The end of the third marking period marks the home-stretch to the end of the school year. The end of the third marking period is also the beginning of mad rush for teachers to fit in all of their lesson plans.

As every student knows, the beginning of the second semester starts off slowly and considerably easy. It lasts that way until the fourth marking period rolls around and teachers realize they only have 10 weeks left to teach everything the state mandates they have to teach.

Cramming so much in such a short time span is not a good thing; both students and teachers develop stress from it.

Teachers have to rewrite their lesson plans to make sure everything is taught by exams, which forces teachers to teach at a faster rate and assign students more work instead of activities.

Students have more stress because they have to learn at a faster rate, which some students cannot handle, and they have to do the more work that is assigned.

For seniors, the stress is even worse. Senioritis usually kicks in full blast in the fourth marking period after spring break. Seniors do not want to learn at a faster rate, and they do not want to do the extra work.

Also, Advanced Placement students who are taking AP tests in May have more stress. Their teachers are cramming everything in before the AP tests, and the students will be missing multiple days of school to take the tests.

For calculus, in particular, the students who are taking the AP test will have to stay after school for a few days just to learn all the concepts that will be on the test.

I understand why teachers are cramming. They have to because the state says so even though it is difficult to fit all of the information that has to be taught to students in 180 days.

However, I only wish that some teachers would cut some slack on students.

Because the end of the year is stressful, it would be better on teachers and students if homework was limited.