January 2002

If the World Changed on September 11th, Why Didn’t My Finals?
by James Chenoweth

By the time this article reaches your eyes, the final exam season in campuses all around the country will have come to an end.  From Tulane to Texas, New York to New Haven, students of all majors and ages will have gone through the arduous task of the examination week.  Finals have always represented a tedious example of just one more thing we just “have to do,” but this season, after thousands perished at the hands of one psychotic with an ever-diminishing life-span, finals seem more insignificant and unnecessary than usual.

Here in New York, just three months after 9-11, the normalcy that is exam season is a bit unwelcome by students, despite the popularity of “moving on” from the mouths of professors and politicians.  Just days after the attack (three to be exact) classes resumed here at NYU Law.  Since then, classes at this institution, as well as those throughout America, have attempted to preserve this semester as they would any other.  The regular tests.  The regular papers.  The regular grades.

Sure, lectures took the attacks into account, attempting to dive into some of the relevant issues such a powerful event had on the classes at hand.  In tort law at NYU, less than a week after the planes crashed into towers not 2 miles away, students were treated to an interesting discussion on the insurance and liability claims possible in the wake of the attacks.  Within ten days, the school gathered a panel discussion on civil rights in times of war.  Within one, a blood drive.

When the dust settled and the world did not end, however, the syllabi reigned, the curriculum did not weaken, and the topics did not vary.  At The University of Texas, a mechanical engineer claimed his professor did not want the event to “slow [the class] down.”  At Texas A&M, one statistics professor did not bother referring to the attacks on a class beginning only 45 minutes after the first plane hit World Trade One.  Could it be the professor didn’t know?  Hardly probable when all the students – all the world – did.  Does the pressure to move on with our lives require a steadfast ignorance to the fact that maybe the world is different than it once was?  Or did the world (at least the statistics one) simply not change?  If class curriculum were any evidence, one would think the latter.

Signs of September 11^th could not be felt at the study lounge on a late evening a week before finals.  Silence and study groups.  Fatigue and Frappuccino.  Life on campus in the Home of the Brave went on bravely as scheduled.  Nor rain, nor sleet, nor gloom of night keeps an overzealous professor from making his rounds and putting the fear of God in his students.  I suppose academia, like capitalism, rests for no one – not even Osama. 

So this exam season, the students of the American higher education system indulged in more dreadful subjects than war or terrorism – their classes.  Perhaps these past few exam weeks represent a true tell-tale sign that normalcy in America has returned, when frat parties helped ease the tension, procrastinators spent whole nights in the library, and parents put the threat of “cutting off” in the minds of borderline students.  God Bless America.

Perhaps living in this great country we have, we must take the good with the bad, the stressful with the patriotic.  They say taxes are what we pay to live in a free society.  Maybe finals are what we students pay so that we can later pay taxes - so that we may live in a free society.  As such, while everyone raises their hats to the men and women in the Middle East, to the political leaders, and to the police and fire departments around the country, I raise my humble cap to those future soldiers, leaders, and public servants going through the thankless job that belongs to the few, the proud, the test takers of America.

James Chenoweth