It’s finally May. This month has a list of connotations: Holiday Hills, warm weather, field trips galore. Before all this, the month unfolds with two weeks of AP exams. The AP students have spent all year, specifically the past few months, mastering their course’s material and slaving over practice tests. The precedent should be that once they finish AP exams, they get to relax and look forward to the exciting end-of-the-year events. This year, however, the period of AP exams and the period of fun intersect.

Students in the music department have been looking forward to their aggregate trip to Hershey Park all year. As it falls on the weekend before AP exams start, however, many students will have to drag their books with them, their incoming test looming over them the entire weekend.

This is not the only scheduling error that have students sacrificing milestone events of the year. Before Holiday Hills on May 18, at 12:30 p.m., the school holds an Awards Assembly, where accolades are provided for sophomores through seniors. Furthermore, the seniors practice walking for graduation by donning their caps and gowns and making a grand entrance into the assembly.

Any student taking AP Human Geography this year, however, will have to be exempt from the event and a portion of Holiday Hill, as its exam overlaps with it. Nestor Rodriguez (’12), an APHG student, states: “With the APHG mess I’m pretty mad since I would be missing not only the award/practice ceremony but also I would be missing some part of my senior trip that I have been for for 4 years…Now a handful of people have to miss out on some very important events because of it.”

Students are wondering how a schedule clash like this could have occurred. Ms. Denise Musser, Student Activities advisor, gives some insight: “I have to pick my dates a year in advance,” Musser explains. “I normally pick mine the previous April. The whole year out I have to sign contracts. By then, we don’t really know the [AP] test dates.”

Because of the unfortunate schedule conflict, the school has tried to work around this as much as possible. The Awards Assembly has been changed to May 24, while Holiday Hills will now be an all-day event, with students boarding a bus for the 40 minute ride at 8:30 a.m. A bus will be provided for the AP Human Geography students after their exam, which begins at 8 a.m. and ends approximately at 10:30 a.m. The APHG students would be about 3 hours late.

The entire Holiday Hills trip goes on till 4 p.m. “You guys are free to do whatever you want [the entire day], it’s crazy there. They won’t be missing anything specific,” Musser explains. She continues, “I tried to change it with Holiday Hills, but they only do certain senior days and take five schools at a time.”

She also clarifies that she has no control over the Hershey Park trip: “I don’t handle that,” she states.

For some students, the next couple of weeks has work overlapping fun. Regardless, the school has seemed to try its best to accomodate what needs to get done, and what everyone wants to do.