Spanish and Computer Science

To wrap up the AP classes that I took, I have to touch on the AP tests I didn't take. I passed all the ones I attempted, but I didn't attempt the test for all the classes I had taken.

I mentioned the Physics Electricity and Magnetism tests which I declined to take. I simply didn't feel prepared enough and figured that having already passed the regular Physics test, that would probably get me as far as I needed to go for general education purposes.

I actually dropped Spanish. In New Jersey I had signed up for an optional early morning Spanish class in junior high, which gave us a jump on the language, since you normally started studying foreign languages in high school. My Spanish teacher my freshman year of high school had an advanced degree from a university in Spain.

After moving to Utah, my teacher's experience included going on a 2 week vacation to Mexico once. Having had three years of Spanish classes, I was excited for AP Spanish to begin, until the first day of class when she started teaching us the alphabet. I thought it was ridiculous that she would do that, since there were prerequisites for the course. I was even more stunned to find that the alphabet refresher was actually needed, because there were people in the class that didn't know it. Between the alphabet experience and finding out that maybe two people from our school had passed that test in the last decade, I figured I'd be better off not wasting my time. Two years would pass before I took another Spanish class, and I picked right up where I had left off (unlike Calculus).

Computer Science was a great class. I learned a lot about the logic of computer programming, building a solid basis for several other programming classes I would take in college. I just didn't feel prepared to take the AP test, so I didn't.