Second semester of every school year is always stressful. It’s the last semester to improve grades before moving on to the next year of life. It’s the last semester before summer, and it’s also the semester that provides exemptions from exams.

This obviously causes lots of stress for students because of the district policy for exemptions which states students are only allowed to miss four days of class. Otherwise, they are required to take the exam for that class. Of course, students don’t want to take exams, so they will do everything in their power to be able to be exempt. I recently just had the pleasure of dealing with this situation of being sick, but also wanting to be exempt from my exams.

Late one Saturday evening, I got a fever. I had already missed two days of school from a 24-hour bug, so I only had two days left until my exemptions were taken away. Hoping that this would all be over soon, I rested and took medicine on Sunday. And then Monday. And then Tuesday. I was upset that my fever had not yet gone away because it was my last day that I could miss.

I woke up on Wednesday with a fever again, but the stress of losing my exemptions made me get up, get ready, and go to school. As a Junior I can only exempt my four core classes, which, luckily, I have for my first four class periods. I just had to get through my first four periods, and then if I was still really sick, I could go to the nurse and go home. I continued to do this on Thursday and Friday.

Saturday morning I woke up with another high fever, so I went to our family doctor. I got x-rays and blood work done. The doctor recommended I don’t go back to school until the results came in. This made me upset because I was about to lose my exemptions. I ended up missing a full week of school because I had gotten pneumonia.

The doctor said that I may not have gotten pneumonia if I hadn’t come to school and would have stayed home and rested. I would have never come to school with a fever, if it hadn’t been for exemptions. Exemptions caused me to risk getting in trouble and get other students sick because I didn’t want to have to study for four extra classes.

Exemptions cause students so much stress and will make them to do crazy things, like go to school with a 103 degree fever. Teachers and staff members don’t understand the stress exams cause and what all students will do in order to be able to be exempt and not have to take exams. Plenty of kids come to school sick which causes other students and sometimes teachers to get sick.

The school district should have a more lenient policy for exemptions. The district even counts surgeries or days in the hospital towards losing exemptions. FBISD should allow students who have fevers, are in the hospital, or who are getting surgeries to have these days not count towards their exemptions. As long as they have proof from a doctor.  This would help more people to be healthy during second semester and not have to miss as many days of school.

This is a serious topic that the district should discuss. It could potentially help with people’s health and schooling. This plan could create a better learning environment where everyone is healthy and not sitting sick in class without paying attention. Hopefully, this rule can eventually be changed in the future for the better of student’s health.