 matcha bowls in 2 weeks or less. The grading depends on how quickly you sell the 100 matcha bowls—the faster you sell them, the higher your score. For example, the first person to return with their successful sales pitch will get a 100%, the second person 95%, the third person 90%, the fourth person 85%, and so on. Because this final is ridiculously hard and literally has nothing to do with English (in some assigned countries, English isn’t a primary language), all of the students in my English class have decided to purposely fail: They capped their sales at 50 matcha bowls. This way, none of them will have perfectly completed the assignment, forcing their teacher to curve their grades. That’s why their motto is: Work smarter, not harder.