Please note: The beginning could be mean, but I’m just ranting, so take it with a pinch of salt
Not trying to be rude, but I just HATE people who take honors and AP classes that are too hard for them and complain later on about how they are failing it. Look, AP classes should ONLY be taken if the subject is relevant to the career you want to be in.If you want to be a doctor or engineer, you definitely DO NOT need an AP history class. There are tons of idiots at my school that aspire to be doctors, engineers, and computer programmers and take all honors and AP classes, get stressed out from the immense workload, and end up getting all F’s on their report cards. Honors and AP classes were made for those who want their career choice to be in that subject and are academically gifted in that field. You should not just be pulling off good grades to be in an honors class. You need to have a PASSION for the subject. Here are some ways you can tell that you don’t belong in advanced classes:
- You stay up until midnight finishing homework for AP ___________ or ________ honors. If you waste valuable sleep working on hw, you know that you don't understand the subject and/or the workload is immense. For someone who actually belongs in the class, it would feel like doing the 1x multiplication tables.
- You don't understand what the teacher is saying while everyone else does. This is quite self explanatory. You don't belong in the class.
- You study weeks before the test, and you fail because the questions look unfamiliar to you. Remember, tests force you to apply the knowledge you know, not just ask you to fill in the blanks.
My reply might come out as mean spirited, but I really can’t sugarcoat this. I’m not aiming to insult or discourage you by any means. I just find it annoying that people who don’t need the class to get them where they want to go take it anyway for bragging rights or under the false assumption that it makes their transcript more attractive. My gc put it this way, an A in regular is always more attractive than a B in honors to colleges. I think that unless you are extremely smart, the highest number of APs you should take in hs should be 3. As for you, you actually are alot smarter than most people. You realized that you made a mistake taking a class you weren’t prepared for. As of right now, there is still a chance you can end up with a good grade in APUSH. You could get a tutor. And I might be wrong about you, maybe you do belong in the class. You mentioned your teacher being out alot. That could be the source of the issue. If more students are underperforming in the class, then the history dept. supervisor might need to check out the situation. You might get moved into another teacher’s APUSH class or something. If you still have a 51, the only thing left to do is work hard next quarter. If your grade stayed at a 51 this quarter (which is unlikely), but you worked hard and got 90s for the last 3 quarters, you would end up with an 80 average. As for involving your parents, it’s worth a shot. As for the grade on the transcript, it probably would show as dropped, and would not get factored into your overall GPA. So, it would be better to drop than fail. Like I said, it’s still the beginning of the year, your still getting back into the swing of things, so your gpa will go up from the 2.6. Oh and congrats on the 3.7 gpa you have currently, that truly is a feat!
TL;DR: Not everyone should take honors classes, but in your case, the teacher being out could be the reason your underperforming.