10) Concert Band

This class is mentally exhausting, and requires the ability to tolerate the loud, uncoordinated screeching of many wind instruments, while many in the saxophone section compete to see who can say a crude word the loudest before the teacher notices. This class is known to cause the development of superiority/inferiority complexes, specifically with the ultimate judgement of musicianship known as “chairs”. Finally, it tests the morality and decision-making skills of the poor freshmen; specifically, what color pen to use to forge their parent’s signature on the practice card. Keep at it, young freshies. It gets better. (And we recommend blue.)

9) AP Biology

8) AP Chinese

7) Chinese III

Chinese III is harder than AP Chinese. We do not know if you have ever been in a particularly competitive game of Flyswatter, but the games in Chinese III have been rumored to draw blood. Also, the listening exercises are nearly impossible to non-native speakers (who become too mentally and emotionally exhausted to consider AP Chinese). Take this class later, unless you want your new best friend to be Google Translator.

6) Power Walking

You heard us. Just the name sounds like work. Join power walking, and you actually have to walk. Which defeats the purpose of physical education, right?

5) AP Chemistry

Guaranteed to turn you from a happy high-schooler to a sleepless 16-8-6-53-8-98-90, or your AP test money back. Just kidding- the College Board doesn’t give refunds.

4) AP Calculus BC

This class is like the spirit of Willie the Wildcat. We’re not entirely sure it exists, but we’re terrified of it. And a teensy bit proud.

3) AP Physics

2) Teacher’s Assistant

This is not a misprint. The Tribune meant to choose the classes that were the most strenuous mentally, not difficult academically. And being a teacher’s assistant is tough. You never know when you’re going to have to grade quizzes or fill out spreadsheets, so it’s no guaranteed study hall. Additionally, most teachers don’t post any grade for Teacher’s Assistant until the last hail-mary day before the end of the semester, so you’re left with the anxiety-inducing ‘No Grades Published’ on SchoolLoop. Maybe they didn’t like that half-joke about their shirt the other day. Maybe they didn’t like that time you came in twenty minutes late with a bad excuse in one hand and a Green Tea Latte in the other. Maybe even enough to give you a B. Then you’ll be known as the kid who got a B as a TA- believe us, the incessant day-mares are enough to cause kidney stones. Please, do yourself a favor- take a less stressful class (like AP Physics), and thank us later. Our Hey You box is always open.

1) Honors Precalculus

We’d love to say a certain teacher is responsible for the stress, but said teacher is not. Honors Precalculus is stressful because it is the first reality check many of Dougherty’s brilliant students face. Many people understood Algebra II. Multiplication makes sense. FOIL makes sense. Negative exponents don’t really make sense, but you can wrap your head around it. HP is a whole other ball game. There’s a circle. And there’s points on this circle, and if you take the sin of these points you get a squiggle. But if you take the inverse, you have lots of squiggles. And when you increase the coefficient on X, you decrease X. And sometimes you flip things around, and they flip back, and then you’re back to the beginning and you have no idea what direction you’re in. And then you’re in bearings, and there are two trains, one coming from Studying and the other from Sleep, and you have to calculate which one will hit you first. Here’s a hint: divide by zero, and call it a day. Because the universe will rip apart either way.