Student Life
How an Unclosed AP World History Live Chat Formed Study Bubbly
By Ashley Manalo | Published Dec 8, 2020 9:52 p.m. PST
The Beginning
It was March 2020, the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Schools all around the nation started to shut down in-person classes, leaving students in their own anxieties about their studies. This especially applied to students using the College Board’s services, as it was soon to approach testing season with AP and SAT exams. SAT exams were cancelled; however, AP exams were planned to continue. To allow this to happen, the College Board released many live lessons on their youtube channel. Thousands of students were on these lessons every single day.
An Accident
On one fateful day, the College Board left the AP World History live chat open. This caused many students to start chatting, and quickly a discord server was made by Mark Khalfin and Alan Wang; it was a chance for isolated students to begin studying together. Over the few months leading up to the May exam, students helped each other by answering questions, sharing resources, and getting peer feedback on DBQs. This learning environment was beneficial to all students; some reviewed better by getting criticism, while others polished DBQ writing skills by grading and looking at other examples.
Study Session
The main student DBQ editors consisted of the following: Ashley Manalo, Alan Wang, Silvia Martinez, Kaitlyn Goretski, and Vincent Yang. Many of those students were up late at night scoring practice DBQs, sometimes as late as 1 am, to accommodate students in different time zones, such as friends from Vietnam and Britain. Other forms of review offered were personalized discord livestreams, where the editors would show a few SAQs and go over DBQ skills with students over certain units. It was a lot of work, but it proved to be rewarding. From all those months spent studying, students felt prepared on the day of the AP exam. Once that gruesome 50 minutes testing period was over, students joined back in the chat to celebrate. That left the question: What’s next?
Moving Forward
Student DBQ editor Vincent Yang presented an idea to the other editors: a new organization. He saw the potential of the editors, as many were passionate in helping others, and he took that enthusiasm and gave a new opportunity to the editors to continue this mission of helping students. This organization would allow for students to teach students; it would be a peer tutor type environment. Free resources such as notes, podcasts, and videos would be provided, as well as live tutor help with answering questions. It was new, and quite frankly risky, but after months of becoming close friends, the editors jumped into this new adventure.
The Organization
As the students started to form this new organization, there were many challenges, one of them being name changes. From names such as AP Hub to College Prep Student Bubble, the final name given to this organization was Study Bubbly. With this organization, a board was established. This included the following members: Vincent Yang, Kaitlyn Goretski, Silvia Martinez, Josh Ding, Mark Khalfin, Alan Wang, and Ashley Manalo. From there these students worked in various fields to grow this organization. The main field worked on was their own studies; many of the board members used Khan Academy to self study some of their AP classes over the course of summer, creating podcasts and notes to jumpstart the organization’s resources. Other jobs included recruiting staff members, doing social promotions, and working online to develop a website. Positions available in the organization include tutors, audio/video editors, social promoters, and creative content creators. With the ever-growing team, the organization was able to become a useful tool for all students.
Study Bubbly
Study Bubbly is a student-based organization targeted towards high schoolers taking AP classes. The resources available on their site is to help enhance student learning, as well as motivate their peers to study and strengthen their understanding of the subject they are studying. By coming onto the site, students will be able to access many free resources and access other platforms like Discord to gain more personalized help. Study Bubbly will continue their mission to keep providing free help and cater to students to the best of their abilities. As Study Bubbly will encourage their members, "Study Smart. Tutor Together. Excel Exams."
Where to Reach Study Bubbly
Website: https://studybubbly.wixsite.com/bubbly
Email: cpstudentbubble@gmail.com
Linktree: linktr.ee/studybubbly