Anxiety of AP's

 I wish I was a snail. Easy life, no AP madness. While many others go through the hallways, clutching a two-subject notebook, AP students lug backpacks filled with enough textbooks to double as workout equipment. Our grades? A delicate ecosystem where survival of the fittest means sacrificing sleep, social life, and sanity.


                                                  


In a spectacle more intense than a high-stakes poker game, AP students sign up for classes like it's a reality TV show. "Take five AP classes,” they say. “It’ll look good on college apps,” they say. But after just one week of AP Calc and AP Bio, students begin eyeing the school's fire alarm as a potential escape route. 

                                           


Grades in AP classes are like rare, mythical creatures: beautiful to behold but nearly impossible to capture. For most AP students, anything above a 90% on a test is cause for celebration, and if you hit 95%, you’re basically a god. With each homework assignment worth 0.01% of your overall grade, you start prioritizing:

  • Homework? Only if it counts for over 5%.
  • Studying for quizzes? If it’s more than 10% of the grade and you’re not at risk of falling asleep in class.
  • Actually understanding the material? Haha, optional. 

You quickly learn the art of “point chasing,” where you obsessively calculate how many points you need to just pass. 


                                   


AP students are known for their quirks. We don’t need reminders that the world is unfair, our grades remind us every day. By December, most AP students have already had at least one MAJOR existential crisis, or two. A classic scenario: you walk into class, hand in an essay you wrote in a caffeine-fueled haze, only to get it back with a generous “68%.” That’s when the bargaining stage begins:

  • “If I go to every office hour…”
  • “If I join three new clubs and mention them in my essay for extra credit…”
  • “Maybe if I become one of the periodic table elements, my AP Chem grade will improve”


Some schools offer the sweet relief of the AP grading curve: a magical system where your 89.8% might just get curved up to a 90%, and on a really good day, an A instead of an A-! But the curve is cruel, rewarding the fortunate few while the rest of us live on the edge of barely passing. Nothing quite compares to the joy of realizing your 75% on the AP Bio midterm was “technically above average” and that now you’re slightly less doomed.


                      

There’s an unspoken language of grade reactions among AP students. The look of horror, disbelief, and immediate dissociation upon seeing your test score. The half-hearted optimism of “It’s just one grade; there’s still the final!” Followed by the realization that, actually, the final is worth 80% of your grade. Every assignment, every quiz, every stray point becomes a strategic opportunity to cling to the GPA ledge. 







In regular classes, your non-AP friends ask why you look so stressed, and all you can do is stare blankly. Do they know how it feels to wake up in a cold sweat, haunted by the APUSH test you know you bombed? To AP students, it’s obvious: GPA isn’t a number; it’s a state of mind. We don’t simply study, we become our classes, living out every hypothetical college credit like our lives depend on it.

In the end, though, AP students wouldn’t trade it for the world. Or, okay, maybe we would, for a slightly better GPA and a good night’s sleep. 

                                                                                            



Yeah, I'd rather just be a snail.

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