Students across the nation enrolled in Advanced Placement [AP] classes began the AP exams at the beginning of May. At Archer, the process began with girls clad in sweatpants and sweatshirts filing into one of the testing locations on campus. The exams took place from May 6 to May 17, and the individual exam times varied.

AP exams are optional exams which can count for college credit, but here at Archer, they are required for students enrolled in AP classes.

Senior Hannah Park prepped for the exam by looking at her notes from throughout the year, which she didn’t do last year.

“I think I was stressed that I wasn’t as stressed as I should have been, I guess, because it’s senior year and I didn’t care about it as much,” Park said. “The night before, I could not sleep at all, which I think shows that I was a little more stressed than I thought.”

Senior Marie Chorpita, who took the AP Calculus BC Exam, felt that the hardest part was sitting through the test, which takes 2-3 hours.

“I really didn’t study…I think it worked out. I did fine,” Chorpita said. “We did a lot of review in class and a lot of homework review assignments leading up to the exams, and I felt like I was solid in the stuff I knew and that there wasn’t that much left that I didn’t know.” 

Chorpita and Park, as well as senior Emma Golden, felt that senioritis was an added struggle and distracted them from worrying about the exams as much, especially in comparison to last year.

“I actually didn’t feel as prepared this year, mostly because I’m a second-semester senior, so my motivation is slowly starting to waver and senioritis is really starting to kick in,” Golden said. “While last year, I was hardcore prepping the weekend before my exams, this year I was a little bit more stress-free, which was great, but when it came time for the actual exam, not so great.”

Librarian Jaque Giebel shared that holding the AP Exams in the library is hard because she wants to support the test-takers, but all of the library’s resources are then unavailable to students. Giebel wanted to thank the Archer community for being supportive of the test-takers while they took the APs.

“It’s tricky in the sense that I usually work in the office during APs and just try to be super quiet so I don’t disrupt the test-takers, and just finding alternate spaces to do our work is a little bit challenging, but we work with it, because I know that it’s ultimately supporting the students,” Giebel said.

Golden and Chorpita also expressed a feeling of joy they had when finishing the exams because they both felt they did fine and that it would work out.

“The hardest part is probably having to sit for four hours and take an exam because it’s just mentally, emotionally and physically draining,” Golden said. “Once you get through it, it goes really quickly, so it’s not that hard, and then you’re done, and you feel this intense amount of relief, and it’s amazing.” 

Students finished AP exams May 17. The results for the AP exams will be released in July.