Breck Hodges and Zoe Dickman were sitting at graduation listening to the calm music playing as the graduates walked down the aisle celebrating. Minutes later everyone was seated and everything was calm. Mrs. Cahoon walked up to the podium and started announcing scholarships for the graduating class. As the numbers flew out of her mouth, Hodges and Dickman were amazed. The numbers inspired them to try their hardest their senior year by taking honors and AP classes to boost their chances of getting a scholarship.

Dickman is one of five students currently enrolled in AP Chemistry. She stated, “I enjoy AP Chemistry because it pushes me to solve problems and it shows me how complex the world we live in is and how everything relates to chemistry. One thing that I struggle with in Chemistry is being in a lab hour by myself because I can’t bounce my questions off of other people.” She added that she decided to take the class because she likes to feel accomplished when she learns new things in the class. She also wanted to push herself in an AP class.

While AP classes are significantly harder than other classes, plenty of students still decide to enroll in them. AP Calculus is taught by Mr. Stedman who has a total of nine students currently enrolled in his class. Mrs. Beery teaches AP Chemistry with a total of five students in her class. Lastly, Mrs. Busch-Grabmeyer teaches AP Language and Composition. AP Language and Composition is the biggest class out of the three with a total of 13 students.

Hodges takes both AP Language and Composition and AP Calculus. He stated, “AP Calc is a challenging class but still feels very rewarding when you learn new problems.” Hodges added that the hardest subject they have learned is derivatives, but once they learned it, they were able to easily apply it to the rest of the chapter.