If you're in the AP class, or even thinking seriously about it, chances are that social studies classes have always been a breeze.  You knew how to ace any test with a half-hour's cramming, and how to toss off projects and papers that teachers went all gaga about.  You have gotten used to getting good grades as a reward for putting in time and paying attention to instructions.

Well, the game is a little different now.   Think of this course as a college seminar.  You will be expected to come to class prepared, having read and made sense of assigned material.  Tests will be rigorous, and will require you to develop your own strategies for pulling essential information from textbook and primary source readings.   You will contribute to discussion and debate as an informed participant, able to articulate clear responses and opinions on historical topics under consideration.

Most importantly, you will prepare a variety of written assignments, ranging from stories to a 4th-quarter full-length term paper.  Through it all, there will be essays---short essays, long essays, document-based essays, essays till you're dying of essays.  These essays will be evaluated by the standards you will encounter in college.  

The grading standards for written work are also driven by the expectations of the Advanced Placement Exams which you will take in May.  These people who grade exam essays are heartless, cold, and brutal.  They have little patience with knock-kneed writing and fuzzy thinking.

You will hate it.  You will hate me.  But in the end, my promise is that you will know a little about how to slap together a real essay, and maybe even a little something about lucid, effective thinking---about history, or about anything.