Prior to the fall of 1997, AP Chemistry at Absegami was no more than an often overlooked listing in Absegami's course book. The reality of this course began when a group of Honors Chemistry students from the graduating class of 1998 came up with the crazy idea of continuing our high school chemistry careers into the 12th grade.
The challenge was to find enough people to sign up for the class to justify its existence. (The school district was currently being threatened with the possibility of discontinuing some extracurricular activities. While the budgets on the cutting block and the budgets concerning academics were separate, we all knew that there wasn't much money to throw around.) Our goal was to find at least ten people willing to sacrifice their social lives and their sanity to take up a second year of chemistry.
It was surprisingly easy to find some students interested in taking such a course, and before long we decided to ask Mr. Dubas if an AP version of his wonderfully taught class could exist with the proper support. Mr. Dubas promised that he would look into the possibility, and soon afterward, during one of our ever so entertaining labs, he directed us to a blank sheet of paper on which all those interested in AP Chemistry were to sign their lives away.
Standing inconspicuously near the entrance to the small office that connected 706 and 708 was Mr. Allen, our future tormentor. With a smug grin, he looked at his future victims, inwardly mocking their confidence and envisioning sadistic methods of shattering the poor students' minds with chemistry, chemistry, and more chemistry (I must admit, however, that this part of the story is somewhat apocryphal). Um, anyway, none of us knew if we would be taking AP Chemistry the next year. Even our guidance counselors knew nothing of what would become of the idea. The ending of the story is obvious as we are now taking AP Chemistry, and not having too bad a time either. What's the moral? There is none. We can say, however, that chemistry is admittedly cool.