As a student who has taken a fair share of honors and AP classes, I can confidently say that it has not been easy. I am not the type of student who gets ‘A’s without studying for hours on end. It has gotten to the point where some days I would have rather gotten a ‘C’ than sit down and focus on one class for four hours just to get a good grade.

I have always been envious of my fellow classmates who could be on their phones the entire class period and still get scholarly grades. It would lead me to wonder if I really was smart and worthy to be taking such rigorous classes. But, I knew that common core classes would be too simple and I needed the honor classes to prepare me for college. 

It was always difficult waking up early, staying late after school, or missing lunch to go to office hours to succeed in a class. I felt like a complete loser because it seemed like I was the only student who needed help since I never saw any of my classmates during office hours. Of course, that is not fully true, since many honors and AP students do go in to seek extra assistance, but there is this stereotype that if you are an honors student, school comes as second nature to you.

Some of the teachers of honors and AP classes skip over  content or use big terminology because they assume since you are an advanced student, you should already have previous knowledge of those topics. In reality, students like me who take these harder classes do it to become more educated. After taking one semester of AP macroeconomics, I can not only say that I will not be going into business, but also that it is a class where you need background knowledge of economics to excel. 

Most AP classes build off each other, especially in the social studies curriculum. I will be in AP environmental science reading information that I was taught in AP psychology. I wonder, if one did not take AP psychology, would they be confused about what was going on in that lesson?

Now, I am not saying that it is the teachers fault as to why honors and AP classes are so challenging. Nor am I trying to complain about these classes, because I have done well in the majority of them. What matters is the fact that these classes are only made for students who are skillful at school.

In my sophomore year I decided to take Math II honors, because in Math I I achieved high scores. However, a little less than a month in, I dropped back down to “regular” math. The class material was the same just at a faster pace and with more homework. I started to feel like a failure when I saw that some of my classmates who were younger than me understood the content while I was completely lost. I wish I had the confidence to work hard and do well in the class. We always read about people persevering through grueling times, but it almost seems like fiction when you are surrounded by students who find honor classes easy. 

I know there are people out there who feel the same way as me. I wish that struggling in school was not so poorly looked upon. I genuinely believe that if school culture embraced mistakes, more students would feel less disappointment in themselves when they are struggling. The thoughts that go through my head when I do poorly on a test consist of “I am so stupid,” “I should have studied more,” “I wonder if everyone else did badly,” and “I am not going to college with grades like these.”

In my honors classes, students will come up to me and ask how I did on a test. I used, to tell the truth until I realized “failing” to be an honors student is anything lower than an ‘A’. I lost a lot of self-confidence once I got to high school because I was constantly comparing myself to my peers. Even though I know I have strengths in and out of the classroom, my weaknesses always hang over my head. 

All in all, I enjoy pushing myself and even though I do fail, it motivates me honor and AP classes are going to allow me to succeed in college. I hope that the phrase “wow that test was really hard” can become just as common as “that test was so easy.”