One of my favorite classes this year is AP Psychology. About two-thirds of the senior class takes Psych, and it’s definitely well worth it. The material is fascinating and the class format is extremely engaging, making the class one that I look forward to attending.

With junior and senior year comes a much greater degree of flexibility for students in their academic schedules, which is something I’ve enjoyed immensely. Getting to take classes in which you have an interest – like AP Environmental Science, AP Psychology, and AP Comparative Politics, three classes I’ve taken or am currently taking – makes the coursework all the more enjoyable, and, of course, the more students want to be in a class, the more engaged they’ll be.

So, back to Psych. Not only is it a class in which I and many of my classmates have an interest in, but our teacher, Ms. Meyer, also does a fantastic job of designing the class so that the work is hands-on and class activities engage all of the students in the material. For example, this week the classes will be taking field trips down to a local elementary school, Monica Ros, to complete a study through observing and interacting with the kids.

Lastly, a brief explanation on my slightly unrelated picture – these are the books that my English class (which has a focus on Paradise Lost/Coming of Age) will be reading over the first two trimesters! After starting out the year with the challenging A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, we’ve moved on to Jay-Z’s equally thought-provoking Decoded. It’s amazing how many parallels we’ve drawn between the two books, despite how different they seem at first glance.