When I entered high school, a big part of adjusting was making a choice between Honors Freshman English or Freshman English. This easy choice has set me up to be in similar classes with students who were placed in the same roster. After being in Honors Freshman English, I decided to stay on the Honors track because I found I didn’t want to give up being in classes with people who listened to teachers. This experience proved to further cement my belief that AP World History: Modern was the best fit for me.
Hearing secondhand stories of kids being rowdy and interrupting in class were not ones I was trying to relive again. Some kids would talk the entire lesson resulting in the teacher sending the kid out, or getting mad at the class. However, my ability to stay in all the advanced classes I could, ended. This year, I decided to drop out of AP Chemistry because the intense homework load was starting to take a toll on my mental health. This fact was only amplified by the numerous activities I do through the school, sports being one of them. I had bitten off more than I could chew, and I recognized that. After acknowledging that I was in too deep, I made the difficult decision of switching out AP Chemistry for the much less demanding Earth and Space class during the same period. This change was counterintuitive for me because the reason I wanted to do AP Chemistry was to get out of the class that I ended up in.
The path I started during my freshman year had dictated my every class up until that point. I was out of the general education classes for most of my time in high school, and the atmosphere in my Earth and Space class was immediately different. Don’t get me wrong, those who choose to take AP classes aren’t people who are intensely focused and diligent all the time; however, everyone tries their best. This is different from the bare minimum that many stick to in general education classes. This shift was not a surprising one, but I was not used to how some students behaved while the teacher was talking or teaching and distracting to the point where they were asked to go outside. This was a shock to me as something like this hadn’t happened in a class of mine since I was in 8th grade.
The choice of taking a more challenging class in order to have a productive, interactive class instead of the easier and rowdier class is one I have always tried to take if possible, and my recent class change has only reaffirmed my beliefs surrounding the differences in education between Honors/AP classes and general education classes.
