Words of Wisdom From Former AP Chem Students

Exponential Growth

When I look back on my AP Chem experience, the things that stand out aren’t necessarily specific lessons or concepts, but rather the feeling of frustration I felt when I got my first test grade, the lunch and morning meetings I scheduled on a near-daily basis for extra help, and the triumph of seeing progress take place.

At the end of my freshman year, during the AP Chemistry info session in the Little Theater, I distinctly remember one message repeated over and over again: “AP Chem will challenge you like nothing has before”. At the time, I didn’t think much of it - most teachers said the same thing, and their classes ended up being easy anyways, so AP Chem was definitely the same… until it wasn’t. 

My introduction to AP Chem was dominated by one feeling: defeat. I went into every test with confidence that it would be “the one” to finally deliver the results I wanted, and it took me quite a few subpar results to realize that the strategy I had used my entire life for school would not work for AP Chem. As that realization hit and I found myself at my wit’s end, I sought help. Looking back, my sent emails from sophomore year are filled with requests to meet with you during the morning, lunch, or even after school - and I was incredibly grateful that you were always willing to help. I soon discovered that asking for help wasn’t a sign of a bad student, like I had always thought, but rather the opposite - it was a sign of a student who wanted to succeed. I would read through textbook chapters multiple times, do practice problems, and look up even more practice problems, and slowly I began to see results. 

I still remember in vivid detail one day of class, when you pulled me aside to talk about my progress in the class. You drew an exponential growth curve on a piece of scrap paper and explained that I was still in the slow growth part of the curve, but that results would soon come in exponentially. At the time, I was skeptical. I wanted results and good grades immediately, not a few tests down the line! But looking back, I recognize the value of what you taught me as a life lesson. Progress takes patience, which is why it’s often so elusive. Getting past the initial hump of slow growth rewards people, but that period of stagnancy is often impossible to endure through. In fact, once that initial phase passed, I found myself not only enjoying the lesson material, but actively seeking out answers to even more questions, from quantum mechanics to superfluids and more. I had set my goal to be number-driven, in making good grades, but I had inadvertently found myself with a much greater prize in enjoyment and curiosity. 

This past summer, I participated in a prestigious summer program known as the Summer Science Program (SSP). On the first day of SSP, Richard Bowdon, the executive director of the program, gave a speech in which he described the 5 weeks that were ahead of us. Much like your AP Chem introduction meeting, he warned us that we would absolutely struggle and that the challenge would be unlike anything we had experienced. This time, I had a little more respect for the claim, after having found myself proved wrong once before, but I was still slightly doubtful of the extremity of his claims. Indeed, the first few problem sets were a breeze, and I quickly gained a sense of confidence that I would cruise through the program.

Then, the real learning started. Those first few days of softball lessons to get us into the learning mindset quickly ended, and were replaced by hours of staring at problems with no clue on where to go next. Luckily, I had experienced the same phenomena once before in AP Chem, so I was prepared. I got extra help from my professors, TAs, and even fellow students, and even found myself helping others on certain assignments. The culture of wanting to succeed and learn that I had experienced in AP Chem was back, and despite the challenge of the content, I found learning more than I had ever thought possible in such a short timespan - and enjoying it. 

At this point, it’s abundantly clear to me that AP Chem was the foundation of my current work ethic and style. I continued the same dedication in College Physics, and was rewarded with consistently perfect scores, something that I know for a fact could never have happened had I not taken AP Chem. SSP was a much more rewarding experience thanks to those same lessons I had learned in Chem, and as a result, I know for a fact that college will require me to continue my habits, if not lean into them even more.