“I have five AP classes and it’s so difficult; my whole weekend is basically just homework.”

Please, I am begging you, stop signing up for AP classes if you’re not legitimately interested in taking that class. I am sick and tired of hearing complaints from people telling me how exhausted they are from all their AP classes. Of course you’re exhausted; you signed up for five AP classes. You chose this life.

I understand the frustration when you are a first time AP student and it’s more difficult than you bargained for; that would really suck. You would think students would learn from that and realize AP classes just aren’t for them, but no. They continue to sign up for them year after year.

A large reason so many students sign up for AP classes is they think they have to for college or they won’t get accepted into a good university, but that isn’t true. Of course having a couple advanced classes on your transcript is a good thing, but you don’t need 14 of them. 

AP classes can also have negative impacts on people. For starters, they can eat up people’s social lives. When you spend all your time doing projects and essays for all your classes, you lose opportunities to do extracurriculars and go to events like football games. It’s worth considering if that’s a part of your highschool life that you’re okay with risking.

Also, when you continuously talk about how hard you have it because of all your APs, others around you who take general level classes might feel like you are invalidating their stresses because it’s “easier” for them.

What really matters is that you take advantage of your highschool years to explore your potential career paths and then take classes based on what you think you want to pursue.

If you don’t really like history, don’t sign up for APUSH. If you only enjoy art classes, maybe AP Chem isn’t for you. If you have a schedule with no AP classes, that’s perfectly fine. If you do choose to sign up for some, choose the ones you like and only take as many as you can handle the workload for.