How to Take 4 AP Exams in 4 Days

Hey overachievers! If you’ve signed yourself up to take more than 2 AP classes next year at Blake, you’ve come to the right place! While all of your peers will be judging your sanity as you shape your schedule around these strenuous classes, trust me when I say that nobody will be judging you more than you will be judging yourself. By the time spring break passes, you will begin to panic as you feel that you’ll never have enough time to prepare for your exams. However, I have the most comprehensive guide to surviving AP exam season, especially if you are as unlucky as I am and happen to have four consecutive exams!

1. Stop studying after 9 pm. None of that information is going to stick in your brain. Get a good night’s sleep so that you can perform well on your exams the next day.
2. Develop a solid study routine at the beginning of the year. It takes 21 days to make a behavior a habit, so take all of September to establish methods of studying that work for you.
3. Completely abandon your study routine and develop an “it is what it is” mindset.
4. Forget that AP Classroom has countless videos and practice assessments to help you prepare until your teacher points them out to you in March.
5. Get mad at yourself because you could have been taking those practice exams this entire time.
6. Go in at lunch to retake as many quizzes as possible. Not only will this boost your grade, but it will also show you what concepts you’re having more difficulty with, so you know what you need to spend more time reviewing.
7. Eat ice cream after every exam you take. If you’re lactose intolerant, good luck.
8. Take a nap after you eat your ice cream. Wake up in a panic afterward because it’s your week on dishes and you haven’t done them yet.
9. Cry.
10. Wear your sweatpants and pajamas with absolutely no shame. Everyone else is doing the same thing. Wear your slides and fluffy socks and whatever else makes you comfortable, because you deserve to feel at ease as much as possible while taking what might be some of the most stressful exams of your high school life.
11. Leave the country.
12. Watch Heimler’s History until you start seeing him double. He will be the key to your success on the AP World FRQs.
13. Same with Crash Course. John and Hank Green are going to be your new best friends.
14. And Amoeba Sisters, if you’re taking AP Bio.
15. Go to Marilyn J Praisner’s library the week before your exams to study and avoid eye contact with everyone you went to middle school with. Take an AP Bio practice MCQ while you’re there and get an embarrassingly low score.
16. Overfill your schedule the weekend before your exams so that you have no time to study and you feel overwhelmed by the time your exams come. Just kidding, do anything except that. Don’t be like me and overcommit yourself, because it is not worth it in the end when you’re panicking over the FRQs on the AP Calculus exam.
17. Discover that DBQs on the AP World exam and Synthesis essays on the AP Lang exam are basically the same thing, then tell all your friends that you’re going to “eat up the synthesis and DBQ essays” because they are the only parts of the exams that you are confident about.
18. Go get Chipotle and bubble tea after the AP Lang exam and laugh at the fact that you have pen marks all over your hands after writing essays for two hours straight.
19. Get Starbucks after the AP World exam, and fall asleep immediately after despite the fact that you just drank an entire cold brew.
20. Get the exams out of your mind. What’s done is done, so it’s not worth worrying about how you did once the exams are done.
21. Dread the day in July in which you receive your AP scores.
22. Remember that in the grand scheme of things, these scores don’t matter! You can get an incredible education after high school and lead a very successful life, even if you fail all of your exams! Your exam scores do not determine your worth or your intelligence, and you are not your grades or scores.
23. Cry about them anyways.
24. Realize that you never have to take those exams again!
25. Repeat the next year.

Happy studying everyone! Remember to check your CollegeBoard account in July to see your scores, and start thinking about whether or not you are going to put yourself through the same insanity the next year.