The Exhibition of Learning is highly regarded by Oakton administration and faculty as one of the high points of the school year. However, it has never quite elicited the same excitement from students. Over the past few years, Oakton has tried to build the EoL into something bigger — a professional display of the diverse talents and interests of Oakton students. Yet student and teacher interest has been steadily dropping, and, for many students, the EoL has become more of a chore than a celebration.

In an anonymous survey comparing this year’s EoL to previous years’, juniors and seniors recalled having at least two weeks of class time completely dedicated to preparing for presentations. This year, three-quarters of freshman and sophomores reported less than three class periods of prep time, and two-thirds of those claimed to have less than one class period available to them. One anonymous respondent spoke of a classmate who simply didn’t want to participate. The result? His or her teacher supposedly allowed them to sit out without consequence. Another student didn’t even recall teachers mentioning the EoL at all until less than two weeks prior to the event, and attributes the overall lack of enthusiasm to this dearth of information.

The attitude of student presenters was overall reported as fairly positive, but students asked  about the appearance of presenters overwhelmingly described presenters’ level of dress as “casual.” Attendees were also asked to compare the quality of presentations to those of previous years; one student thought that their presentation was better, but “other students didn’t dress up so much; [he or she] saw multiple students in sweatpants.” In addition to the unprofessional attire, many found the presentations to be a bit repetitive, “given that most of them were tri-fold posters about sports or science projects.” The “What’s In Your Closet?” chemistry poster project has long been a popular choice for EoL presentations, as well as the freshman Enduring Legacies project. Across the board, however, the students surveyed agree that it is time to move on from these unoriginal displays.

The role of observers has also changed. Since teachers were not required to bring their classes down to view presentations, students were often disinterested in the work of people they didn’t know. A take on the project growing in popularity is baking—students who choose to bake are often very passionate about their hobby and excited to talk about it, but find that more often than not, observers will take a cookie or cupcake and leave without listening to their presentation. Other students make a bee-line for their friends and spend the whole time chatting, depriving the presenter of opportunities to show off their work. One senior believes this seeming indifference to be a result of a vicious cycle — if presenters are bored, then the observers are bored, and the presenters are less inclined to speak to people who don’t care about their work.

When asked about ways to improve the EoL, most students had the same answers: enforce a dress code, restrict allowance of school projects to reduce redundancies, and make the importance of the presentations more clear. One freshman tried to be excited about their presentation, as the “EoL let us practice presenting to our community members what we have learned and how much learning is worth; [however], I thought they could have been more professional.”

Some students have voiced copious complaints about how the EoL is stupid and a waste of time, but there are clearly people in the school who care about what they are presenting. The problem here is the same one which affects so many of Oakton’s initiatives: dissenters are the most vocal commentators. The only people we hear from are the people who don’t care, a fact which skews our overall perception of the event. Students presented alternatives to boost morale such as making EoL optional, instead of forcing adverse students to groan their way through a speech, and moving it back to an after-school affair, so that teachers do not have to give up class time. However, the potential for change truly lies in the people. If no one wants to keep EoL alive, it will wither and die, becoming the soul-sucking factory farm of spit-back speeches many students already believe it to be.