by Heather Tyner

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After working hard all year long Advanced Placement students take an achievement test. This test is taken in early May and is designed to assess the student's knowledge of the course and determine whether or not they will get college credit. Once the tests are done, many of the classes are left with nothing to do for the last month of school. Students who used to be AP scholars soon become AP slackers, many of them not even going to class.

"I don't go to first hour which is AP Chem., 6 th hour I go to like maybe once a week which is AP Psych; in Language we're doing a project, so it's pretty light."

Jessica Williams, a first year AP Psychology teacher said she understands why some students might want a break.

"I thought it was a tremendous amount of work... a tremendous amount of work, umm, more than um, your average college um, psychology course, which is what the students are getting credit for," Williams said.

After seeing her students work hard all year long, Williams said she doesn't have a whole lot problems when students skip her class.

"I think that there's going to be a lot of people that just want to hang out and mentally check out of school. Just like most people in school do right around this time of year, but for as hard as they...for as hard as the AP students worked in class over the course of the semester I can't blame them, so that's okay, " she said.

But, not all teachers share this opinion, some continue to give assignments and carry on with course material. Longtime AP literature teacher Glen Wright said his students are still working.

"They have a big project they're working on that, they present that after the AP Test so that's what they're kind of working on now," Wright said. "They won't have much to do if they get all their work done ahead of time, but most of them are still working on it now so it's kind of even all the way through."

And, Wright said, teachers have to be creative to keep the class interested.

"You have to be careful that you don't just make it more, more worksheets. More hours of work, that's not the goal of an AP class. It should be the caliber of work, the level of analysis and critical thinking is what you want to get raised up for AP classes."

And for most of the year, students are up to that challenge, but once the AP tests are done it seems they'd rather turn off their brains and veg.