AP Computer Science Principles Exam

It was a warm, clear night on a Friday evening in July 2018, we were just about to go on the Freedom Trail walk in Boston when I first checked my grade for the AP Computer Science Principal’s Exam. It was a 2 out of 5. I could not believe my own eyes – a 2 in an AP test was considered a failing grade, which meant that I had failed my first AP test in my life. During the entire walk, I felt so sullen and dejected that I could not enjoy any of the trail attractions and I needed to force myself to smile in every picture. During dinner, I asked my mother to buy some AP Computer Science A books, which I elected for next year because I absolutely did not want this result to be repeated in any of my other AP tests. I had such a restless sleep that night, due to the memories of my previous programming experiences that raced in my mind.

 I started programming in Scratch on my 9th birthday because both of my parents are software engineers and I wanted to learn how to program too. I enjoyed it because it was very easy to learn and I could make fancy games and animations with it. I learned that computers only follow the directions which I gave them and I needed to give extremely specific directions. I also learned how to use the x y coordinate plane. However, now that I have revisited Scratch after getting a beginner’s programming experience, I realized that there was a lot more in that program that I had not fully explored during those early parts of my childhood and wished that I had spent more time on it back then.

When I was 11, I got introduced to Khan Academy. While exploring the website, I saw the programming section. From what I remember, it had only four computer courses back then: Intro to JS: Drawing & Animation, Intro to HTML and CSS, Advanced JS Games and Visualizations, and Meet the Professionals. I had heard about the JavaScript programming language from my parents and wanted to know more, so I decided to start the Intro to JS: Drawing & Animation course. The structure of the course made it very easy for a beginning programmer like I was. I loved doing the computing challenges and did not move on to the next lesson until I finished it. Occasionally, I would take a break from the course material and make animations on my own. I made my first animation when I was in sixth grade, even before I learn how to write if statements in JavaScript. I even made an animation for my parents’ anniversary. The biggest difficulty in this project was getting the rectangle to go from the sides to the bottom. I originally had a single conditional from my if statements, but then I realized that I needed the put multiple conditionals. By the end of the course, I learn the basics and JavaScript as well as some object-oriented programing. I also learned several techniques for debugging and to never give up when the program doesn’t work. Most of all, I got interested in programming and computer science in general, which, as I believe, is the first key step towards finding the right career. Since I only worked on the course two hours per week and implemented several other programs to accompany the course, it took me two years to finish it.

Then I took CS50 which I have already talked about my CS50 course in another post: https://anikanath.com/cs50-a-passport-to-college-level-computer-science/my-achievements/

The summer before my freshman year at high school, I wrote some automation test cases for the Everbridge mobile app with a group of 3 other people. I learned a lot about automation testing which I thought was a really cool feature because of the large amount of time it saves while testing products.

At the end of the weekend, I checked my AP score again and I was over the moon to see that I earned a 5! I spent the rest of the day celebration by ordering dinner from outside and even cutting cake.