this is a really long post.
as you all know, or, as you all should know by now, i took a class called APUSH during my sophomore year.
APUSH stands for Advanced Placement United States History. its a college level course that is offered in my high school.
for many, its the hardest class theyve ever taken. but from where i am…its the hardest class for everyone
yes, i am here to rant about my experience with it for the past year…and no i do not expect you to read the entire thing…
but just know the length of this post should show the sheer pain i felt for those nine long, painful months of school.
…and its because of the teacher.
at the beginning of the year, mr greyson told us that approximately 20% of people in the U.S get a passing score on this exam (he did not explain that there were also a–while small–certain amount of people that got a 4 or a 5)
heres what scores on AP tests look like. you either get a 1 or a 2, which doesnt pass, or you can get a 3,4, or 5, which does. (note: you can still get a 2 and pass the class, but you are not eligible for college credit as it fails the exam).
this table also shows that the APUSH test has gotten more difficult over the years, as you can clearly see theres an increase in people who didnt pass compared to a decrease in those who did.
mr greyson then proceeded to flex on his entire classroom by stating that the average AP score in his class was a 4.2.
mr greyson was the epitome of chaos, and ill show you how:
the packet
at the beginning of the year, he gave us a packet. and, this was no ordinary packet. it was approximately 12 FULL pages long, with 2-3 large, blank boxes on every single page.
he gave us two or three of these packets every week, and very rarely pushed assignments back.
he told us that he doesnt really collect homework, but that he would do so randomly throughout the year to make sure everyone was doing their assignment.
many times throughout the year, people from fourth period would tell those of us in seventh period that he was collecting our packets, scaring the absolute living shit out of all of us.
mr greyson never collected a single packet.
the first test
after about three weeks of packets, mr greyson announced the first test.
he said that the test would be very difficult, but that we would do fine as long as we did our packets and didnt cram right before it.
oh, but he didnt stop giving us packets during test week. no…we still had to do them, just on top of studying.
let me tell you something about mr greysons tests…they are the most batshit crazy multiple choice papers ive seen in my entire goddamn life. it also, unlike any other class, takes 2 full days of class just to finish. the first day is the multiple choice and short answer question test, and the second is the written essay portion.
on these tests, any of the four choices could be correct, which is NOT like the FINAL AP test AT ALL (more on that later). similarly, the questions were absolutely wild…and could have been interpreted in so many different ways. they were set up in a way where youd read a historical document first, and then answer 2-3 questions about it after.
for the first test however, EVERY SINGLE QUESTION HAD ITS OWN GOD DAMN DOCUMENT.
anyway, after we all took the test, the room smelt like so much fucking sweat, and i think 90% of the classroom had shaking, callused hands from the essay.
mr greyson then individually pulled out every single person who got below a 70% to talk about it with them.
the speech
after winter break, mr greyson told us that we would have a 5-7 minute presentation at the end of the year about one person who we thought made a big impact on american history, but, we couldnt use anybody that had won in previous years.
mr greyson has been teaching for over thirty years, and 2 to 3 nominees are usually selected as ‘most influential’ per year, meaning all the famous ones like george washington and abraham lincoln and whatnot were mostly taken…trump too.
so, to clarify, we had approximately 24-36 pages of homework per week first semester, and in the second semester we had that on top of a 5-7 minute presentation looming in the background about some random person in history that barely ANYONE knew about that we needed to worry about…as well as studying for the end of year test.
the globe
this is probably the funniest and horrifying shit that has ever happened in my classroom…
one day, near the end of the school year, mr greyson came into class–on time, for the first time–with the most stern, furious look on his face.
he went to his desk, picked up a wooden globe that had been sitting there, and held it out to the classroom.
everyone was completely silent.
i shit you not, this is practically what he said verbatim:
“this was a gift…from my grandpa, who gave it to me right before he died,” and he looked around the classroom, expecting something from one of the students.
“i picked it up today, and i saw that somebody had written THIS on it”
i dont remember what it said, but it was very mildly innapropriate, like “i farted” or something.
he then stared down the entire classroom, and asked…“anyone want to admit what they did?”
I SHIT YOU NOT THE GIRL NEXT TO ME WAS SO RED IN THE FACE SHE LOOKED LIKE SHE WAS ABOUT TO START CRYING AND SHE WAS TRYING SO INCREDIBLY HARD TO KEEP HERSELF TOGETHER.
there wasnt a single noise in the classroom for a full 30 seconds, until mr greyson finally started laughing his goddamn ass off
"im just messing with you. i dont even know my grandpa i bought this at walmart and i just thought it would be funny to mess with the person who wrote it 
btw i know who did it and i dont really care. "
i think half the class was in tears, the other half utterly shocked at how good of an actor he was. the girl next to me…i dont even know how to describe her face.
the video
at one point during the year, mr greyson decided to temporarily entirely change the homework assignment schedule by making it 10x more chaotic.
some days, in class, we would have time to work on the same packets he assigned, that way we could watch his lectures through video instead.
this wasnt particularly realistic though, as the assigned readings took WAY longer than 45 minutes if you were like me and tried to fill most of the boxes completely.
so, one day, after we’d been assigned to watch the lecture for the very first time, mr greyson came into the classroom with kind of like a calm, but clearly very angry, mood.
he told us that he looked at the video that was assigned to us, and asked how we were going to succeed if only four people, in total, watched it.
now, the amount of views didnt count for JUST our class, it was the total amount of both period 4 and period 7. (us).
mr greyson, however, only did something about it to us because he didnt want fourth period warning us (oh yeah, by the way…mr grayson occasionally gave one class a surprise multiple choice test and not the other bc he thought it was funny or some shit.)
so anyway, i personally DID watch the video on my phone during lunch the day he asked about it. and i talked to a number of people who said they did the same. i think the video didnt count views on accounts that werent registered within the schools email, meaning most people probably DID watch it…just not on their school chromebooks.
thing is, i hadnt yet started the packets for the unit since he didnt collect them, and i was a little behind…so i didnt know like ANYTHING about that portion of history.
mr greyson told us to open our laptops for a test over the entire video.
we took it, and then he proceeded to tell us that the average score was 8/16 with a dissapointed look on his face…then anonymously calling out one person by saying “one person even got a 2 out of 16” (i got a 3/16 
)
THEN, he told us that we had TWO practice short answer questions (which are basically mini-essays) that we needed to write.
let me tell you something…trying to come up with an answer to a question in which you have to cite a specific moment in history that corresponds to your answer while not knowing ANYTHING about the unit is the most anxiety-inducing shit in the world.
and AMAZINGLY, i managed to get a perfect score on BOTH of the short answer questions.
the AP exam
throughout the year, we had approximately 10-12 practice exams. like i mentioned, all of these took 2 days to take. and all of these tests were absolutely wild in terms of difficulty.
throughout the year, i had to actually work my way up from getting 50-60%s on average to getting 80-90%s on average.
the test were in-depth too, and VERY hyper-specific.
the final exam, though…oh my god.
mr greyson overprepared us TO THE EXTREME. we only needed to know approximately 30% of the information he gave us, if im being honest, and the questions were not nearly as esoteric as his were.
a general rule of thumb, for college board, in case you didnt know, is that out of the four options that they give you, two of them barely relate to the topic, while the other two are a little bit more difficult to discern which is correct.
and i could see that for practically every question, too.
now, dont get me wrong, i probably didnt get a 5. but IM ALMOST 100% CERTAIN that i at least passed the test.
a couple of days after we took it (bc youre not allowed to talk about AP exams until they release the questions/essay prompts online) mr greyson told us this years test was a little harder than the previous one, and proceeded to ask “did you feel prepared?”
to which the whole class shouted “YES.”
then, 5 minutes later, after we had experienced a brief moment of peace, said “ok then, onto your end-of-the-year presentations that will count toward your final exam grade”
and so that is why i forgot completely about AO, this forum, and any hobby that i used to enjoy. to the point where writing about history in those goddamned packets became something that i almost enjoyed doing due to the sheer accomplishment of finishing it.
i shit you not i cried tears of joy the moment it was over.
you prob dont care, and i dont either, but for some reason, whilst i was fishing for galleons, i felt the desire to talk about my favorite teacher. youre welcome.
