Is it worth self-studying AP courses as a senior?

Pre-College Topics High School Life
21

yeah, AP classes to me are a little intimidating D:

but my schedule and brain love learning but my schedule is literally empty.
(school schedule)
i’m off for 3/9 periods of my day – too many.

period 1 : off
period 2 : English 12 (cuz I dropped out of AP Lit)
period 3 : resource room (another off, but I cannot leave the school / confined to a classroom)
period 4 : college Spanish 5
period 5 : off (used to have APCSA here, I will be taking marketing in spring)
period 6 : economics
period 7 : physics
period 8 : gym or lab
period 9 : introductory calculus

having 2 classes offset with 3 breaks is understimulating, I need to fill the voids that bore my day.

22

College calculus for engineering and data science majors will cover calculus BC material in one year, including the AB content. In other words, it will be a big step up from the less-rigorous-than-AB calculus course you are in now.

1 Like
23

so should I wait until I go to college?- (to take any form of college-level Calc?)
also my school doesn’t offer AP Calc AB, hence why no one really takes it…

24

Yes, wait until you can be taught the material in a classroom.

Math is sequential in nature so a sold understanding of the important concepts is critical.

4 Likes
25

I’ll vote. I don’t think you should self study an AP course this year. You already have a full courseload of classes. You have college applications. You will probably have college visits once acceptances come in.

And you want to have time to actually enjoy your senior year of high school. Go out with friends. Join a club. Do a hobby. Get a part time job. There are plenty of things you can do instead of an AP self study. Please take the time to enjoy your senior year of high school.

5 Likes
26

No, not at all! One of the Honors English classes, at my high school campus, had a list of terms that the students were advised about not using these in their writing.

That list was copied by the AP English classes and all of those teachers gave a “beginning of the year” quiz, with those terms embedded in simple paragraphs.

The task was to find the words that were errors. They would give Starbucks cards to anyone with a perfect score. It rarely happened.

A lot of us have used words that are grammatically incorrect. The Teachers told the students that they didn’t want to see any of those error words in the essays throughout the year.

I had special ed students on my caseload. A lot of them were in AP classes. Please don’t make excuses for the fact that you did well to achieve to AP level skills. It’s a good thing and it’s a good skill.

I just wanted you to realize that even on a simple website, people pick up on things that will stand out on an essay.

1 Like
27

I may even benefit from instruction.
Like if my calculus teacher didn’t teach me Discontinuity, I would have (probably) not have gotten a 97 on my test! (I lost 1 point / 29 out of 30 :D)

no it isn’t!! I need more classes!! I’m so bored! (college applications stress me out though)

I’m kinda stuck in the clubs I’m in right now, i love them all equally (robotics, however, is top tier!)

I have hobbies, but Iike – they’re childish. Like…what 16-year-old high school senior is obsessed with Let it Go?

I don’t think I can hold a job (yet), I literally got something in the mail a couple of days ago asking if I want to set up a meeting with an ACCES-VR counselor (my school district sent the mailing on behalf of ACCESS-VR) because of my learning disability! plus holding a job sounds extremely intimidating right now, I have my working papers but i’m freaked out about the actual idea of it…

I take classes at my home school and with NYU, so six out of my seven days are full. Then when I have my “open” Sunday, I get my hair done, study, and go to my therapist…i’m a kinda busy person right now…

I know that (super aware) except that I really think that like I was unsuccessful in AP Lit because the class felt like we were extrapolating in my disability and I could not understand it.

It really doesn’t mean much to me because I’ve only taken 1 and I keep hearing that college is like AP classes but faster. so if I just had the rigor before hand i’d be more prepared and less freaked out.

by the way, thank you for that :slight_smile: I’ve been writing a novel & I used the word ‘irregardless’ two times too many…it’s a problem.

28

There’s your answer. Use your free periods, study halls, the times you are bored to work on your novel. No need to add to your stress level by self-studying- you already have an engaging hobby/special interest!

2 Likes
29

How have you found your way back into yet another thread of mine?
but I can’t really spend much time on it because of college applications which always even if i’m engaging in something I really like FIND THEIR WAY BACK IN, somehow…

it really isn’t engaging anymore, I overplay it a lot (still an obsession) but I told my therapist about it and she was telling me that she was happy that I found something else.

I need to add to my stress level, as ironically weird that sounds, because I find myself bored sometimes (hence why I constantly check CC) and actually freak out that I need to do something…then again CC is the reason I constantly compare myself to much more overqualified people and I realize I won’t get into college-

The only thing really contributing to my stress is all the fun little spirals I get from thoughts of not getting in anywhere or college applications themselves…or just school in general!

For a fun lil’ example, on Thursday night I put off doing my English HW that required me to annotate three chapters and it was like eleven(?) pages and I opened it up on Friday AM a period before my class and I literally started panicking…

(I got it done but did not understand what I read. I have a quiz on Tuesday)

30

Boldface added by me. If you are busy right now…then don’t add self study for an AP course. It’s not necessary.

31

I just feel worried that I’ll regret my decision if I choose not to…
maybe I should email my therapist and ask her? I’m unsure on how to approach a decision like this.

32

There is a lot you can do in robotics - highly creative and productive without much stress, especially when you enjoy it. When I coached FTC, I had a couple of students who would work on 3D design as their meditation.

1 Like
33

I think you should discuss with your therapist your overall “I’m stressed but also bored and have free time but am doing my homework at the last minute and not fully understanding it and oh, I feel lousy because other people are tackling more than I am”. This is a much more important dynamic to unpack then whether or not you take an self-study AP course.

However you want to summarize your current state of mind- not doing enough, not enough time to chill, too stressed about college to focus on the here and now, comparing yourself to others, feeling “less than” because of your academic profile- whichever words you want to use to express how and what you are feeling- this is a tangible thing you can accomplish in therapy. This is significantly more important than an extra AP class. This is significantly more important than even doing your college applications, although I know you won’t believe me.

The world isn’t running out of college. The world isn’t running out of any of the subjects- computer science, statistics, calculus, whatever. All of these things will be there a year from now or two years from now.

Getting healthy and confident and figuring out strategies on coping with the tasks in front of you instead of spiraling into “future me” is Job 1 IMHO. Self studying is hard for a focused, fully present student. It is excruciatingly difficult for someone who is currently procrastinating or avoiding or stressed out or feeling “less than”. It becomes one more thing you can fall behind on, it becomes one more thing where in your head, succeeding in it means you are a good person and failing in it means you are not.

I didn’t take Calculus in HS (and didn’t even take it in college). I’ve had a good career, a satisfying life, some incredible intellectual challenges.

Please discuss your current state of mind with your therapist and put extra classes/more stressors for you on the back burner right now. Hugs.

4 Likes
34

I wish I could do FTC (I did it back in 7th grade), my school’s team is VEX V5RC however. I love Robotics, I’m obsessed with notebooking, I just love it- I’ve been working with robots since middle school, where I learned how to build sumo wrestling robots and programmed drones using Raspberry Pi- then I learned how to make and program a video game at Hofstra (this was actually all done there, super fun) but then in 10th grade I realized that I wanted to do robotics again, so here I am, making use of the past.

my therapist would reprimand me in a heartbeat for using such negative self-talk, even though I constantly go through it.

of course I won’t believe you! college applications are #2 on my priority list (#1 is school/#2 is college apps/#3 is my mental health)

I feel super impatient and I don’t think I can wait that long. Like when I dropped out of Stats, my GC told me “you’ll get to take Stats in college”, and I went, “but it’s not the same!” (I think I said that because I had my desired teacher and did not want to disappoint this teacher who recommended I do it anyway)

I’ve been reading the Confidence Code but it’s not working-maybe because I’m not super far in, but it bothers me every time I tell myself i’ll do something to be more confident when it actually doesn’t work.

that is literally the definition of my thoughts.

you should!!! (if you can!) I love my current Calculus class, I had a 90 in the class in my last marking period.

Why does everyone keep saying that? I don’t want to be consoled, I really don’t think i’m doing anything wrong, but the occasional “Hugs” (not just from you) freaks me out a lot-

overall. Blossom, you made a lot of great points but I still don’t know if I can manipulate these thoughts in my brain to not do all this stuff-

35

Please discuss your priorities with your therapist. Your number one priority should be sound mental health. Everything else on your list is secondary…in my opinion!

3 Likes
36

She knows my priorities, already- and is okay with them (as long as my mental health doesn’t become self-destructive…I don’t want to talk about that [on this forum!])

but anyways my current self-study probability is 80% in favor of not; 20% still wants to.

So I’m still in a knot.

37

There is what you should do for university admissions, what you should do to be prepared to do well in university, and what you should do for fun.

For university admissions, do well in the classes that you are already taking. If this does not include any AP classes, that is fine.

For Mechanical Engineering, Data Science, or Mathematics, you would want to be very ready to take calculus as a freshman in university. As someone pointed out earlier in this thread, mathematics is very sequential. Calculus specifically depends quite a bit on its prerequisites, such as high school algebra, trigonometry, and pre-calculus. You will want to have a solid understanding of these three subjects before you arrive at university. However, this does not require that you take any AP classes at all in high school. Almost any university can do a very good job of teaching you calculus.

One daughter attended a very competitive suburban high school. There were plenty of students who took AP classes. However, there were also plenty of students who did not take any AP classes. One good friend did not take any AP classes at all in four years of high school. This particular friend did well in university and recently got a health-care related graduate degree at quite a good university, although I forget exactly what the degree was (perhaps physicians-assistant?). My other daughter attended a small high school that did not offer any AP classes at all, did very well in university, and is currently in a very good and well ranked PhD program (in a biology-medicine related field). You really do not need to take any AP classes at all in order to do well in university.

This is exactly correct. You be the best version of you that you can be. Do not try to compete with everyone else.

This sounds like a good and solid plan.

This is very normal. The US education system puts way too much stress on our high school students. There are however a huge number of very good colleges and universities in the US. You should ignore rankings and look for a school that is a good fit for you.

I was a high school students way back before we have minicomputers and before robots were a normal high school activity. I am a bit jealous. This sounds like great fun.

One daughter did have a high school class that consisted of the class making robots, and then running them up and down the hallways of the high school. Again, this sounds like great fun to me. Hopefully they were careful so that no one tripped over a robot (at least I did not hear of this happening).

2 Likes
38

Yes, it excludes AP classes, except for AP CSP which I took my junior year and got a 3 on the AP Exam, which I felt like the MCQ were annoying but the new FRQs were relatively easy.

Oh, really?- Okay; that makes it seem more worth not adding another AP Calculus/Precalculus style course, especially because I am in a Calculus class.

This is inspiring, thank you! :smiley:

yes, it may be normal- but I get almost TOO MUCH stress from thinking about them…

I mean…you could always order a robotics kit and satisfy the part of you that wants to have this great fun. Not a bad idea, actually…maybe you and your daughter can do that as a little bonding time thing? (just suggesting)

Oops, now that is quite the scary thing. I just always have to worry if I might get accidentally hurt from some of the parts. I freak out a lot around accidentally doing something wrong - so that’s why I try and work on stuff that typically involves me AWAY from cutting/drilling, and why I work as Design Notebooker.
Not on my team, but at a competition, a team was so mad about their progress that they literally threw the robot on the ground. There were parts everywhere. Color shafts, axels, wheels…it was no bueno.

1 Like
39

I’m not as familiar to VEX as to FIRST. I’ve only judged two VEX regional events last year. Knowing this little, I still want to say that the notebook is one aspect that can use a lot of improvement. VEX already emphasizes the notebook more than FIRST does; however, not many teams could do well on “explain” their potential solutions and the reasoning behind their decisions. If you have time and energy, I think it’s better utilized in this than self-studying an AP course. Each potential solution can be described in physics and math, all the test run results can be analyzed in math. Such practice can deepen your understanding of the math and physics in a way I believe is better than doing AP cal homework.
Good luck.

2 Likes
40

I feel like a lot of people say that, and I’m trying to make my team’s notebook better-
I also really wanted to join a FIRST team outside of school and it was somewhat unsuccessful.

I think you just convinced me (not to) with your analogy. Thank you.

1 Like