This past school year was my first year as a high school student. The great thing about BU, Boulder Universal, is that it starts at kindergarten and goes up until the senior year of high school. Now, we have been using BU for four years! I still believe that BU is the best choice for our education. I have gained enough experience to confidently call myself a "master" of this form of schooling. Here are a few reflections on comparing the years of middle school and first year of highschool;

• The format hasn’t changed at all; there still is a weekly list of assignments that must be completed by Monday of the next week. This didn’t change with moving into high school. What is really great about BU is how flexible it is as there aren’t many mandatory same-time things, meaning with time zones it is possible to complete the work at your pace; if you want to hold it off to the last minute, you can do that, but then you are faced with a lot of work on the weekends.

• However, there are some differences between high school BU and the other grades. Namely, there are many more options, as is expected when going into high school. BU has a list of required classes that you must complete in order to graduate, like so many years of math, ELA, Science, etc. There are a certain number of credits that must be acquired, just like any other high school. Every year in high school we get to fill out a form with the classes we will be taking. It is fairly straightforward, with some classes being mandatory, but you always have some leeway. For example, this past year I had to choose a class or classes for history (or “social studies”). In total, I had to do 10 credits (or two semesters). The options were US History and Human Geography (one semester each), as well as AP* US History and AP Human Geography (each one two semesters). This is excellent because it means that I can already start doing AP classes and get college credits. For this choice, I chose AP Human Geography, which was an experience unto itself.

*AP classes stand for Advanced Placement classes and are college-level courses that are operated by the College Board. These higher-level courses are offered at high schools to provide students with an opportunity to earn college credits.

• If you ever took an AP class, you probably remember that the entire class is preparing you for the AP test at the end of the course. BU doesn’t offer AP classes through their school, so they have a partnership with Florida Virtual School (FLVS). FLVS is a well known adn credited online school that is widely used, including BU’s elementary is through FLVS. There were a few things different, enough that I can say that I prefer normal BU.

  • For one, it had you go to the Florida Virtual website which had the feeling of being much older and not as updated. Also, the course itself was first made in the early 2000s, and it seemed that they updated parts of it (although not all) every ten years or so. For their AP classes, it was truly at your own pace. Instead of weekly deadlines, there were semester deadlines. (For BU’s FLVS elementary course, the deadlines are weekly, just like the rest of my classes) There is a dump of all the assignments of the semester, and you have to complete them before the end of the semester. Although I completed it without issues, I could see this as a big problem for procrastinators who leave all their assignments for the last minute. I do have to say that my AP teacher was fabulous. Twice a month we had to have a video meeting with our teacher as part of the assignments, and every time she was great. She helped me prepare for the test and had some very helpful study guides.

  • At the end of the school year, we had our AP test. This test had to be taken in person, so we had to go to Colorado to complete it. The test was pretty grueling. There were two parts to it, the multiple choice and the free response part. The multiple choice part had 60 questions, to be completed in 60 minutes. The free-response was three parts with 7 questions each, and we had 75 minutes. In all, with a break and everything, the test was 2 hours and 30 minutes. The grading of the test is out of 5, and scoring a 3 or above pretty much-guaranteed college credit. The multiple-choice part was much harder for me, and the written part was pretty easy. I just barely finished the multiple choice in the time frame and the written one I had time to finish it all and review it. Out of 5, I scored a 4. I got a 4 on the multiple choice part and a 5 on the written one. The final result is rounded down so I got a 4. That meant I was “well-qualified” for college credit. I think all in all, it was a great experience.

• Another course I took that I enjoyed was the Spanish course. I felt it was one of the most interactive classes and pretty fun. In high school, we are required to take a certain number of language classes. Spanish is such an important and worldly language, furthermore, the USA borders México, resulting in a large number of people that speak Spanish in the USA; it is easily the most important language to learn. Others like French or German aren’t really as important nowadays compared to Spanish. That is why I took the course even before we came to Latin America and are aiming to become fluent in Spanish.

  • The BU Spanish course that I took focused more on grammar. It built the foundation for Spanish grammar and allowed me to move on to the actual language part. Before doing the class I already had a good understanding of Spanish (due to having been fluent in Portuguese when I was a toddler), so I immediately went into Spanish 2. I then did Spanish 3 last year.

  • It went beyond the simple present tense conjugations and explored everything from the conditional to the past tenses and more. To learn a language, you need to learn it in several ways. Simply one source of Spanish learning isn’t enough. If I solely used this class to learn Spanish, I would end up with “high school Spanish,” which means that I would have a pretty broken Spanish and not anywhere near fluent; I would have sounded like a gringo. On the reverse side, I don’t think I would have learned the grammar as well if I hadn’t taken the course. 

• One downside of BU high school is that there is a minimum number of courses, but you can choose as many as you want after that. The minimum number is 5 courses, but you can end up with 8 classes (this happened to me the first semester)! I noticed that high school had a lot more schoolwork than before. In middle school, I had maybe 10 assignments in total for the busiest weeks, but in high school, I had at least 20 regularly. That was definitely a big step up. I also know now to have fewer courses and spread them out more. 

• Also, another new thing was proctored exams. At the end and beginning of the year, I had to do a couple of proctored math and Spanish classes. Because we are traveling, and our family’s track record with BU, they allowed me to do those online (via zoom with my teacher proctoring it), but that wasn’t something that we had to do the years before. It did mean that I studied harder as I was more nervous, but in the end, I completed them without issue. Because we were back in the USA because of my AP test, I had the opportunity to do the proctored tests in person at the end of the year. My math exam was especially difficult. Without any breaks, I spent 3 hours on 30 questions from the entire semester. I ended up getting a 96% on the test, which I am pretty happy about.

Overall, the transition from middle school to high school hasn’t been that bad, and it opens up possibilities. I made sure to take as many weighted courses as possible, rounding my overall GPA to 4.4! I also made sure to continue working hard and getting straight A’s in all my courses!