I took an AP test 4 weeks into 9th grade. @Alphaschool gave us no materials. Only what we could find. Lets see if I can actually learn to learn.

Today's is the day where we test our AP Human Geo knowledge. Students get five days to teach themselves the material. I studied like my life depended on it, so let's see if I ended up actually retaining information. Today we see if teaching yourself is the way to go.

I just read Kevin Kelly's "1,000 True Fans" essay. The core idea: you don't need millions of followers to build something real, you need a small group who actually care. My challenge: get 100 followers on X by October 9th. This is my audience-building check @Alphaschool.

Every student built their own AI with one job: reject any goal that's too vague or too easy. My second ambitious goal is due tomorrow. It only counts if someone outside the student confirms it actually happened. No self-reporting.

On an AP, FRQs (Free Response Questions) test if you truly grasp the content and can explain it. You can't just guess. After spending just four days studying AP Human Geography @Alphaschool, we found out that we'll ONLY be answering FRQs.

Day 2 of teaching myself AP Human Geo. No teacher, textbook, or provide material. Just what I can find. The passing metric is getting a 5 on the test in 5 days. I don't know what I would do without @HeimlersHistory

Two places can be 10 miles apart and still feel worlds away. I have 4 days to self-teach an entire AP Human Geography unit and score a 5 on the exam. Absolute distance is the number. Relative distance is the feeling, political, social, cultural. Sometimes the second one matters more than the first.

My school encourages me to be on social media. I was tasked with gaining 100 followers in 8 weeks. We learned: - Post everyday - How to be engaging - How to format posts Do you think I used the structure well?

My own parents have told me plenty over the years: be more open-minded, put in more effort, finish the job. Today, high schoolers hear that same kind of feedback live, wearing a heart-rate monitor. To pass, their heart rate has to settle back within 10% of resting. Emotional regulation is a crucial life skill that most people don't know how to apply.

As a freshman, I had to do something most adults can't do. I had to receive feedback. From my parents. In front of my peers. And my heart rate couldn't rise more than 10% Feedback used to scare me. Now it is fuel.

I wore a heart rate monitor while my parents told me, on camera, what they actually think I need to work on. My baseline was 88. It jumped to 143 the second the feedback started, and stayed around 127 the whole time. Passing meant staying within 10% of my resting rate. I wasn't close, but now I know what to work on.

Today, @Alphaschool, we got to hear what our parents really thought about us. Instead of sitting and taking a Geometry test, I had to watch a video of my dad giving me critical feedback. Not only that, it was in front of my peers. Throughout the video, they measured my heart rate. To pass this test, it could not go over 10% above my baseline.

I have 5 days to teach myself an entire unit of AP World History. No textbook. No teacher. No resources handed to me. I have to find everything myself. This is "learning to learn," the core life skill at @Alphaschool. The test I have to pass to get the check: score a 5 on a set of Unit 1 FRQs. @HeimlersHistory save me!