C-/D+ in AP Calc

blu_g8orade
Mon, 26 Jan 2009 16:44:32 +0000

i bombed Calc last year too, i ended up with a C but it could have been a lot worse… as you probably know, in Calculus if you don’t make an effort to completely learn everything from the basics, you would continue to slip further and further downhill. before you end up failing the class, you have to stop yourself and make a committment to get better at it.

like literally, i would just be sitting in class feeling like an idiot not understanding anything. i would always tell myself that i would go home and review what i learned, but i rarely ever made the time for myself. and even when i did, i just wasn’t effective at studying and it didn’t really help. my teacher was no help either. he basically catered only to the kids that understood quickly and didn’t slow down to explain things for anyone else.

i kind of developed a learned helplessness, in psychology that’s when continued failure causes one to lose confidence and just give up. every test/quiz i was taking was coming back as Ds and Es, maybe a C if i was lucky. even when i “studied” my ass off (at the time, i thought staring at the textbook for a couple hours and doing a couple problems was “studying my ass off”), i would still get Ds and Es. it was tough, because i lost a lot of confidence and became unsure of my own intelligence. everyone else seemed to be picking it up faster than me, and i felt really dumb.

but instead of just succumbing to it, midway through the year i decided to pull myself together and made it my goal to at least do well on the AP test. like someone said, if you want to get better at Calculus, it’s really not hard to find resources. the average person will struggle with Calculus when they first learn it, so there really are TONS of resources out there. the AP test review books are really good, because they summarize the main points in an easy-to-understand manner as opposed to the confusing jargon and complicated symbols from the textbook. you should try the Princeton Review and Kaplan books, they were really helpful. and there are tons and tons of little online tutorials and whatnot. now, it definitely wasn’t easy for me to sit down and study, especially with me basically being a slacker. for about 2-3 weeks i would just go to the library for like 2-3 hours a day, sometimes up to 6+ hours a day on weekends. i would watch tutorials, read the books, and do problems upon problems.

in the end, i really improved my performance towards the end of the year. unfortunately, it was too late to improve my grade at that point, and my final grades still averaged out to a C. it did feel like all hope was lost, but fortunately when my AP scores came in i had gotten a 4. now, i’m a senior in Calc BC, and i just finished first semester with an A. so i think i have effectively made up for it.

my advice to you, is yes, write a letter explaining the problems you’ve had, the mistakes you made in the way you approached the class, and what you will do to change that in the future. i would at least have your guidance counselor look over it and sign off on it.