“You think I can use my five on the AP Stats test for anything other than bragging rights?” asked Shultz. “I paid too much for it to be ‘elective credit only.’”
Photo by Jack Yang
Muir College freshman Derek Schultz has recently expressed concern that nobody he has met at UCSD has praised him for scoring highly on all of his AP exams in high school. Schultz estimated that prior to entering college, he would receive three to four daily compliments from his parents and teachers about his ability to handle a tough academic curriculum with his lacrosse schedule.
“People used to say I was a unique and bright boy who was going to accomplish big things in life,” shared Schultz in an interview. “At UCSD, no one gives a damn. The other day, I tried to tell my RA that I managed to get an A in Mr. Johnson’s AP Chemistry class, the hardest class at my high school, but she didn’t even bat an eye. Do people here not know I’m special or something? Nobody will even let me tell them my SAT score.” The RA later shared that she was in the middle of writing an abstract for her research in microbiology, and was too consumed in her work to reply to Schultz.
Schultz shared that the general apathy regarding his high school activities also extended beyond his academics. “I tried telling my professor today that I was the secretary for my school’s Key Club and clocked in 70 hours of volunteering to get a distinction on my high school diploma. He laughed at my face and said ‘good luck kiddo.’ I don’t get what his deal was. Don’t people care about service here on this campus? My college counselors told me it was an important life skill to have for college.”
Fed up with the lack of commendations to his high school achievements, Schultz has started a support group with other freshmen who have had similar experiences. One student is reportedly “emotionally broken” from discovering that his roommate from Oklahoma did not know his high school was considered a “STEM oriented magnet school that attracts only the best students in the Modesto metropolitan area of California.”
While his new group has helped assuage some of Schultz’s discomfort with the university’s indifference towards his high school successes, he is still worried about how he will handle this issue if it does not cease in the future. “For my whole life, my parents have told me people will recognize me as long as I put in the effort. All my hard work studying for AP exams in high school couldn’t have been for nothing. People have to care, right? Right!?”
Steven Zhou was made in Canada and designed in California. He tolerates writing and has been occasionally funny since 2016.
