Every OHS student has heard rumors and differing opinions about which class is most challenging. Some say it is AP Chemistry, others argue AP Calculus, and a few insist that nothing compares to AP Chinese. But which class truly deserves the title of Hardest Class at Orono High School? After conducting several interviews with students and teachers, two clear contenders emerged: AP Chinese and AP Physics.

Many teachers believe a class’s difficulty depends on the students themselves.

“Not doing the homework is like not going to your soccer practice. How can you be expected to succeed if you don’t do the bare minimum?” Honors Functions and Trig teacher Jesse Allex said.

Many classes are difficult, not necessarily because of the material but because students struggle with study habits and time management. Some courses, such as Honors Spanish IV, have reputations for being extremely challenging, but the hardest part is often the effort required to do things like homework.

Taking a deeper look into coursework, AP Chinese is a particularly challenging class. Language learning requires intense memorization, and Chinese adds an even greater difficulty with its character-based system.

“Chinese is a character-based language, making it harder to read and write compared to alphabetic languages” AP Chinese teacher Shiow-Jen Sun said.

Unlike most languages, mastering Chinese involves learning thousands of characters and tones, which makes it especially difficult.

Meanwhile, AP Physics is known for its quick pace and strong workload. Compared to the experience of taking two AP math classes in one year.

“It’s like taking AB and BC Calculus in a year’s worth of time,” AP Physics student JT Burns said.

In most AP classes, you take a semester’s worth of college courses to learn information over a year, but for physics, it’s the equivalent of two college semesters’ worth of work.

So, which class is genuinely the hardest at OHS? It depends. While AP Chinese challenges students with its unique linguistic structure, AP Physics appears to take the top spot as the hardest class due to its tough pace and complex curriculum.

Even though AP Physics is considered one of the hardest classes at Orono, most of its difficulty lies within the students who take it. Not everyone is fit to take a class like AP physics.

“The difficulty is all about how you see the class and how you’re willing to put in effort,” AP physics teacher Gregory Pusch said.

If you don’t care about trying, then any class you take is going to be the hardest class at OHS. Not all classes are meant for everyone, so choose what you feel is best in your heart, not others’.