Goodbye to CollegeBoard

AP scores are in. This is the end of an era.

No more SAT prep, no more AP study sessions or tests. The tension is over. UT has my scores and I'm prepared to negotiate with them for credit. But I'm done with CollegeBoard forever.

The experience was at least an interesting one. I'm slightly partial to the SAT because, like most "gifted" (I hate that word) students, I took it in sixth or seventh grade as part of the Duke TIP program. I did well enough to get some kind of state medal and be invited to participate in TIP's programs, which I did. I took Writer's Workshop I at Kansas University in the summer between 8th and 9th grade. It was a three-week course that I can't remember much of (except for iambic pentameter, bank holidays, ancient Greek, and the Campbellian—or is this from Frazer's Golden Bough?—archetypes). Just this last summer I went to Ghost Ranch (Georgia O'Keefe's sweltering realm of inspiration), New Mexico for what amounted to Writer's Workshop II (though they called it "A Writer's Art"). All in all, that first go-through of the SAT was deeply beneficial. The second time I took it I only did better by 100 points on the math, but by about three hundred on the reading. My scores were amusingly typical. Verbal: 800. Writing: 800. Math (sigh): 560. A third retest rendered my writing score 90 points lower and my math score 10 points higher. Such is life. The same thing happened on the PSAT. I got 99% on both English-styled sections, and barely scraped a 55% on the math. Who needs a National Merit scholarship anyway?

AP, however, I am even more emotionally attached to. Pre-AP started in 9th grade; actual AP classes (at least for me--I didn't take Human Geography until my senior year) began in 11th grade. I slaved away over English Lit, English Lang, Human Geog, Latin Vergil (which I would recommend only to the masochistic), US History, Psych, Government, and Microeconomics. I came out of the experience with impressive amounts of college credit: two threes (Eco and Latin), three fours (English Lang, for reasons incomprehensible to me; Psych; and Gov, see English Lang comment—I am still steaming from this particular insult), and three fives (US History, English Lit, and Geography). Still, the classes mattered more than the scores. All of them were interesting, even if they were at times torturous (see Latin), and they adequately prepared me for college—enough so that the classes I'm taking right now are positively easy.

The best thing about AP, though? Once I claim credit, I'll be something along the lines of a second-semester sophomore. Nothing like exempting basic classes. (And getting right in to the weed-out ones. Sigh.)

Rhetoric Essay Status:
Dear God I don't want to write this kill me now