Sunday, November 21, 2010
The Difficulty of AP English
Today at work I talked with another employee, a senior at West Geauga High School, and we were comparing the classes and homework. As we discussed our English classes I attempted to describe a data sheet to him. When I told him about the length of a data sheet his reaction was "How can you find that much to talk about in one book?" As I tried to explain all the various parts and the types of details that needed to be included he could not believe that someone would have to do a assignment like that in high school. He became increasingly astonished as I described how difficult and time consuming of an assignment a data sheet is. Eventually his reaction started me thinking, how is it that an assignment that does not seem out of the ordinary for us appear so difficult and foolish to others. How have we become so accepting of an assignment that other high schools in a different school think is insane? We work at all hours of the day trying to complete an assignment that runs more then fifteen pages. Have we all gone certifiably insane working on data sheets? Or is this simply the reality that one lives with when you take AP English 12. To most it is the first option but for those of us in the class we know that it is just the reality that we have accepted to be a part of the class. As I gave up trying to explain the enormity and difficulty of a data sheet, I realized how ridiculous this assignment might seem to others but to us, it is just another day in the life of an AP English 12 student.
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Kyle I had a very similar experience at work with a senior at Solon High School who takes AP English Literature like us. She was talking about how much work it was and I was trying to hold myself back from laughing. She was telling me about how they have to turn in 8 page assignments every once in awhile and they have a little book full of poems that they look at some times. I was trying to be respectful but I had to give this girl a little taste of Chagrin Falls AP. I told her about our 20 or more (sometimes closer to 30) pages of a datasheet and our weekly poetry papers that come with a SOAPSTone. She was astonished and she had immediate respect for our class and our teacher.
ReplyDeleteI used to think that our workload was too much, as all of us did in the beginning, but now I'm used to it and thankful for it. We'll be getting more difficult assignments than the datasheets in college, that's for sure. Thanks to the hours upon hours we've put into this class, however, we're going to be more prepared. Not completely prepared, but more than the average student at least.
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