I
have come to the conclusion that it is our nature as people to show off. We
believe that we need to prove ourselves to be above average. This quality is
especially prominent in the New Trier. We have to prove that we are bigger,
stronger, faster, smarter, and better than one another. In the academic world
at New Trier, our success and strength as students is determined based on two
letters that do or do not appear in front of the title of your classes. Those
letters are A and P.
I
believe that New Trier is a highly concentrated version of our success-oriented
society. Almost everyone feels the need to prove their success. So what better
place to conduct a survey with high school students than at New Trier? In my
survey, I asked one simple question: What classes are you taking this year?
Once the person responded with AP in the title of one of their classes I
stopped them, thanked them, and asked the same question to another person. If
someone did not respond with any AP’s in their answer, I asked them if they
were in any AP’s. The answer every time was no. Likewise, not one person in an
AP class neglected to leave that detail out.
So
now I wonder, why is it that we feel the need to distinguish our classes as AP?
Why not just say we are in Calculus instead of AP Calculus BC? I truly believe
that this is because we all think we need to prove how smart we are. We think
that if we can say that we are in an AP class, that people will suddenly think
that we are geniuses or something. But that’s just my own hypothesis. Everybody
has different motivations and reasons. However, do we all just have this deep
desire to constantly prove our intelligence? What is the reason behind all of
this AP nonsense?
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