@penngirlpending I thought you were rickrolling us but I guess not
@awesomepolyglot haha should’ve
Should’ve
@penngirlpending Hope you signed up for the AP you wanted to selfstudy. I did it with the help of my counselor and VP.
@YoohooAddict I’m still waiting in the dark >:c
@penngirlpending Oh well then… Good Luck!
I just signed up for my classes next year, and here is the schedule:
AP Spanish
Honors Physics
Fantasy Literature
AP American Gov’t/Economics
Philosophy
AP Calculus BC
Photography
The hardest thing for me while choosing my classes was which ones and how many to take as weighted. Going to a competitive public school in the Bay Area, I’ve been struggling with my self-esteem because I’m taking only 3 APs (Bio, Lit, and Psych), while 4 or 5 is the norm here. I’ve always felt sort of ashamed to be taking a “lite” AP (Psych) and finding the other two challenging, while others appear to be breezing through their difficult schedules. But I took (and will be taking next year) the classes I like, and I think that that’s what matters more. Even with my senior schedule, it probably looks way easier than what students at my school/on CC would deem “appropriate”, because of Fantasy Literature, Philosophy, and Photography, but I find these classes so interesting, and I would rather have fun taking the classes I want to than struggle in a bunch of weighted classes that are not of interest to me.
TL;DR: I’m slowly realizing that it’s okay to take the classes you like even if they aren’t the most challenging or impressive. BUT you shouldn’t take too easy classes, either. 
@photogeek8 That’s the spirit! My goodness, your school offers fantasy literature? Wow. :o That’s cool! AP Psych is considered “lite”? Interesting. I’m proud of you for taking what you wanted to take, because, like you said, that is all that matters. 
My school opened class registration on Monday and I have been told we have until the 28th to finalize our courses. Here is what I have so far:
AP Environmental Science
AP English Lit
AP Gov
AP Psych
Honors Pre-Calc (Dual-Enrollment with nearby college)
Art I (I wanna draw!)
2 Study halls (the first study hall is automatically placed for everyone)
I wanted Russian History, but Powerschool deleted it from the electives list. It was apparently a mistake to have it deleted, but I’m taking this as a sign that it’s not for me? Hm…
Meanwhile, the kids at my school are trying to pick the “easy” AP classes. I laugh at them. If it’s an AP course, it’s not “easy”.
At my school there are easy AP classes. AP Psychology and IB SL Psychology are examples. I’m taking SL Psychology and it is by far my easiest class and I’ve heard others say its easier than their regular classes. We hardly ever have homework because the teacher doesn’t really believe in homework. That might seem like a good thing to some people but I don’t feel like I’m actually learning anything in that class. We go over the same things over and over for days and then the tests are super easy. Soon I’ll have to take the IB exam…that’s going to be a challenge. I regret taking the class, I could’ve doubled up on sciences like a lot of people or taken IB World Religions with my old AP World teacher. Oh well.
@dsi411 They want an AP class they could pass without doing homework or studying.
Is anyone else starting to panic about college!? Suddenly I’m getting so obsessed with everything and I literally can’t focus on anything besides college acceptances. I feel like this is really premature ugh!
So I decided to take the AP Lit test and I’m going to read some literature over the spring break to help me prepare since we didn’t read “AP Lit books” in my IB English class (though I can still probably use some IB books for the exam). Do you all have any recommended readings? They can be books or poems or anything else you guys read in your AP Lit classes.
@dsi411 At my school, books read in AP Lit include: Atonement (McEwan), Beloved (Morrison), The God of Small Things (Arundhati Roy), The Metamorphosis (Kafka), The Plague (Camus), Hamlet (Shakespeare), The Prince of Denmark (Shakespeare), The Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck), The Pickup (Gordimer), Fences (Wilson), Let the Great World Spin (McCann), Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (Sijie), All the Pretty Horses (McCarthy), and A Streetcar Named Desire (Williams).
Never read any of them, but you can look up summaries or something and decide from that. You can probably find AP Lit reading lists on Google or something.
@dsi411 we read the Iliad (three months on this thing gg), 1984, Brave new World, Catcher in the Rye, Hamlet, Othello, The Canterbury Tales (gg I’m dreading this one), Crime and Punishment, Heart of Darkness, The Trial and Death of Socrates, and Gulliver’s Travels. Also known as: all that fancy old literature.
I’m a little disappointed that I ended up dropping one of my APs for next year because it wouldn’t have been doable, but I’m pretty happy with my schedule, since I’m taking two English courses as well as three STEM courses (and Gov/Econ, but my school doesn’t offer AP for that so it’s going to be really really BS) (also known as I got a 97 in regular US History last semester without trying and I’m pretty sure gov/econ will be the same thing) (which is a shame because I actually like the subject).
@Futuremed17 i’m not panicking but i’m certainly obsessing. i found my dream school, barnard college, and now all i can think about is going there; naturally, this will be very bad in the future if i don’t get in because i’m only getting excited about one college but i can’t hELP it
@dsi411 I’m not in Lit right now but I know they usually read Pride and Prejudice, Hamlet, Macbeth, Atlas Shrugged and many more.
@tarantinq same I’m obsessed with USC. It’s getting really bad so I probably need to start finding some others schools I love or next year might be very depressing! Like I seriously spend at least an hour at night looking up stuff about USC ha.
It just hit me that we will be seniors in three months. WOW. I remember my first day of freshman year like it was yesterday. Really scary. I can’t be an adult yet…
I can’t wait to be a senior and apply to colleges. This is what I’ve been preparing for since 9th grade, I can’t believe it’s almost here! Who else is excited?
Does anyone have really bad anxiety? I get so anxious to the point where I get intense stomach aches and heartburn. For example, last week in AP Lit, we were reading aloud in class our current text. My teacher takes volunteers, but because no one raised her hand for one of the characters, he assigned me the role. As soon as he called on me, I skimmed through the chapter to find when my character would speak (toward the end of the chapter), and during the entire period, I felt really hot and clammy. As silly as it may seem, I was incredibly nervous that I might say the character’s lines incorrectly or use wrong intonation and then the class would laugh at me.
Incidents like this one happen all the time to me. Sometimes I’ll have the answers to the teacher’s questions, but I’m so scared that I’ll be wrong that I hardly ever raise my hand. And if I do, I have to rehearse my answer and consciously use sophisticated vocabulary.
I have occasionally tried breathing techniques (my parents are big believers in mediation/yoga), but in the moment preceding the scary event (talking in class/performing a piano piece/interacting with others/pretty much anything involving people), all I can think about is the embarrassment I’ll feel if I mess up. I try to assure myself mentally that it doesn’t matter what will happen or that no one will remember the event even the next day, but my anxiety is so extreme that I can’t seem to muster the courage to get through without thinking of the worst outcome.
Can anyone relate and/or provide any helpful tips to control my anxiety?