At the start of the school year, students, understandably, could not imagine taking AP or IB tests since the exam date was so far. However, as the lengthy school year comes to an end, exam season is swiftly approaching. It is now May and many students at QHHS will be taking IB or, the more popular, AP exams.

To help students study for their exams, teachers at QHHS have set up “Saturday School Sessions.” On a date designated by the teacher supervising the “Saturday School Sessions,” students are able to arrive at school to take a practice exam and get help from their respective teachers. The most popular subject for these sessions is AP Calculus AB/BC.

Junior at QHHS, Meiyi Ye, is in Mr. Herman’s AP Calculus AB class. According to her, the practice sessions on Saturdays help prepare her for the AP exam in May, as the packets of  exam questions give her a “Better understanding of the material.”

Because AP exams are cumulative, they require students to access the knowledge they learned since the first day of school. Because of the Saturday sessions, Ye “Encounter[ed] questions [she] did not know how to do,” which in turn aided her by underscoring what she had to study and improve on. It is easy to forget all of the information learned throughout the course of the school year, so these Saturday Sessions help students review what they have been taught and focus on the topics they struggle in. Thus, these practice exams are a great start to knowing what to study for the actual exam.

For most students like Ye, the only downside to these Saturday Sessions is the Saturday part. Many are unwilling to sacrifice their precious sleeping time to go to school at 8 A.M. on a Saturday and take a practice exam. However, in the end, these sessions are considered beneficial for students who have trouble dedicating their own time at home to fully study without interruptions. Taking practice exams and studying at school while the teacher is present is also helpful by allowing students to ask their teachers for help on problems and receive an easy, understandable explanation that may have otherwise been difficult to figure out alone.

The AP and IB exams in May are difficult exams that require quite a considerable amount of preparation, studying, and revision. Teachers and other staff at QHHS are kind and dedicated enough to spend their own valuable time of rest to work for the mere benefit of helping their students pass an exam. Students should take advantage of and be thankful for the time teachers set aside in their own personal lives to help children like us have a fighting chance at receiving a score greater than a one.