Aeries closed during crucial finals week

Imagine receiving your report card and seeing two C’s in classes you swear you got A’s in. Your parents go crazy and lecture you incessantly on the disappointment you’ve caused the family. But wait, you go to talk to your teacher the next day and find out it was all because of a grading mistake; all because Aeries was closed.

Finals is a stressful time for everyone, and the absence of Aeries in this time of need makes students even more anxious and worried.

For many students, Aeries is an important tool to gauge progress in a class or to talk to teachers about fixing last minute mistakes in grades. With Aeries closed, students are left completely in the dark.

Of course, the closing of Aeries is not intended to hurt students. The idea is for teachers to calculate, input and tweak grades without a badgering flow of angry e-mails from parents and students who are upset with a sudden grade drop. As a number of parents in Saratoga are in this habit, it is much more peaceful for teachers to just close off Aeries altogether.

However, teachers and administrators should also consider this from the students’ point of view. Academics are an extremely important aspect of the lives of a majority of Saratoga students. Between putting in an incredible amount of time for review and trying to raise borderline grades, students have more than enough on their plates without being put into the dark.

However, when Aeries is closed, students are left stressing and unable to relax even after finals are over, as they are unaware of their grades for at least a few days after the exams.

Perhaps a compromise is to only close Aeries for a set amount of time each day during finals week. That way, teachers will be uninterrupted while entering grades and students will maintain the ability to monitor their grades throughout the crucial week.

Another solution could be for all teachers to be required to hand out printed grade sheets to their classes so that students can at least verify their grades before the reports get sent out to parents.

No matter how, a change would help students enormously. Not only would it lessen the giant stress load, but also it would create a smaller margin of error for grading. At the very least, it would save our overly worried parents from getting a heart attack and save us from nonstop lecturing.