As Advanced Placement exams creep ever closer, many M-A teachers are reporting an oppressive sense of calm washing over them. They have covered all the material within their respective subjects. They have covered each unit of content to the same degree of detail. Their students have been attentive and hardworking all year; all are veritable masters of every possible content area on the exam. They burnish their armor, engrave their helmets, and practice winding their foot cloths as they prepare for the war to end all wars.
The copy room resembles a barren wasteland, as the AP teachers distributed their review materials, study guides, and the notes for the final few chapters of their courses long ago. Students spend class time diligently reviewing the material, with no need to play catch up.
We approached Liane Strub, AP Art History teacher, for a quote on the matter, but found her levitating over her desk, so free of stress and worry that she was literally floating. “My students are going to knock the socks right off those College Board gnomes” she trilled, brimming with confidence. She proceeded to remove her own socks, in order to demonstrate the iminent utter socklessness of the AP gnomes, exactly the sort of concrete examples her students were prepared to incorporate seamlessly into their essays. A crowd of students were later seen staring confidently at a Botticelli painting they were unable to identify, one of them claiming, “I have never seen this painting in my life, but I know I can crush it with my essay writing hand.” Strub nodded approvingly upon hearing this account.
John Florio, huddled and squatting behind his desk, began laughing maniacally at our inquiries. He assured us that his students were more than well prepared to succeed on the AP European History test, especially because “they see through all that College Board quackery about the Second Industrial Revolution.” Nested in a combination of crumpled up FRQs from first semester and empty bags of Doritos, he predicted, “the harvest of 5’s will be abundant this summer. Bountiful crops indeed,” he mused, staring into an extra large ice cube that stood in for his usual crystal ball. “Maurice will feast this night.”
The only teacher apparently immune to this trend of assurance, AP English Literature teacher, Lisa Otsuka, has transformed her classroom into an Amazonian literature boot camp. Students draped in animal skins have been spotted army crawling through the underbrush to chants of “IT IS A TRUTH UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED”-pant- “THAT A SINGLE MAN IN POSSESSION OF A GOOD FORTUNE”-pant- “MUST BE IN WANT OF A WIFE!” Hair matted, eyes in a crazed frenzy, Mrs. Otsuka reportedly chanted “LIFE IN A BOX IS BETTER THAN NO LIFE AT ALL” as she hefted a box containing all of the English department’s Scantron forms over her head.
Aliza Katzman, a concerned student, confided: “Yeah, dude, I dunno, Mrs. O seems kinda different than usual you know? I thought it was kinda strange that she was pouring uncooked rice all over her floor earlier, but she told me I could still make up some Invisible Man quizzes, so it’s chill.”
Benjamin Wellington, AP U.S. History teacher, was recently spotted packing a suitcase, preparing for his upcoming vacation during the mass student hibernation period to follow in the last two weeks of May. “I just feel like everything post-Reagan is pretty self-explanatory, man,” he explained. “The kids will do fine. They’ve been sharpening their knives- erhm- pens for weeks.”
