Can taking exams cause a lot of stress for students? There is such a thing as exam stress. Stress includes sleep disturbances, tiredness, worries, irregular eating habits, increased infections, and inability to concentrate (Dunford, 2014). Would our society be better off without final exams? The final exam is an exam taken at the end of an academic period. Neil DeGrasse Tyson once said, “The only way to invent tomorrow is to get out of the box that the school system has set up with exams written by people trained in another generation (year).” What he is trying to say is that we need innovation in our school systems. We cannot base our tests and exams on the exact same thing every year. Our students are taught the test and not the actual subject. Tests are normally from a long time ago and are simply reused and something needs to be changed about it. Our school systems need to start using alternatives to the final exam. There are alternatives to typical academic tests, and school systems need to start using other methods to measure retention and performance of their students. The first thing you need to know about exams is that they are causing too much stress among students at all grade levels. Stress is one of the body's natural responses to something that is threatening or scary. We all experience this feeling sometime in our lives. Sometimes it can be for a good reason and sometimes the opposite. There is good stress and there is also bad stress. Bad stress can cause you to not perform at your highest level and impair your abilities (Exam Stress, 2014). Research is showing that college students are stressed halfway through the assignment ...... rebalanced, the grade obtained gives only a brief glimpse of a performance on one day that could really be tested throughout the year with the other alternatives listed above. There are so many more ways to test students and children today, and our school systems need to start innovating. They need to stop using things from years past and learn to teach children new and more productive ways. Our students are taught the test and not the actual subject. Our school systems need to start using alternatives to the final exam. There are so many alternatives to the typical academic tests and final exams that are offered. I hope that over the years, in the near future, schools will begin to move away from exams and use alternative options. It may take generations, but it would be a win-win for all school systems and future students.