I think I'm going fail my AP Latin exam

PatrickMcgann
Thu, 20 Apr 2017 03:21:31 +0000

So, I am a sophomore in high school and, because I went to a private school for elementary and middle school, I already had credit for Latin I and Latin II. For the school’s advanced diploma I needed either three years in one foreign language or two years in two, so, because I am not a huge fan of foreign languages, I just decided to take Latin III and get it over with, but I liked the class so much that I decided to take AP Latin the year after. This year. But what I didn’t know is that my teacher from 9th grade had had to transfer schools over the summer and my school had to find a last minute replacement for the Latin classes. Also, due to the massive influx of Latin students that came in because of the old teacher’s popularity, the school had to clump Latin III, Latin IV, and Latin AP into one class. I should have known something was amiss when the detailed breakdown of the Aeneid I had written for my summer assignment was taken in as a completion grade. Things started off badly as it soon became clear that the new teacher had zero control over the class, in fact he only added to the disruption. The other AP Latin student and I were given our Caesar textbooks and I got to work. I figured that the teacher would gain his footing as the year progressed. I was wrong. I finished translating the Gallic Wars near the middle of the third grading period and was given my textbook for the Aeneid. Over those two and a half grading periods I had not been the most productive as classroom distractions and an overall confusion as to what was going on were obstacles, but I came out of it with a decent grasp of Latin prose. The help I got from my teacher came mainly in the form of vocabulary and grammar help, but in actual layout I had difficulty, but I got the hang of it in the end. By this time the other AP student had totally given up and was one of the worst people in the class (and that’s saying something). I got my Aeneid textbook and am now totally confused. I’ve been working on it for a few weeks and I’ve gotten about 100 lines into book 1, but I am terribly confused. I have no idea how poetry formatting works and any help the teacher tries to give is completely useless to me at this stage. I realized that I was on my own when the teacher put in only 1 grade for the entire third nine weeks, a participation grade. I hadn’t had a test or quiz in months. We started watching movies in class every day, often ones with little to no relation to Latin. I started doing my work in the library, but that meant that I was cut off from any of the limited help my teacher could offer me. Alone with Vergil. I’ve been spending the past through periods wading through the Aeneid, trying to gain some level of competency in Latin poetry. Through a complicated series of notes and case charts I can get a very rough translation of about fifteen lines in around 45 minutes, but only with the help of a ton of references and my Latin dictionary. There’s under a month to go to the AP exam now and I tried to do the practice test in the course description and utterly failed. I couodn’t get a single one of the fifteen sample questions for thr Aeneid. So basically I’m up a creek without a paddle. There’s under a month to go until the AP exam and I’m abysmal at Vergil, I know barely any vocabulary, and I have under a month to translate about five books of the Aeneid as well as Ovid (which I haven’t even started yet) and to learn vocabulary and to review Caesar. I have no teacher that can help me, I can’t afford any practice tests or references, I have no one to study with because I am, effectively, the only AP Latin student in the school, and under a month to do all of that as well as study for my AP Human Geography exam and my two SOLs and to edit videos for two different video competitions and put on a play and to finish my Honors Thesis project for Chemistry. I just have no idea what to do. I can balance everything else easily, but the Latin stuff throws everything into chaos. I’m fairly certain I’m going to fail my AP Latin exam now and there is absolutely no one I can turn to for help or support. That’s why I’m here. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. Does anyone have any advice on how I could complete and understand all of the Latin stuff I need to do before the AP exam by myself? The saddest thing is that I know Latin class can be so fun. It was my second favorite class last year behind only creative writing. It was fun and educational, as school should be. It was the only thing I had to look forward to on even days. If the old teacher had been able to stay I was considering becoming the first ever Latin V student our school had seen. Even the other AP Latin student this year, one of the most nototious slackers in the school, actually enjoyed last year’s Latin class. This year it’s one of my least favorite classes. The students refer to Latin class as recess, and that’s exactly what it is now. The class is a joke. Completely useless, and I’m probably going to fail my exam because of it, and there’s no way for me to avoid it. No friends, peers, or resources. Thanks for listening to my story and I hope that someone is able to give me some form of help.