Unfortunately, I've forgotten some of the context...

I, along with my friend Deena, took AP US History as a high school senior. It wasn't that I wanted to take a class traditionally populated by juniors as a senior. Rather, it was a result of scheduling difficulties the year before: somehow the school had forgotten that some of their intelligent flock were planning to take AP Calculus and AP US History concurrently, and they had scheduled the single section of each class during the same period. So, I took AP Government as a junior with a bunch of seniors, then took AP US History as a senior with a bunch of juniors (and my sophomore sister, who was jumping the gun). I have vague memories of the class: a few naps, a lot of definitions, and many many random inside jokes (okay, I also probably learned some history, I'll give Mr. Lancaster credit for that). At the end of the year, we were required to complete an extensive review outline (the document saved on my computer is 102 pages long). Surely exhausted and more than ready to be done with high school, in the midst of AP exam reviews, I referenced some of our funnier class moments in the title of my final project, copied below.

.

RUM PITS, BEN & JERRY’S, and

THE ANNEXATION OF CANADA:

APUSH REVIEW PROJECT

.

A bit of context (as best I remember it):

Rum pits refer to an ingenious idea we thought the colonists should have tried during the Revolutionary War: luring and capturing the British soldiers in grass-covered pits full of rum. Don't ask me why...

Ben and Jerry's... I don't recall.

At some point, most likely in the latter days of autumn or the early days of spring, we proposed that Canada be annexed to our own dear state: Virginia, preferably Rockingham County. We supposed this would give us more snow days, as school gets cancelled for the entire county when any section is deemed impassable.