May is here, and while Cornerstone is filled with the scent of flowers and end-of-year nostalgia, some students are desperately striving to stay awake on energy drinks in the library. Everyone clings to the hope that a 5 will somehow appear on their College Board screens. AP season has officially begun, and as a senior who submitted her last college application months ago, I can only observe your suffering from the other side. Poor, poor you. I would like to express my deepest condolences to all of you. Who wants to study during these bright, warm, beautiful spring days? Certainly not me, but here you are.

Let’s take a closer look at your daily schedule, shall we? It’s 7 a.m. You are already on your third can of energy drink, frantically reciting fiscal and monetary policies for your Economics exam. Don’t worry, I skimmed through the same AP Crash Course materials and that endless PDF two years ago and retained approximately nothing. I mean, let’s be honest. What’s the point of grinding for weeks, scoring a 5, and forgetting everything a week later? At least you’ll have a great story to tell that you once knew how to draw the world market’s supply and demand curve.

And then there’s a whole crowd cramming AP Calculus BC on the staircase at the last minute. Apparently, these students genuinely enjoy integration by parts and Taylor series. Do they, though? We all know that every person staring at those intimidating sigma notations just wants to watch Netflix. I can see the emptiness behind your eyes as you realize you’ve never seen that formula before.

And then comes the Physics exam. As someone who once drew a quadratic curve where a straight-line graph was required, I’m fairly confident you might make similar mistakes. The worst part was that I drew it with a pen. But don’t worry, you can still use the blank sheet that Ms. Lee provides… I just hope that the blank sheet isn’t your final answer sheet. And please, don’t be a person who vents their frustration at Collegeboard when the reality is you forgetting to label your axes.

I do genuinely respect you for sitting on the sixth floor for three hours while I am out enjoying the park, feeling the sweet breeze, while all you can do is sneak a peek through the window. It truly takes a special dedication to voluntarily sign up for this kind of suffering and call it an achievement.

So, good luck, AP takers. After all that agony, it all comes down to simple numbers, nothing more than 5 or nothing less than 1. That’s it. That one beautiful number will determine how long you spend crying on the bus ride home.

And my final thought, for your emotional support: “AP? Like, is it even hard?”