This is a tribute to all the Advanced Placement English Literature Exam readers this year, especially those with Question 1 that had a passage from the recent novel The Age of Light. We note that back in 2003, the A. P. English Lit prose selection featured another North American expat woman in Paris.

The school is quiet, the only other workers the custodial staff, the lower half of their faces covered with N-95 masks. A couple of Dunkin Donuts paper cups curl around Mr. A. P. Little’s laptop with its built-in camera, which he has brought to school though the school has some PCs he could have used.

Just before he checked out of the hotel at last year’s A. P. reading, his roommate asked him if he wanted a set of range finders for Question 3. Not all of them had a score on them, but he could figure it out. When he got back home, he would sort them out as he sat in a lawn chair in his yard. Those plans did not work out as expected, though, because A. P. range finders (they call them benchmarks now) adopted the new 1-4-1 scoring system.

The maintenance supervisor stops by and tells him he is going on a Starbucks run and asks if he would like anything. A. P. hesitates, thinking about the coffee buzz he feels right now, but he says yes. Even though the Dunkin Dark Roast is still circulating through his veins, he needs a reason to stay awake this afternoon, especially if he gets two hours of mostly twos and threes as he did yesterday.

He decided to work from the school to do the Advanced Placement reading. He had done the last third of the school year doing Zoom classes from home with students who missed the school as much he did. The only advantage to being at home is that there are no study halls to monitor and no commute. He has been going bug-eyed putting electronic sticky notes onto Turnitin assignments. At least now all he has to do is press a couple of buttons after reading the essay—anything to pass the time and forget how lonely we all feel.

A. P. had never been great staying at home. Other than mowing the lawn, ogling his beautiful wife, and playing video games, there is not much to do when everyone is sheltered in place. As the weeks have gone by, he has learned to weigh himself daily to avoid gaining weight. Taking the laptop to the school is better for this job. Even so, he can see the icon for Minecraft on the laptop’s taskbar. He is conscious of its presence, almost like squishy tentacles with round suckers to pull him in and drown him.

But he knows that if he slacks off during the reading he will be demoted and get his blue stars taken away. The maintenance supervisor picks up his empty coffee cups, and A. P. can tell he is wondering why he came to school.

“Are you doing some kind of summer school?” he finally asks. A. P. is reading about Miss Lee’s complex conflicts and isn’t really paying attention to what was just said. When he doesn’t respond, the building chief nods his head toward the computer screen.

“No, I’m reading English Lit Advanced Placement essays.”

Since he’s started, he’s read lots of stories about the challenges of moving to a new city and read lots of essays that state the obvious: Lee is lonely, the waiter has a narrow mustache, Paris and New York are on different continents. He had one today that was blank. Another one ten minutes later he had to put on Temporary Hold. He couldn’t read it and wanted to see if his Table Leader could decipher it.

Ah, but then he had one that made him remember why he had signed up for the job in the first place: Five detailed paragraphs, explaining symbols, finding complimentary images, referring to two other relevant works of literature, making a solid thesis, and a conclusion discussing its significance for young Lee. It filled A. P. with pleasure that he would remember weeks later. A. P. silently confessed that even though he had been teaching literature for twenty years, he could not have written such a good essay in less than an hour himself.

He turned to his right where he subconsciously expected to see a table mate and say, “You’ve got to see this one!” Only there is no one there. There is not even a way to flag it to show to the Table Leader. At least the lockdown at the reading a couple of years ago was with other English teachers.

The maintenance supervisor has headed out the door with A. P.’s Starbucks order as the ONE program dinged to tell him someone has posted a chat. A. P. turned to his computer screen to read an essay exclaiming how challenging it is for someone to do things in a different way. Miss Lee, we have all run into that this year.

June 2020

For another work inspired by an A.P. Exam question, click here.