Once school resumes after winter break, it takes a considerable amount of days to break from the acquired laziness of latter December and early January. Schoolwork is gradually piled on and after awhile, however, life goes back to normal.

On the other hand, second semester began very differently. In January alone, U. City students only attended school 13 of the 18 scheduled school days. All of this occurred as a result of inclement weather and does not include the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday or the day students were released at 9:15 a.m. due to a heating system failure.

Clearly, these missing days out of the schedule are inconvenient. Still, many are quick to point out that for A.P. students, the occurrence is an obstacle keeping them away from potential fours or fives on the A.P. exam—something they think is a bit more serious.

“The difficulty comes in that even though final exams get rescheduled at the end of the year, A.P. exams are not,” said A.P. Language teacher Ms. Hackmeyer.

For Hackmeyer, this proves to be lost time taken away from valuable instruction and planning for her rigorous language course. Hackmeyer said that she often is forced to ask more from her students.

“There is a really finite amount of time to prepare students for the A.P. exam,” said Hackmeyer. “It causes us to do more in a shorter amount of time and it puts more pressure on teachers and students to learn more material in less time.”

A junior in Hackmeyer’s A.P. Language class anonymously sheds light on some of the anxiety brought on him because of the snow days. The increased workload has him metaphorically on his knees.
“I’m struggling in A.P.,” the student said.

Junior Sloan Marion, a student who currently takes A.P. Language and A.P. Government, plans to study a bit more than usual so the scores he gets on the exams in May are not a disappointment. However, he does note that the snow days have ironically increased his determination regarding academics.

“The snow days provide time to really focus on my studies and catch up while providing ‘extra’ time,” Marion said.