AP classes are total nightmares. Hearing someone say “AP” feels like an anchor dropping on your back. No one truly wants to take these classes, but they do to get the college credit or to possibly challenge themselves and prepare for the next level. The past two weeks have been mock finals and AP testing. Students throughout all grade levels have been abnormally stressing and studying for the past month just for these tests.

AP stands for Advanced Placement. These classes are taken by high schoolers, but they contain college-level material. Throughout the year, students learn more than the lower level classes at a faster pace. At the end of the school year, AP students have the option to take the AP test. If you decide to take the test, you have the opportunity to receive college credit depending on what your results are. Each course requires a different score in order to get the credit.

Junior Anthony Cimpean went through AP testing with a breeze. He was ready for it and went in with a positive mentality.

“AP testing was actually pretty good this year. I took the APUSH and GAW tests. I feel that my teachers prepared me well for the exams. Surprisingly, studying wasn’t that stressful for me. The worst part out of everything was that the exam took forever to start,” Cimpean said.

Cimpean is one of the few who flew through the exams with no worries. Freshman Gianna Pehar had a rough experience with her first AP exam in high school. Pehar took AP World History to challenge herself and also because she heard from others that it wasn’t too difficult.

“The AP test was very stressful because it’s all stimulus based which makes it much harder,” Pehar said. “There were also four parts to the test which took four hours long. Studying for this was extremely stressful because the test covered time periods 10000 BCE ’till present time, therefore it was a broad range of studying which wasn’t easy whatsoever. I think I did okay, but there were definitely parts on the test where I didn’t know what I was doing.”

A thought that is always taken when enrolling in an AP class is the college credit. Even though junior Michael Daratzis enjoys a good challenge, he thought of the bigger benefit of taking classes at the hardest level offered: saving money.

“I chose to take AP classes because there is a great chance to save money down the road,” Daratzis said. “Personally, I felt prepared going into the exams because my teachers did a great job at getting us ready for them. It was pretty stressful studying this year because the better you do, the more money you could save in the future. Looking back, I feel like I did well enough to get a 4 or 5 on my tests which puts me in a great place for saving money during college.”

Every student has a different perspective and experience with these tests. It’s a great burden to carry around, but once it’s over it’s so relieving. Don’t forget to check your scores when they will be sent out in July.