Change has the ability to manifest itself in a great number of ways. Sometimes its comes as a dramatic event, such as Pearl Harbor or a Vikings win. Often it is gradual, like Reagan's tax policy, which people still swear to me will be good for this country at some point. Recently, I realized that one of the more troublesome vehicles of change is that of preemption. I might not have a stomach ulcer just yet, but I can feel the acid eating away at my gastric lining, and it has little to do with my soda consumption and much to do with this final month of school.

While Thanksgiving break represents a time to relax with family and celebrate the great, longstanding alliance between American Indians and our pilgrim ancestors, the moment classes start back up Monday morning all feelings of optimism and, dare I say, enjoyment are immediately swapped for self-loathing and contempt.

The time between now and finals transmogrifies itself from mere days into a Baton Death March of sleepless nights and emotionless afternoons. Just as the weather starts to turn, so does the attitude of the UW campus, giving the entire city of Madison a seasonal disorder courtesy of this last hellish month. Something needs to be done, if not for my health, at least for my GPA, which is looking more like Billy Joel's blood-alcohol level every day.

So, as both a student and a human being who'd like to see his 21st birthday, I would like to offer a solution — an olive branch of peace — in an attempt to ease the fears of the undergrad masses and appease the powers that be. It is time to abandon the college system of education, a formula that greatly benefits the good test-taker and leaves the hard worker in the wreckage.

In its place, testing should become more incremental, decreasing the importance of one individual exam yet increasing the importance of the individual class period. Increased testing forces students to take a more specific approach to themes and topics, as more exams provide a professor with more possible questions.

This also requires the student to sustain knowledge, instead of simply cramming for an exam and forgetting as soon as the ink runs onto the paper. The benefits are mutual. While the student gets more opportunities to prove to the university that he is deserving of a certain grade, professors, no matter how jaded they might be, might actually force us to learn.

Critics might suggest that this type of learning is not fitting of a college education and that while the frequent testing method may be popular in high school, entrance into the University of Wisconsin comes with a sort of educational evolution, when more is expected of you.

But a university should not be afraid to adopt practices simply because they come from a less-advanced institution. The fact of the matter remains that many of us succeeded in the high school system while balancing education with athletics and other outside groups. Yet now that we've hung up the skates and quit 4-H, we are more stressed than ever.

Also, some might argue that students are given the opportunity to help their grades outside of tests, typically in the form of discussion sections. While I agree that making the discussion an important part of the class is helpful to both increase the understanding of class material and improve grades, it is still typically not enough to decrease the overwhelming importance of the exam.

A college education is never something that should be taken lightly, especially at a university such as ours, where we pride ourselves on high academic rankings almost as much as our binge-drinking rankings, but there comes a point when we must ask whether a research paper on the history of international semaphore code is worth such an incredible amount of mental strain. This is, after all, the holiday season, and although no one truly enjoys it, we should be allowed to fake it along with the rest of the general population. Those are the opportunities that are lost under the current system, where I will undoubtedly be trading my wellbeing for a second crack at sophomore year.

Sean Kittridge ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in journalism.