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Summer is only a few weeks away, but rigorous classes are far from over. Final projects, papers and exams are piling up, and junior Emma Auld is feeling the pressure.

“I’m stressed for my physics paper that I haven’t started,” Auld said. “I have other things to do and I just really don’t want to write it.”

Auld has already finished with a lot of her work for the year, though. She took 4 AP exams and 2 final exams, one of them for calculus, for which she also has a project due.

“[Ms. Shridhar] gives us the mock AP exam as our final, but it can’t technically be our final, so she gives us a project too.”

These assignments wouldn’t be so daunting if Auld had more motivation.

“I have classes that I don’t do anything in, where we’re watching movies, and then I have classes where we’re still learning,” Auld said. “Going from one to another makes me not want to do anything anymore.”

Many AP courses slow down in the last month of school with the culmination of the AP exams.

“Some teachers give up because their class is over; after the AP exam, they have nothing else to teach,” Auld said. “But some teachers want to hold on and keep teaching us stuff that isn’t necessary.”

If Auld were a teacher, she would do a mix of the two.

“I would just start doing fun stuff. Like in chemistry, we’re doing this lab where we’re just using up all the chemicals,” she said. “I feel like a mad scientist.”

Armed with experience with both types of assessments, Auld recognizes a difference between final exams and final projects.

“An exam is how well you can study and if you really know the material, but a project is if you can apply it and be creative with it.”