AP World History

AP World History Was My Hardest, Yet Most Enriching Class

When I was in senior high school, I signed up for an AP World History class thinking that I would coast through the course and earn college credit by passing the advanced placement examination at the end. While I did receive college credit for passing that exam, I did anything but a coast through the course, and found it to be one of the more challenging classes I’ve ever taken.

I was a sophomore or junior at the time I don’t remember which, because I had the same teacher for both AP World History and AP U.S History.

His name was Mr. Lemons, and he was the best teacher I ever had, at any level of education. I was always pretty good at history, and it was an issue that I sincerely enjoyed. I felt sure that I would make my way through AP World History class without any trouble whatsoever, but I before long discovered that the world is a big, big place, and it has been around for a long, long time. The things I thought I knew. I didn’t really know, and there were many things I didn’t know earlier.

I clearly remember studying ancient Egypt in AP World History and being awestruck by how well Mr. Lemons knew that portion of history. He could tell me so many things about the different pharaohs and architecture, and I could not start to understand how someone could retain so much information. It was as informative as it was humbling, and I learned early on not to be so cocky about my knowledge of history.

I remember learning about the history of the Middle East, and Stonehenge, as well as all the Germanic tribes and how they sacked Rome. I think my favorite subject to study in my AP World History class was the Middle Ages in Europe. I loved the Renaissance also, but the Middle ages always fascinated me because of all the great battles that took place during that period of time.

When I received my first test score back, it was an 84, and I was pretty pessimistic. I felt that I knew the subject matter rather well, but in fairness, I had not studied really hard. I made the mistake of assuming that because I was interested in a subject and had read about it, I would know the answers to the questions he was asking, and that simply wasn’t the case.

I made an effort from that point on in AP World History to really study before all test and quiz. I managed to pull an ‘A’ in the course, but I wasn’t nearly as happy about that as I was about all the historical knowledge I had picked up along the way.

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