Pranav Week 4: AP Farming
College Board Logo from Facebook.
“How many APs are you taking?” I get this question almost EVERY SINGLE TIME I try talking to someone my age. It gets to a point. As we get older, school becomes a greater part of our identity than most of us would like. Fine, I’ll admit it: whenever a conversation is dying, I ask a question about school or AP classes, and all of a sudden, the conversation is reborn. In fact, most high school students could talk about their classes for hours. Although this seems like a good way to make connections, you never actually learn anything about the person you're talking to; you just learn the classes they’re taking and how they feel about them.
Somewhere along the way, we started treating our schedules like our personalities, and we have the infamous College Board to blame for that. I took my first AP class my sophomore year, and for the first half of summer, rather than enjoying it, I was worried about my score on the AP exam. Every single time I had a slight bit of enjoyment, my mind automatically went right back to thinking, “AP scores come out soon.” Even though I know the stress of an AP exam, I still keep taking them because one day a group of people decided that they were the gold standard for getting into a good college. AP classes can be fun sometimes, but it truly angers me when I see someone making fun of somebody else because they didn't take 6 APs and ruin their social life.
As taking an unnecessary amount of AP classes becomes normalized, it starts to hinder high school students real personality traits and replaces them with prosaic ones. Sadly, I feel like this blog is dying, so how many APs are you taking?
Hello Pranav! I also took the AP World History exam and was stressed for weeks after it, and it was all because of that pesky third short-answer question! Gosh, I never expected geography to be the thing to get me on the test rather than a gap in my historical knowledge!
ReplyDeleteI’ll admit that I took the amount of AP classes that I did due, in part, to the fact that it would look good on a college application. In reality, though, I actually love the pressure of having these classes. I believe that although the knowledge I learn from some of these classes may not be directly applicable to my future career plans, it’s the development of my mindset and learning to deal with intense workloads that will help to mold me into a, generally speaking, strong person.
I think that talking about classes in school is not always a terrible thing. I’ve found that despite everyone’s differences in interests, sports, and hobbies, school is the one thing that unites us all. It makes for a great way to start many conversations. Yes, you may not know the full extent to who that person actually is, but it’s that conversation starter regarding school and course loads that opens the door for more.
Having a schedule with 6 AP classes should not determine your worth. Being deliberate in selecting the courses you take is almost always the better choice, since that will serve you better in the future. In the end, there is more to life than just school, and it is important that we all do not base our livelihood solely on our grades and the difficulty of the classes we are taking!
Hi Pranav! Your blog was, unfortunately, very relatable. Now that you mention it, in almost every conversation that I’ve had this year with a new person, the subject of AP classes has always come up. I’ve understood being “the smart kid” as being a part of someone’s identity, but I’ve never connected it to school actually becoming a bigger part of our identities.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that even if you have a really long conversation with someone, you could end up knowing nothing about them. It’s entirely possible to be friends with someone for a few years and not actually know any basic information about them apart from their schedule, like their birthday or if they have siblings.
I’m sorry that you weren’t able to enjoy your summer because you were worried about AP scores coming out. I thought about it every now and then, but it didn’t consume my entire June. But I have a feeling that I’ll definitely think about it more this year, considering that I’ve taken 5 APs as opposed to the 1 AP last year, and of course, they fall into a variety of subjects.
Overall, I liked your blog topic, and you explained it well. It’s not something that people call out too often. Your title was also pretty creative and funny. I especially liked how your concluding sentence was the same as your introductory sentence, and how it reflected your topic. I thought it was clever and made the blog come full-circle.
Hey Pranav, your blog really tackles an important issue that I find super relatable. I also believe that there is definitely this toxic academic culture, especially in more competitive schools, regarding “college-maxxing” or “stat-padding.” Taking multiple APs is just one part of this. I personally am guilty of being the person who always asks, “So…how many AP’s are you taking this year?” However, it's just like you said, I really don’t know what else to talk about. Everyone around me also pushes this AP culture. As a result, I think this creates an infinite cycle in which the culture keeps spreading and becomes more and more prevalent.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that there is a toxic culture in which kids who don’t take tons of AP’s are looked down upon or are viewed as “inferior.” I think this is an important issue that all schools should address as your grades or what classes you take do not define your intelligence. In addition, it should not define your identity. People who take lots of APs and their whole character also need to change. I feel like it has become like a status symbol; kind of like how much money you make. I think this notion comes from the belief that those who take multiple APs are automatically going to a better college or are inherently smarter. In reality, anyone can take as many APs as you like. No one is stopping you from taking 10 in a year. Anyways, I love how you brought this up as it's a cultural issue that not many people have talked about but has been pervasive.
Hey Pranav. I’d like to say that I absolutely agree that it is incredibly exhausting how much our conversations revolve around school. I feel like we’ve let big corporations like the College Board dictate not only our schedules and what we do with our time, but also how we measure our self-worth. Because if a massive chunk of our summers is ruined by looming anxiety over test scores like the APs and the SATs, it is clear that the system is broken.
ReplyDeleteWorse than that, we are letting it dictate our relationships. Choosing a lighter and easier
course load should not be social suicide, and it certainly should not give anyone the right to look down on you. We should always remember that we are more than a list of classes, and it’s time we start treating each other like human beings instead of a bunch of talking transcripts.