When I had my annual meeting with my guidance counselor to finalize my schedule for the 2024-2025 school year, the main class that I wanted to take was AP U.S. Government and Politics (AP Gov). My guidance counselor thought that I would be better off taking this class senior year, but I insisted that I need to take it this year due to the 2024 presidential election.
I am an avid watcher of the news and I love having conversations with the people around me about current events . During the summer leading up to my junior year, many political events occurred. From Former President Joe Biden dropping out just 107 days before election day, to two assassination attempts on President Donald Trump, I knew that we would have many current event topics in my AP Gov class to talk about.
The 2024 presidential election played a huge role in the first three months of my AP Gov class. At the start of every class, we would look at the polls and talk about which candidate we thought would win each battleground state, and even created a project about the matter.When I would watch election updates on the news, I thought about the discussions this would lead to in gov tomorrow.
As we got close to election day, Nov. 5, 2024, It saddened me to realize that the election conversations in my gov class were going to come to an end, and we weren’t going to continue talking about current events any more. I convinced myself that the class wasn’t going to be fun anymore; however, I was proven wrong.
After Trump won the 2024 presidential election, there was a great increase in political news. From the hundreds of pardons issued by both Biden and Trump, to Trump signing over 70 executive orders in his first day as president, the current event discussions in my gov class were certainly far from over.
Yes, taking AP Gov during a politically active year leads to a lot of class discussion but it also leads to a lot of great examples for our required free response questions (FRQ). Need an example of the president’s pardon power? Look no farther than the pardons that Biden and Trump issued. Need an argument for the 14th Amendment, the amendment that protects birthright citizenship? Look at Trump’s executive order that he signed to end birthright citizenship in the United States.
Taking AP Government and Politics during a politically active year has made the class enjoyable, has led to so many class discussions, and even helped me write my FRQs for the class. No one is able to predict the future, but taking AP Gov during a politically active year is definitely the way to go.
