Outrageously long post about my first two AP tests. Written Saturday May 9th, 2015, but I didnt want my scores to be canceled because sharing details of the tests is a bad idea. But its a year later and I think its okay to talk about it now.
The post itself isnt completely coherent so here the things you need to take away from this post:
Here is the exact list of history videos that I watched within the 4 days before the test, pretty much all of them at 2x the speed. Looking through my history, I was watching a lot more random other videos than anything else, which is really scary. I watched:
I also watched a bunch of physics stuff but feel no need to list them as they obviously didn’t do the trick.
Anyway, I'll get to that later. For now, history. I highly recommend Adam Norris. I watched these videos:
So many videos!! We had just barely covered things after like WWII... in fact the teacher was on vacation the week when we crammed time period 8 and 9 so I was feeling very unprepared in those areas.
I was hoping to read some of the illegal AMSCO book, but it’s like 800 pages so that didnt happen. You can download it here: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/155097365/APUSH-AMSCO.
The morning of I watched Colonial Rebellions again, 9 in 10, 3 in 10, 2 in 10, and had to leave early to be dropped off so that’s I had time for. :)
Note that I was playing all of these at 2x the speed.
Coming out of my APUSH test, I felt like I was a genius. It was so easy, I could have taken the SAT right after without a blink and it was a great great feeling. Of course I later learned that I didnt get a 5 so there was some sort of disconnect between how I felt after the test and how much the graders thought I knew but.....
My very first question was McCarthyism and I knew that pretty well. Second Red Scare = Witch Hunts = Everyone ("even the Girl Scouts") was targeted for being “communist” by Senator McCarthy. It was a great start because I knew what I was doing.
Pretty much all that through me for a loop was that I didn’t know the one SDS (Students of a Democratic Society) set. I knew they turned to violence, but not what about. :/
Also in a short answer I didn’t know what was going on with a law that saved land for preservation. (Think TR and Progressivism). Because the prompt was to “identify” it, I just talked about what it was for a really long time and used key words like “conservation”.
But it felt like it all worked out almost perfectly. In the gym you couldnt hear the proctors, you could hear every bell for classes, but I had my pencils, erasers, mints, chapstick, a tissue just in case. It could have been worse.
Again, the night before I crammed a lot of Adam Norris videos and that (and my own teacher’s reviews) made me In one, Mr. Norris had said “If you get an essay “Talk about the French and Indian war and a turning point that said that the relationship was forever trashed and for these ninety reasons” use that. And that was literally an essay choice! So I talked about a the internal and direct taxes, wanting to go west and us thinking that Pontiacs rebellion was a hint for “help us poor innocent colonists” *not* “Place the Proclamation Line of 1763 and so we can’t even move onto the land we won from France, who lost all its land”. So then I talked about grass roots stuff like the Boston Massacre and Tea Party. Then in my conclusion I talked about the Gadsden Purchase finishing off the continental 48 and Polk’s Manifest Destiny and the Span- War and Guam, Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines which led to the Philippine Insurrection.
I totally blanked on the Mexican American one which I find really funny because I totally talked about it with my conclusion and the Mexican Cession and stuff.
A lot of people flipped out over the DBQ but come on it’s the DBQ! We had to talk about all the liberalism made for a lot of conservativism. We talked about the Bible and more homemakers after all the flappers, and stuff like anti-abortion.. I had studied that too from time period 9, but I get we didn’t do much of that in class so…
We had one that made me feel like a nerd because it was a really cool short answer. I wanted to write a book! “Talk about why it might have been an American Revolution before Lexington” and “Talk about why it might have been an American Rev. after the war was over”. So I talked about the two grass roots Boston things again salutary neglect, political accident, imperialism with the frontier, and then for afterwards a nice argument on the articles of confederation being scrapped at the Constitutional Convention and all of the compromises there like the Great Compromise (Connecticut plan) combining NJ (small states) and VA (wanted by population) and the 3/5ths also for representation and stuff. Maybe I should have just picked one thing, but oh well.
We also had a short answer where we talked about the Native Americans pre contact. I wasn’t sure if Sioux (who hunted buffalo and were nomadic) were Western Great Plains or Great Basin so I just did Aztecs (huge society. stationary. corn), Pueblo (best living standards. dry. some agriculture.) and Algonquin (women farmed, men hunted. GA to Maine along the App Mountains so duh, game. weak politically.)
It was amazing, and I would give anything for a copy of those essays.
(UPDATE: I am buying them from the College Board and will share them with all you guys. Promise!)
(UPDATE: I got my things. They were $10. Would you like to see them? I dont actually know if that is allowed but...)
On the other hand, coming out of my AP Physics exam, I felt really really bad.
I had the O exam whereas the C one everyone found easy and so I blamed it on the form. #truestory
It wasn’t that my teacher hadn’t prepared me so much as that I hadn’t prepared me. And that was pretty depressing. For example, I scanned various assignments and notes from the year, which were in my unorganized binder.... the night before. On the other hand one of my friends took a nap for part of it and not only finished, but felt pretty good.
In preparing, I had crammed all the equations and I felt like I needed none of them which was getting really annoying. Especially as I saw my smart friends finishing with like 25 minutes left to stare at the rest of us and make us uncomfortable :/ I had extra time on the History one but this! No way.
I mean, listing steps to conduct an experiment to test for non-ohmic properties of a resistant material? We had read about what non-ohmic materials were—so why couldn’t I think of what to write? I was like V= IR (Ohms law) and that’s about all I knew on the subject.
How to conduct an experiment with an ammeter or a voltmeter? We had learned which was to be in parallel vs in series and which was to be of infinite resistance vs pretty much none. But sitting there in the fear-stuffed room, I couldn’t remember what to do. Bad timing for a 12 point question, right?
A kid on a merry go round throws a ball to someone, does the kid speed up? Idk.
Sphere M1 is .01 kg and Sphere M2 is .03 kg. If vi1 is -.3m/s what were they both going when they collided and bounded away. I spent a long time figuring that one out and then had to guess because the pi was equal to pf in a few of them, but now I’m like, but what about rotational?!?! *tears*
I was having a hard time recalling what to do with different tensions of systems and getting a different answer each time I thought of something new (Mine in the open ended had one where it was two pulleys on the corners of the surface and then they added a mass on top between what became Ti and T2.) We had done these in class, so by all means look over your
…but yet I could tell you all about circular motion or simple electronics or inclines or gravitational stuff of which I saw no problems—NONE!!! (2 exceptions:
1 in which it helped to have a basic understanding of positive/negative charge and attractions but I got wrong so who cares. Here it was this is attracted to this of +Q and that is then repelled from +Q and what was the initial charge of the ‘this’. Your options were +Q/2, +3Q/2, etc.
1 in which there was a FBD and I had to draw Force Gravity and Tension. FBD’s were not on all exams otherwise.
One of my friends also thought it was weird that they did a lot of some stuff and nothing on others. “Yeah. I'm not really sure what was on the test. However there was a lot of momentum”
Everyone else was coming out happy “Well, I’m glad I got a high 5 on that to boost my confidence for the 7 others I have to take in these next two weeks” and I was pretty much about to cry. No “High Five” for me, guys.
Searching Twitter, I believe the one I most related to was “AP Physics: Find the coefficient of kinetic friction of my tears on my face as I take the exam. At what velocity will these tears fall?”
Another read: “Gonna have nightmares about the AP physics exam tonight”
Another: “The only thing I knew how to do on that ap physics exam was putting the stickers on my book”
Another: ap physics was a no
And so, it was a very unpleasant 30 minutes as I waited in the rain for my dad to get me. Egh. You win some you lose some.
Although I had a lot of pizza that week. 1 Slice before Friday from a friend who bought a box @ lunch, 3 slices Wednesday from Physics before the exam, 2 Slices Glee Club tech rehearsal, and one at home Friday night since my dad had leftovers at work. Yay for pizza!
Just kidding, pizza isnt important to scoring well. I was just sort of journaling for myself, you know. Anyway, here are some additional links.
Physics:
These didnt prepare me much but they quickly reviewed topics.
APUSH--
AMSCO
Adam Norris Videos:
You might be interested in these Adam Norris videos:
10 Minute per Time Period MUSTS https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlair5BOIPJaUm7qr07c7J-A_zyt2dH3I
Each Idea In the College Board Curriculum: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlair5BOIPJZzLARtGCY6KiZ7dwRhv3Uw
Final Reviews from last year: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlair5BOIPJYCGH9JPm498emF-dUFVMqU
https://quizlet.com/42190347/apush-cramming-set-8-flash-cards/
https://quizlet.com/emily_healy8
https://quizlet.com/mackenziemcgraw15
Anything else you would like to hear, feel free to ask.
The post itself isnt completely coherent so here the things you need to take away from this post:
- Curriculum change! Make sure the material you are studying will prepare you for the current test! The US test has changed twice in the past two years.
- If you are in AP Physics, get a review book. Now. Do it. Or else.
- If you are in Physics, dont worry about math.
- If you are in any AP, do practice tests. Review, review, review!
- If you watch videos, play them at 2x the speed.
- If you want AP United States History videos: Adam Norris.
- The week before cut out everything but: eating, sleeping, cramming. You need to focus on your test so maybe hide your phone or tell your friends you cant go to the party. Also sleep a ton the week before tests because the night before you might have trouble sleeping.
Here is the exact list of history videos that I watched within the 4 days before the test, pretty much all of them at 2x the speed. Looking through my history, I was watching a lot more random other videos than anything else, which is really scary. I watched:
- 9 hair style videos
- 3 20 minute Torrin Paige blogs
- several menstrual cup videos
- 11 funny prank videos
- 8 Tay Zonday through GMM
- 15 aloe vera care videos
- who knows how many Good Mythical Morning videos
- an embarrassingly large number (16) of videos when I was trying to pick out a spray tan
- a bunch of music, etc.
I also watched a bunch of physics stuff but feel no need to list them as they obviously didn’t do the trick.
Anyway, I'll get to that later. For now, history. I highly recommend Adam Norris. I watched these videos:
- Containment, Truman Doctrine, Cold War: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jH3X3P7tO40
- Time Period 6-9 Review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4aA_ROri6s
- 1.1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtW2d-vM6MM&index=1&list=PLlair5BOIPJZzLARtGCY6KiZ7dwRhv3Uw
- 1.2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vptOsio63i8&index=2&list=PLlair5BOIPJZzLARtGCY6KiZ7dwRhv3Uw
- 1.3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9THmzmw6oS4&list=PLlair5BOIPJZzLARtGCY6KiZ7dwRhv3Uw&index=3
- 2.1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDsvOgfB32E&list=PLlair5BOIPJZzLARtGCY6KiZ7dwRhv3Uw&index=4
- 2.2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDsvOgfB32E&list=PLlair5BOIPJZzLARtGCY6KiZ7dwRhv3Uw&index=4
- 2.3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yUZ2YtdKxw&index=6&list=PLlair5BOIPJZzLARtGCY6KiZ7dwRhv3Uw
- 3.1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYtIONoWFRY&index=7&list=PLlair5BOIPJZzLARtGCY6KiZ7dwRhv3Uw
- 3.2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nG8-x2QgCs&index=8&list=PLlair5BOIPJZzLARtGCY6KiZ7dwRhv3Uw
- 3.3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bMfQnI0_X4&list=PLlair5BOIPJZzLARtGCY6KiZ7dwRhv3Uw&index=9
- 4.1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YvCcOTC2To&list=PLlair5BOIPJZzLARtGCY6KiZ7dwRhv3Uw&index10
- 1 in 10 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p_dNOpqdj0
- 2 in 10 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YlsHTjfguc
- 3 in 10 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6kTPbwyNWA
- 4 in 10 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aYY2sW596s
- 8.1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFEybdLbnVo
- 8 in 10 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1lcDtZ8ds0
- 8.2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hYxekR6wHE
- 8.3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwFSta0GzBM
- 8 in 10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1lcDtZ8ds0
- 9.1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5kdgRZOPXM
- 9.2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3Kr4WA5H2w
- 9 in 10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR9UilvsIr8
- Another 9 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlair5BOIPJbGFXezTsF_nVc6vHp2bCvd
- 5 in 10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zEBVzp7HS8&list=PLlair5BOIPJaUm7qr07c7J-A_zyt2dH3I&index=5
- 6 in 10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01X0xrxbmqI&index=6&list=PLlair5BOIPJaUm7qr07c7J-A_zyt2dH3I
- Colonial Rebellion and Conflict: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlxiqeNlOJo
- 1-5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAlZEh46ytI
- Time Period 6-9 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4aA_ROri6s
So many videos!! We had just barely covered things after like WWII... in fact the teacher was on vacation the week when we crammed time period 8 and 9 so I was feeling very unprepared in those areas.
I was hoping to read some of the illegal AMSCO book, but it’s like 800 pages so that didnt happen. You can download it here: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/155097365/APUSH-AMSCO.
The morning of I watched Colonial Rebellions again, 9 in 10, 3 in 10, 2 in 10, and had to leave early to be dropped off so that’s I had time for. :)
Note that I was playing all of these at 2x the speed.
Coming out of my APUSH test, I felt like I was a genius. It was so easy, I could have taken the SAT right after without a blink and it was a great great feeling. Of course I later learned that I didnt get a 5 so there was some sort of disconnect between how I felt after the test and how much the graders thought I knew but.....
My very first question was McCarthyism and I knew that pretty well. Second Red Scare = Witch Hunts = Everyone ("even the Girl Scouts") was targeted for being “communist” by Senator McCarthy. It was a great start because I knew what I was doing.
Pretty much all that through me for a loop was that I didn’t know the one SDS (Students of a Democratic Society) set. I knew they turned to violence, but not what about. :/
Also in a short answer I didn’t know what was going on with a law that saved land for preservation. (Think TR and Progressivism). Because the prompt was to “identify” it, I just talked about what it was for a really long time and used key words like “conservation”.
But it felt like it all worked out almost perfectly. In the gym you couldnt hear the proctors, you could hear every bell for classes, but I had my pencils, erasers, mints, chapstick, a tissue just in case. It could have been worse.
Again, the night before I crammed a lot of Adam Norris videos and that (and my own teacher’s reviews) made me In one, Mr. Norris had said “If you get an essay “Talk about the French and Indian war and a turning point that said that the relationship was forever trashed and for these ninety reasons” use that. And that was literally an essay choice! So I talked about a the internal and direct taxes, wanting to go west and us thinking that Pontiacs rebellion was a hint for “help us poor innocent colonists” *not* “Place the Proclamation Line of 1763 and so we can’t even move onto the land we won from France, who lost all its land”. So then I talked about grass roots stuff like the Boston Massacre and Tea Party. Then in my conclusion I talked about the Gadsden Purchase finishing off the continental 48 and Polk’s Manifest Destiny and the Span- War and Guam, Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines which led to the Philippine Insurrection.
I totally blanked on the Mexican American one which I find really funny because I totally talked about it with my conclusion and the Mexican Cession and stuff.
A lot of people flipped out over the DBQ but come on it’s the DBQ! We had to talk about all the liberalism made for a lot of conservativism. We talked about the Bible and more homemakers after all the flappers, and stuff like anti-abortion.. I had studied that too from time period 9, but I get we didn’t do much of that in class so…
We had one that made me feel like a nerd because it was a really cool short answer. I wanted to write a book! “Talk about why it might have been an American Revolution before Lexington” and “Talk about why it might have been an American Rev. after the war was over”. So I talked about the two grass roots Boston things again salutary neglect, political accident, imperialism with the frontier, and then for afterwards a nice argument on the articles of confederation being scrapped at the Constitutional Convention and all of the compromises there like the Great Compromise (Connecticut plan) combining NJ (small states) and VA (wanted by population) and the 3/5ths also for representation and stuff. Maybe I should have just picked one thing, but oh well.
We also had a short answer where we talked about the Native Americans pre contact. I wasn’t sure if Sioux (who hunted buffalo and were nomadic) were Western Great Plains or Great Basin so I just did Aztecs (huge society. stationary. corn), Pueblo (best living standards. dry. some agriculture.) and Algonquin (women farmed, men hunted. GA to Maine along the App Mountains so duh, game. weak politically.)
It was amazing, and I would give anything for a copy of those essays.
(UPDATE: I am buying them from the College Board and will share them with all you guys. Promise!)
(UPDATE: I got my things. They were $10. Would you like to see them? I dont actually know if that is allowed but...)
On the other hand, coming out of my AP Physics exam, I felt really really bad.
I had the O exam whereas the C one everyone found easy and so I blamed it on the form. #truestory
It wasn’t that my teacher hadn’t prepared me so much as that I hadn’t prepared me. And that was pretty depressing. For example, I scanned various assignments and notes from the year, which were in my unorganized binder.... the night before. On the other hand one of my friends took a nap for part of it and not only finished, but felt pretty good.
In preparing, I had crammed all the equations and I felt like I needed none of them which was getting really annoying. Especially as I saw my smart friends finishing with like 25 minutes left to stare at the rest of us and make us uncomfortable :/ I had extra time on the History one but this! No way.
I mean, listing steps to conduct an experiment to test for non-ohmic properties of a resistant material? We had read about what non-ohmic materials were—so why couldn’t I think of what to write? I was like V= IR (Ohms law) and that’s about all I knew on the subject.
How to conduct an experiment with an ammeter or a voltmeter? We had learned which was to be in parallel vs in series and which was to be of infinite resistance vs pretty much none. But sitting there in the fear-stuffed room, I couldn’t remember what to do. Bad timing for a 12 point question, right?
A kid on a merry go round throws a ball to someone, does the kid speed up? Idk.
Sphere M1 is .01 kg and Sphere M2 is .03 kg. If vi1 is -.3m/s what were they both going when they collided and bounded away. I spent a long time figuring that one out and then had to guess because the pi was equal to pf in a few of them, but now I’m like, but what about rotational?!?! *tears*
I was having a hard time recalling what to do with different tensions of systems and getting a different answer each time I thought of something new (Mine in the open ended had one where it was two pulleys on the corners of the surface and then they added a mass on top between what became Ti and T2.) We had done these in class, so by all means look over your
…but yet I could tell you all about circular motion or simple electronics or inclines or gravitational stuff of which I saw no problems—NONE!!! (2 exceptions:
1 in which it helped to have a basic understanding of positive/negative charge and attractions but I got wrong so who cares. Here it was this is attracted to this of +Q and that is then repelled from +Q and what was the initial charge of the ‘this’. Your options were +Q/2, +3Q/2, etc.
1 in which there was a FBD and I had to draw Force Gravity and Tension. FBD’s were not on all exams otherwise.
One of my friends also thought it was weird that they did a lot of some stuff and nothing on others. “Yeah. I'm not really sure what was on the test. However there was a lot of momentum”
Everyone else was coming out happy “Well, I’m glad I got a high 5 on that to boost my confidence for the 7 others I have to take in these next two weeks” and I was pretty much about to cry. No “High Five” for me, guys.
Searching Twitter, I believe the one I most related to was “AP Physics: Find the coefficient of kinetic friction of my tears on my face as I take the exam. At what velocity will these tears fall?”
Another read: “Gonna have nightmares about the AP physics exam tonight”
Another: “The only thing I knew how to do on that ap physics exam was putting the stickers on my book”
Another: ap physics was a no
And so, it was a very unpleasant 30 minutes as I waited in the rain for my dad to get me. Egh. You win some you lose some.
Although I had a lot of pizza that week. 1 Slice before Friday from a friend who bought a box @ lunch, 3 slices Wednesday from Physics before the exam, 2 Slices Glee Club tech rehearsal, and one at home Friday night since my dad had leftovers at work. Yay for pizza!
Just kidding, pizza isnt important to scoring well. I was just sort of journaling for myself, you know. Anyway, here are some additional links.
Physics:
These didnt prepare me much but they quickly reviewed topics.
- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLa5xw2RkwZ30QxhWEl6TBqN_DvWOEqH57
- Doc Physics Videos
- MillerStem reviews -- I was looking for longer review videos if you have dont all the above and such, maybe this guy would drill in topics? I didnt actually watch much of the video.
APUSH--
AMSCO
Adam Norris Videos:
You might be interested in these Adam Norris videos:
10 Minute per Time Period MUSTS https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlair5BOIPJaUm7qr07c7J-A_zyt2dH3I
Each Idea In the College Board Curriculum: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlair5BOIPJZzLARtGCY6KiZ7dwRhv3Uw
Final Reviews from last year: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlair5BOIPJYCGH9JPm498emF-dUFVMqU
https://quizlet.com/42190347/apush-cramming-set-8-flash-cards/
https://quizlet.com/emily_healy8
https://quizlet.com/mackenziemcgraw15
Anything else you would like to hear, feel free to ask.
