Photo by Kiley Ring

Senior Holly Darby reaches for a paper in Mrs. Patel’s seventh period AP Lit class. She worked on annotating poems in class.

Taking English in high school is required for all four years. There are different levels available for all students, and students may choose their preferred course when signing up for next year’s classes. Senior year is one of the most flexible years for students, and many wonder whether they should take Honors English 12 or AP Literature.

Honors English 12 is a class that is seen as less challenging than AP Lit, and it consists of common tasks and progress checks, whereas AP teachers are more flexible in creating their curriculum. This can make Honors English 12 more tedious and filled with busy work, but AP Lit is overall more difficult in terms of harder grading and content learned and practiced in class.

In Honors English 12, many classes have been reading the same book since the beginning of the school year. Friends of mine in that class also have told me that the class time consists of discussing the book and doing extract analyses. In comparison, AP Lit has read two books already and is now starting their third. Also, in English teacher Jennifer Patel’s classes, students take reading quizzes on the details of the books or short stories they have read. There are many more discussions in Lit and we have also started working on a group presentation for poems in addition to reading Hamlet.

Although AP Lit is very challenging, I think it is extremely helpful to students interested in literature in the future. My teacher has given me a lot of information about writing and analyzing things that I have never thought about before, and it has strengthened my skills as a writer already. If you are looking for an easy senior year, I wouldn’t suggest taking AP Lit, but I think the skills learned from this class are worth the hard work.