The Worst Class I Ever Took

Have you ever tried something you thought would be fun, but then regretted it once it was too late? Like when you get on a roller coaster and then realize you want to get off at the top of the first drop. I made a mistake like this when I decided to take AP US History, my junior year. The difference is, roller coasters end up being fun anyway, this class, on the other hand, did not. I had taken AP World History the year before, and it was more work than some of my other classes, but it was still fun and I successfully passed the class. That same spring, I had also gotten into the musical Hamilton, so I thought that since I enjoyed history it would be fun to take AP US History. I was so wrong.
The first thing was the homework in the class. I know that I’m not great at keeping up with homework assignments, I’m writing this like four months late, but even people who always have homework done agreed that the workload was too much. We had at least two homework assignments a night, work was not accepted late and homework counted towards the grade. The assignments were usually large, like writing an essay comparing and contrasting two, fifteen to twenty-page documents on a historical event or time period. Some nights we were assigned chapters out the textbook to read, no worksheet or questions we needed to find in the book, just reading the chapter and taking notes on what was important. How was I supposed to know what to look for? The questions on the test never seemed to be anything anyone had written in their notes.
The quizzes were the worst, I don’t think anyone got above an 80 on them, ever. I usually got 50’s and I usually do great with tests like that. I didn’t always do the reading, so I didn’t know some of the information, but I had friends bring in pages of notes, neatly labeled and color-coded with highlighters. Some of the questions were about things that were just barely mentioned in the book. Since it was an AP class it was possible to pass without finishing all the homework, and I usually do this because I’m good at tests, but I didn’t pass almost any of the tests or quizzes in this class.
I usually was good at tests and quizzes in other classes, but one thing I have never been good at writing. Now obviously, I know that taking an AP class was a bad idea if I know I’m bad at writing, but this post is about a mistake. So yes, I am aware that taking this class was a mistake. Anyway, I am awful at writing, and we had to write essays all the time. The worst part about writing these essays was that they had to be handwritten. Now if there is one thing that worse for me than writing essays, its hand writing essays. When I write I like to try getting something written down and then going back and revising it later, but you can’t do that with hand writing. Yeah, you can erase, but it messes up the spacing, or completely rewrite it, but that takes to long. Speaking of time, did I mention that we had time limits on the essays. Time limits are the worst for me, when I get doing something I can get a lot done, but it takes time to get my thoughts together. I know that I should have expected the essays like this, especially since I took AP World History the year before, but I never said I was the smartest.
I know dropping the class at the beginning of the year when I realized that it was too much work would have been the smartest thing to do. The teacher even suggested that I switch to a regular US History class, but It would have messed up my schedule, and I would have had to drop one of my other classes. Looking back on it I should have switched out of the class, even if I had to drop something else. It would have made my life so much easier.  

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