More times than I can count, I’ve found myself slaving away at my desk at 1 a.m., spending half of my time calculating the lowest possible grade on my next MCQ I can get to end the semester with an A and the other half trying to understand what this God forsaken textbook is trying to tell me.
With my sanity dwindling and the AP exam approaching, I start to wonder, are all of my all nighters, Quizlet sets, and weird memorization tricks just to get a five in May really that important? Is all of this even worthwhile in the long run?
Oftentimes, the answer is no. Probably the most notorious aspect of AP classes is how time consuming they are and the sheer amount of work they require. Depending on the AP class, students can get one to two hours of homework per night, and this is only for one AP class. But students obviously get homework from their non-AP classes as well, adding up to hours and hours of homework.
The last thing all student athletes want to do after coming home from practice at 9 p.m. is read their U.S. history textbook, and read about the oh so interesting Gilded Age into the early morning hours. Once it gets into those gruelling winter months, it starts to feel like I spend more time on Quizlet than with my own family. As my winter depression sets in, the last thing I want to do is spend hours studying irrelevant information that I’ll never use after the AP exam.
This huge amount of classwork directly correlates with students’ mental health. According to a Stanford research study on homework, “56 percent of [students] considered homework a primary source of stress.” AP students definitely find that homework contributes to their stress levels. After hours of watching of Heimler’s history and still not feeling like your brain cows are milked, the pressure of getting a good score on the AP exam, a good grade in the class, finishing your homework, and trying to get more than five hours of sleep piles up very quickly and leaves students feeling tired, stressed, and burnt out.
But despite the stress and time spent on AP classes, there’s peace of mind knowing that you’ll at least have an easier time getting into a good college and while you’re in college…right? Well, how AP classes actually affect your college experience is probably a lot less than you would think. According to a study done by the University of Colorado, 28,000 Texas students found, “no evidence that passing an AP course leads to faster graduation.”
So hoping your AP credits will equate to less gen-eds in college probably isn’t reality. You’ll still be stuck taking an English 101 class and reading Shakespeare, whose painfully boring writing you hoped you had escaped after taking AP Lit senior year. Some colleges don’t even accept AP credit, according to data collected by the Progressive Policy Institute: “Eighty-six percent of the top 153 universities and colleges in the United States restrict the awarding of AP credit”.
So, next time spring rolls around and your counselor starts talking to you about your schedule for next year, instead of deciding to collect AP classes like Pokemon cards, ask yourself what subjects you’re really interested in and whether or not you’d be willing to risk your sanity for a class you may or may not be getting college credit for.
Ultimately, no class is worth that makes you feel like your life depends on how good of an FRQ you’re able to write come the beginning of May.