[atomicnumber3]

This is essentially how "honors" classes worked at my large public high school. If I weren't in the Anime- sorry, I mean, Japanese Culture- Club, I would literally have only seen the same 50ish kids all day out of a class of ~1000.

In freshman and sophomore year I decided that English classes bored me to tears, so I took non-honors English both years. There was zero overlap between that class and the kids I saw the rest of my day in honors classes. Then in junior year when I decided to do IB and was forced to take IB/AP English, suddenly boom yep exact same set of kids.

I'll admit, I enjoyed the experience. Admittedly partly because even half-assed work got me easy A's and glowing appreciation from my teachers (for actually putting in some effort and not being disruptive etc), but also getting to meet lots of different people was fun.

Also good god did I hate English class. So many insufferable books of what I still consider to be terribly little literary merit. I wish we'd been allowed to just read classical literature all year. For one of the book slots we were allowed to choose our own book, and I chose Plato's Republic, which I enjoyed thoroughly. It was the only book from prior to the 20th century that I got to read for class that year as well. At least it got better in senior year when we got to do Shakespeare again.