Has this ever happened to you?  You’re sitting in class when the entire guidance office kicks the door in and tells you to decide the next two years of your life right now?  You sit and stare at the endless stream of vague class titles trying to discern whether or not they’ll be boring when you spot the two letters that send a chill down your spine.  AP. 

Now, from what I can comprehend, AP classes were invented as a way to get college credits out of the way and to keep teenagers from being too happy in school.  In fact, Sophomore Helen Logan says she feels “nervous for the exams” because she’s never taken one before and “there’s a lot riding on the results.”  It’s an amazing thing to be able to stress out a student only a couple weeks into school. 

I always pictured the creators of AP classes and especially the dreaded AP exam to be a bunch of non-teachers sitting at a table saying something like this, “What will we do?!  The brats are getting too comfortable with GT and Honors.  Can we make like a GT squared or something?  We can’t let them start imagining that there is life outside the walls of the school!” 

I might be exaggerating, but even if I am, I think we could all picture that being a real thing.  And you may have noticed that I said they were non-teachers, yes that was definitely on purpose.  I mean, the AP exam is 3-4 HOURS long, can you really picture any of our teachers wanting to be stuck in a room with us for that extended an amount of time?  I don’t think so. 

It seems the idea to start using AP-style rubrics has become a teacher trend in Towson as well, I think because they’re just trying to mentally prepare for having to deal with us later.  That’s all I can think of because it’s clear that the teachers aren’t the biggest fans either.  I dare you, just ask one of them after class and look for a shift in their face and body language.  You can tell that they’re thinking of polite ways to talk about it because they aren’t allowed to outright hate on it like we do. 

The AP classes are so well known for their teachers and their famous heavy workloads that certain ones already have reputations.  A common recommendation that I’ve heard is, “Don’t take AP World unless you’re prepared to take five pages of notes every class.”  Even Mr. Geckle threw out a handy tip to his 10th graders in Chemistry saying that, “AP Physics is the class where you’ll be doing a lot of your more theoretical stuff, whereas GT is more math-heavy.”  AP-you’ve done it again, managing to be so well-known by the teachers and the students through cautionary tales and scaring underclassmen. 

Luckily for those dreading the end of the year test pressure, the entire class is basically designed to prepare us for the exam.  At least, that’s what the teachers say to make us feel a little better.  So, yeah it probably will be a lot of stress, sleepless nights, coffee addictions, and bathroom breakdowns but I think we can pull it together and make this year as no-stress as possible. 

Thankfully, despite the massive workload, most of our AP teachers do want to help.  From what I can tell the teachers are making it clear that while there will be a heavier workload, the last thing they want to do is see you crushed under it.  They are perfectly fine with you relying on them for help so I would really suggest you do because high school doesn’t get easier.