Students reflect on experiences with doubling history

As if the hours of reading and thesis-writing required for AP U.S. History classes were not enough, nine juniors this year are taking AP European History as well, a 200 percent increase from those in 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 school years. Both classes require a lot of reading and effort.

Junior Lisa Yu knows the difficulty of doubling in history all too well: She once spent seven hours on a documentary project for AP Euro one Sunday, only to return home to a mountain of APUSH homework.

“By the time I got home, it was 10 p.m. and I had 30 pages of AP [US History text] to read, as well as [writing] a bunch of theses statements that I had procrastinated on doing,” Yu said. “I ended up getting no sleep that night.”

According to APUSH teacher Kim Anzalone, the social studies department sees “doubling” in both APUSH and AP Euro as a good opportunity for those with a liberal-arts bent.

“Many of the AP offerings in the past have been geared toward those students who are passionate about math and science,” Anzalone said. “By offering AP Euro and AP Gov, we are giving those students who are passionate about social studies an opportunity to take AP classes dealing with a subject matter they enjoy.”

For junior Ingrid Pan, who is in the Media Arts Program (MAP), the decision to take the two classes was a simple one.

“I’ve always been a humanities person, and I don’t really want to go into science and math when I’m in college, so it seemed like a good fit,” Pan said.

Despite the significant workload from APUSH MAP and AP Euro, Pan said that her interest in history makes the classes seem less demanding.

“It’s weird, because these two are probably two of my easier classes,” Pan said. “English 11 Honors is harder.”

Junior Jayee Malwankar said she took both classes because of their differences as well as an underlying love of history.

“I wanted to do double history because I really liked World History, and I also liked it when we learned about different perspectives, and so I wanted to do AP U.S. History,” Malwankar said. “But then Euro kind of gives context for events that [are] going on in U.S. History, and it goes further back in time.”

Because AP Euro covers a wider breadth of information, Malwankar said, the course tends to focus less on specifics and more on overarching ideas.

Malwankar said that time management skills are a must for those who take the two advanced history classes.

“The biggest thing is that there’s a lot of reading per night, but then it’s kind of OK because APUSH has weekly homework, so you can manage it the way that you want,” she said. “[Doublers have] to be really fast at reading or they have to be willing to put in more time on the weekends.”

If students are serious about history, doubling can be a worthwhile experience, Pan said. She herself decided not to take a science class this year.

“It’s weird to say, but I actually sometimes like studying for history tests versus in science, I’m just like, ‘I don’t know what’s going on,’” she said, “and it’s just a different mindset that I have.”