Today was my first day of school and it was incredibly stressful. I got my schedule this morning (we never get them more than a day in advance). My first three years I really had no scheduling complaints – I got all of the classes I needed, and I never had a teacher bad enough to cause me to transfer out. This year was very different. I requested AP Lit, AP US Gov, AP Econ (Macro + Micro in one class), AP Stat & AP Psych. I live in NY, where you need a semester of both gov & econ to graduate, so you typically have to take both AP Gov & AP Econ if you want to take one or the other because if you don’t, you won’t have the credits necessary. When I received my program, I had AP Lit, AP Econ & AP Stat, but no AP Psych or AP US Gov, and I was given English 11 and regular Gov instead. It turns out that, for the first time this year, there is only one section of AP Gov, which happens to be taught at the same time as AP Lit.
I was able to sneak into the guidance counselor during a free period, and I pretty immediately got English 11 swapped for AP Psych, so I was good on that front, and though I don’t have AP Gov, I was relatively happy with my schedule. However, I’m afraid that they’re going to take me out of AP Econ because it’s a bit over capacity and, though I have the graduation requirements because I’m enrolled in regular government, I don’t have AP Gov. My other option would be to transfer out of AP Lit and keep both AP US Gov and AP Econ, but writing is my thing and my teacher would be heartbroken. At the same time, I love the humanities and was really excited for both AP Gov & Econ, and sacrificing two APs to take AP Lit scares me. A bunch of kids in AP Lit have the same dilemma, and since AP Lit is a really small class to begin with, I’m afraid it may get canceled altogether if people start dropping it to take AP Gov. I really like my AP Econ teacher (who incidentally happens to be my non-AP Gov teacher), and he told me that he really hopes I can stay in his class. If I am forced to leave, he wants me to audit the class without receiving credit for it so that I can take the AP exam in May. I hope that, if it comes down to this, my guidance counselor will be able to explain my relatively light senior course load in the context of these restrictions…