<p>The class did move at a pretty slow pace all year; however, I signed up and paid for the trip (like everyone else) the year before we took the class. There was no way we could have known the class would be moving that slow.</p>
<p>I’m extremely involved in theater at my school, and I had a part-time job all year, but I wasn’t able to be involved in the Big Time Consuming Spring Musical because of the French trip, so I didn’t have any extrecurriculars going on. Also, I had quit my job around March because I was getting paid peanuts and it just seemed pointless. I was devoting almost evey spare moment I had to getting this stuff done. I gave up my lunch hour every day for two weeks so I could sit in the media center and work on my homework. This is not an exaggeration, and this is coming from someone who has juggled jobs with extracurriculars and homework without much of a problem before.</p>
<p>Yeah, I called my Guidance Counselor the day I posted this but the soonest I could get in was the 19th. That was the VERY soonest. I hate my school. But anyway, she just told me to remind her and she’ll include a paragraph in her counselor recommendations explaining why my grades took a nosedive. I think that’s all I’ll get out of my school. </p>
<p>Anyway, only 3 kids who went on the French trip suffered huge grade falls and it was those who took AP History. That was the killer. It was the first year the school offered the course and the teacher didn’t really know what a proper pace to go at was. But three kids is not enough to get the school to change anything, it’s a pretty stubborn faculty and administration.</p>