Did you know that in 2016, about 23% of test takers scored a 1 out of 5 on the AP Computer Science exam? Because, coincidentally, my first grade of the year in APCS was also a 23%.
Last year, I decided to take AP Computer Science. I didn’t have much experience, but I liked the idea of coding. Over-confident, I thought that the class might be a bit challenging, but as long as I studied a little I would easily get an A.
Turns out, it was a lot harder than I expected. The test that I got a 23% on was about string manipulation, one of the easier concepts in the course. If I couldn’t grasp that, how was I going to be able to comprehend arrays and polymorphism?
Throughout the year, I tried my best to follow along in class. I steadily improved, but I still struggled at solving the most complex problems. On the bright side, I was scoring much higher than 23% on my tests, so at least I had that going for me.
In March, my class finished the curriculum and moved on to AP exam preparation. The teacher gave the class a review worksheet on recursion, an important topic. I found the problems incredibly confusing, and I couldn’t figure out how to solve any of them.
This was a major wake-up call that I might fail the AP exam and final. The
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Do I really see myself as a computer scientist in the future?” For as long as I could remember, my sights were set on something in the engineering field, but taking coding classes in high school helped me realize that there were actually other sciences out there that I wanted to focus on as well. It became clear to me that the only reason why I wanted to succeed so badly in computer science was because I truly had a passion for the subject.
In the end (after a lot of work), I got an A on the final and a 5 on the AP exam. It felt great knowing that all my studying and hard work paid off, that I truly was capable of coding, and that I wanted to pursue programming in the