Dun dun dun DUN... At the moment, I feel like my life has the Jaws soundtrack playing in the background. That's because my AP exam is fast approaching, and I feel incredibly nervous about it. I've been studying, but it doesn't feel like nearly enough. AP US is the first AP
Mainly, I've been going to AP review sessions that my class and I've also been practicing different past essays. I'm not worried about the multiple choice, but the essays scare me.
How am I supposed to worry about all of the complicated intricacies of different periods of history? It just seems impossible and so frustrating. I'm great with World War I onward, but before that, I'm a little shaky, especially on the colonial era. I've been trying to touch up on that, but my efforts don't seem good enough. I'm worried that my studying is all in vain.
Perhaps this goes back to the flaw of the AP test, how it is supposed to be this one test to gauge everything that you learned throughout the entire year. Shouldn't my grades in the class speak to that? Apparently not. AP classes are set up to help you take this entire test, which in turn are somehow supposed to set you up for college. Maybe the whole thing is kind of flawed. I feel like there's so much pressure to be in as many APs as possible, and that just makes this even scarier.
Either way, I'm still taking the test Wednesday whether I like it or not. Ugh.
We didn't have AP classes at the high school I went to, but I have been a history buff most of my life. I found for myself it was easier the think of history as cause and effect. "This happened so it caused this which changed the way people thought about that." And make major note of the big picture. My least favorite thing was memorizing dates. I set up flash cards that asked, "what happened before and after *insert date*" then I would write on the back important events or people. It worked at the time, but to tell you the truth when I got to college a lot of the information I learned turned out to be false or less important. But that was just my experience. I hope schools have improved in the last 12 years.
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