College. Some say it's the best time of your life. Others will say it will grow and change you into a better person. Still others believe the education received at a higher institution is the most valuable thing college has to offer, and that its value will be of great worth to society. So far, I believe college is a healthy mixture of all of these things. It is a place to learn, grow, and build community in all spheres of one's life. It is unlike any other place and has a unique role in shaping us through time-management, social, and academic challenges. College is academically challenging, if it is not, maybe we should be doing something that will stretch us just a little more. If we aren't failing, we aren't having opportunities to learn and grow. Yet, life is a constant process of learning and growth. If our education isn't challenging and doesn't prepare us to best handle the encounters which will undoubtedly be ahead, then what's the point? Many people, however, go into college not prepared for the rigors their program of choice is composed of. They are not prepared to spend a vast amount of hours outside of class studying, along with balancing all of the basic tasks that must get accomplished for life to go on as normal (maybe it's just me who wants to have clean clothes). Students have great career aspirations, which can be obtained only through pursuing academic majors that may seem impossibly difficult at times. The work-load is overwhelming and the content is beyond them. With all of that being said, it is possible and many have done it all before.
As others stress around me, I feel just a little ahead of the game in the form of already having acquired study skills through my comparable-to-college high school curriculum. I experienced many hard classes throughout my years at Jenks high school that my friends at other high schools in my city could not understand. Few of them ever seriously studied and never suffered failing many AP history quizzes, as my high school peers and I came to quickly accept that we would not come out of our classes with a better-than-perfect 102% average like we would have in middle school. Much of the workload was placed upon us as the students. Our high school teachers may have seemed a little harsh and unhelpful at the time (we complained), but maybe they were actually looking into our future and making decisions that would be for our later benefit. They wanted us to know what it was like to work hard and succeed because of it. They wanted us to know what the real world was like. They wanted us to experience failure and learn from it. They wanted to shape us to be independent learners, not agreeing with everything we read or hear, but developing our own, unique, personal beliefs and become passionate about them, never failing to stand behind them. At Jenks high school, less importance was placed upon learning something to get a good grade and more on learning something just to learn and maybe, eventually, become a master of the content placed before us.
Jenks high school offered a program called the Advanced Placement program. The AP program is a national, and sometimes abroad, high school program which provides students with college credit if they take an AP test at the end of the spring semester and pass. The amount of credit a student will receive varies from college to college. It is not uncommon for an AP student to test out of all of their basic freshmen courses. This is beneficial for a student in terms of early graduation, double-majoring, or taking the gained time to explore various areas of study. It may sound a little too good to be true. It isn't entirely, but maybe a little. According to the 2016 AP Score Exam Distributions, for the majority of the AP tests, the pass rate, a score of 3 or better, is right around 50%. It is not rare for a college to only accept scores of a 4 or a 5. The tests are lengthy, dense, and nothing short of a good challenge. Colleges take this credit, because they believe if a student has the ability to perform well on the test, it is equivalent to taking the college course that matches.
The opportunity to achieve college credit in high school is one of the most appealing factors to students who choose to enroll in multiple AP classes, but their rewards are far greater than passing a test and being ahead in credit hours. AP classes teach students how to effectively study and take massive tests. The exposure to hard content so early on is another great benefit.
A special thanks to Jenks high school and all of the faculty who work to make the learning environment second-to-none. I am so grateful for how you pushed me far past my limits, knowing I wouldn't crash and burn but would instead flourish. Even if there were some tears of stress and many sleepless nights as I would attempt to finish a paper due the following day after having no time to work on it because all of my time that week had gone to extracurricular activities. Some of the tasks that were presented to me, at the time, seemed massive and impossible. I am grateful for those too. Thank you Jenks for setting me up for greatness and leading me on the path of opportunity.
