Ok, this year I only took one AP class, although that one teensy-weensy AP happened to be AP Calculus. Ouch. Two semester class, 270 in-class hours, 180 days. That translates to approximately 16,200 minutes of sheer pain! Seriously, my AP experience was pretty good. The class was very mature and enjoyable. My teacher was absolutely awesome. She was the nice and kind Filipino lady and just a lot of fun. More interesting was the math that accompanied the class. It's amazing how fun math can actually be. Ok, maybe not fun, but interesting. Calculus seems to be a math of approximation. It works through estimation of a sort. In calculus we find the area under any curves. The trick is to get infinitely close to the right answer. Kinda hard to explain, but it's an interesting math.
Anyway, on to the exam. I took it Wednesday about 830, although it lasted until around noon. I won't divulge any details about the multiple choice, mostly because I can't remember any of the problems :) I will say that I felt fairly confident about the whole thing. Until I got to free response. On multiple choice, I answered almost every problem except for about two or three out of 50-something. However, on free response things work a little differently. Each question is worth nine points, and each part of each problem is worth a varying percentage of those nine points. Anyway, I started to work out the first problem and answer the whole thing under section 1a. Terrified, I marked out my work, and placed it under 1b and 1c---only to realize I had done the whole thing wrong. More marking out, and I've already used half of my available time for this one problem. To make a long story short, I think I still did well on the exam. Also, on one problem, I was give an acceleration function and I had to take it's integral to find velocity and the integral of velocity of to find position. I finished the problem and found velocity to be -7/3 all over 523 feet/second. That was wrong. I took the derivative of acceleration to find velocity. Once i got that wrong answer, I heard the ominous sound echoing around the room---"you have ten minutes left." Uh-oh. I have never worked a problem faster than in those ten minutes. Like a little child hitting a pinata at a birthday party, I attacked that problem like no body's business. I finished the problem and think---think---I got the right answer. Overall it was one crazy day! So that's my exciting AP story of the day. By the way, prom pictures will be posted soon, I'm at my sister's house and have a complete lack of prom pictures. Don't worry though, first thing monday the pictures will be on the blog. I'm trying to do a slideshow type thing on the blog, so hopefully I'll have that up and running by monday. Aurvoir and Audieu everyone!
By the way, I actually didn't describe any problems from the AP exam---they were all from a dream I had. Yeah, that's what it was. Because I would never discuss anything about the AP exam. Never. Oh yeah, it actually wasn't a dream. It was a nightmare :)
It's a sad commentary on my math ability that I can barely even understand what you've talking about - much less have any clue how to solve such a problem!
haha, don't worry, calculus is different from any other math I've ever taken. If I hadn't just taken Calc, i wouldn't have any more of a clue than you would. In fact, I would daresay that Calc can be just frightening at times :(
math is not my strong suit, but i'm proud of you anyway! hope you score well. what other ap classes have you taken, if any?
i took ap english, ap biology & ap music theory. i daresay calculus is equal to or tougher than ap bio, which i thought was a horribly horrible (that was for you, ethan) exam.
i can't remember if i had to make a vow of silence as well. i would love to know. of course, i can easily keep it now, b/c i have no idea about any of the tests! how quickly we forget....
All I took was AP Calc. That was enough to freak me out as far as APs are concerned. Looking back, I wish I would've taken maybe one more AP or possibly Honors World History instead of regular World History. Oh well. I also wish I had tried harder.
On the other hand, I (mostly) enjoyed my high school experience. I tried to shy away from the drama and just plain annoying sections of high school. Overall, I would rate my high school experience around B-. Now the scary part is just graduation... T-minus 12 days
"The class was very mature and enjoyable?" I dunno Adam, I think you enjoyed your alone time with TI-89 more than the math; I certainly did.
Ok, so in between sleeping and caressing my TI-89 (Titanium that is) I didn't get too much out of the class.
Seriously it was a good time. Granted, some of the people in the class were a little sub-mature. Oh well. The company at my table was quite superbly excellent. And except for the ridiculously long review (and chapter 5) I really enjoyed the math part as well.