AP Music Theory Reflection

To this day it shocks me that the College Board could make us sing for a grade. Not play an instrument, but read notes off of a paper, into a tape recorder, alone in a room with only a proctor and a microphone. While the scope and goal of the class still slightly evades me to this day, the anger I felt towards AP Music Theory has long since evolved into something different, acceptance.

I had been convinced by my peers that having played the piano for seven years was enough to ace the class. In their defense it did give me a good place to start. I found the introductory topics easy to grasp due to my musical training; one of the first lessons was identifying the notes on a piano, something I’d been doing for seven years. It was when we started

The class had become an unnecessary blight on my otherwise fine transcript. The hardest part of bringing my grade up was not the work it entailed, but rather swallowing my pride. In a class filled with a myriad of talented and intelligent students it felt like I was the only one struggling with this course. Nevertheless I attended student hours and tutoring every week. Each day the end of homework marked the beginning extra Music Theory. Whether it was playing pre-recorded audio to identify chords or writing my own progressions there was always something to do to prepare for the upcoming AP. The impact of “playing catch-up” after a virtually useless semester was still evident in my score, but that aspect hardly mattered. At the end of the year, even though many students had higher averages than me, I was the one who received the student of the year award for Music Theory. I am still in shock that my teacher decided chose me, yet I in a sense understand his decision. As I progressed through high school I have cared less and less about my GPA (though paradoxically my grades and number of AP classes rose in tandem) because I found that learning for the sake of learning is the actual reason I wake up at 6:00 and come to school. AP Music Theory in 9th grade was the event which provoked that gradual