Reflection

Before AP Lang, I didn't consider myself much of a writer, and I didn't know if I could handle this so called "AP Writing Class". But, bravely jumping in anyway despite my worries, I discovered the wonderful world of rhetoric and the most amazing teacher of all time, Mrs. Zavitz. By now, I realize that there was nothing to be worried about, and that, as I'm clearly typing this right now, I obviously survived what I thought would be my downfall.
At the start of this year, I was an extremely unconfident writer. I was so unconfident in my writing ability that I constantly made fun of myself and my "crappy" writing. It turns out that this hurt, yet also somehow helped me at the same time. As I learned this year, confidence is a huge factor in writing, and simply having confidence in your own abilities can instantly boost your success in the area. As I now know, this unconfident nature of mine was part of what was holding me back. But there was a bright side to this characteristic. At the beginning of the year, we were told that we would have to completely forget everything we had ever been taught about writing in our lives and start over. For me, this was a plus. Even though I felt like my writing ability was behind everyone else's, the fact that we were all starting over as writers together put me back on an even playing field. With the realization that confidence was a huge factor in stellar writing, as well as learning all about the wonderful world of rhetoric, I feel like my writing has drastically improved this year. I started off the year totally unconfident in my writing ability, and now I feel as if a whole new world of opportunity has opened itself up for me. The fact that I can write now has made me a happier person, as it is imperative to be a good writer for the careers that I'm interested in. In just nine months, AP Lang has transformed me from a sluggish caterpillar into a soaring butterfly.
As much as I hate to say it, the most important tool to my improvement this year was the timed writings. The fact that we could write two of them but pick only one to be graded was a huge confidence booster. With only writing one to be graded, there would be so much more pressure to write the best essay possible, and we all know what horrors pressure can work on us. But that second chance was huge, because it took a vast amount of pressure off of our shoulders. It allowed us a bad essay here and there (because of a day with a cold or some other annoying outside circumstance) without totally destroying our hard-earned grades. Plus, writing several a month exposed us to all sorts of writing we would need to do in the future. So as much as I hate to say it, the timed writings were the key to success. However, if I could change one thing, I would make vocabulary a more central theme to the class, as I'm a firm believer that a diverse vocabulary is one of the most important things to have when writing. AP Lang has been huge in my development as a writer, and I'm ready to take on the world with my newfound skill.

Favorite Literary Movement

My favorite literary movement? Hmmmmmmm, this is a tough choice... I'd say my favorite would have to be realism. It tells it how it is, no beating around the bush or anything. By examining the realities of life and shining a light on human frailty, it shows us what's really happening in the world, outside of our little bubble. The realism novel that I read this year was Huck Finn, and I loved it. It was one of my favorite school books that I've ever read, and I'm just now realizing that this is because it was a realism novel rather than that other romanticism or naturalism stuff that we usually read in school. Twain cut to the chase about what was wrong with society, and continually pointed this out throughout the whole novel. The added regional culture of my beloved rural south added to the novel's awesomeness; as a matter of fact, any kind of regional culture that is added to a novel makes realism pretty neat. Out of all the literary movements we've covered this year, realism was by far the best one.

The American Dream - Dead or Alive?

Let's start out with what the American Dream really is. It isn't a set of values like many people think. It is simply the desire and ability to move up in the world. That said, it is impossible to achieve the Dream, because one is never done moving up in the world. In the past the American Dream has been very much alive, minus times of deep depression such as in the 1930s. It is dead and alive with the economic cycle: when the economy is doing well, the Dream is very much alive, but when the economy is tanking, the Dream is temporarily dead. Right now, we are in a recession, which means that ordinarily the Dream would be dead or barely alive, with only a few people in the nation who can  really improve their lives. But now that CEOs have become total jackwangs in the last few decades, they have made it nearly impossible for normal people to improve their lives, because the CEOs have made sure that they get a huge percent of the nation's income, leaving less for the rest of us. This has further downed the American Dream, as there are fewer and fewer people who are able to improve their lives. A similar situation occurred in the Great Gatsby, but not quite with money. The highest social class looked down on and rejected everyone else who wanted to be like them, even people like Gatsby who were super rich and fancy, simply because they were not born rich. They, like CEOs today, got to make the rules, and suffocated the Dream until it could revive in the 1950s. So with the recession and the oppressive CEOs of today's world, it is clear that the American Dream is dead - for now.

Research Paper Reflection

Ok, so let me start off by saying that I hate research papers. I'm probably not that different than everybody else. But this project wasn't awful I guess. I got to read a good book (Slaughterhouse-Five) and that made the paper itself more bearable. Many people complained about the short amount of time we had to work on it, but that quickness was a double-edged sword. Yes, it meant we had less time to get everything done; but it did teach me to manage my time well and get some of it done every day so that I wouldn't have to pull an all-nighter the night before. I liked that we got to choose what our topic was; it also made the paper more bearable to write. The livebinders experiment was a disaster; I'll just leave it at that. So yeah, the paper wasn't that bad; I don't know what everyone was complaining about...

Valentine's Day

Ugh. It's Valentine's Day. The worst holiday ever created by Hallmark as a way to make more money. It seems like it serves two purposes: to show off to others if you have a significant other, and to make single people feel like crap. I, for 16 years, have been on the single side of V-Day, and therefore I hate it with a burning passion. I'm sure if I wasn't single I would probably enjoy it. But that's not the case. So I hate it. There's not much else to say. Well, I guess the candy that I get every year from my parents who feel sorry for me makes up for it. Yep, that's the only thing I look forward to in February. The free candy. Well, I guess it's time to go watch TV and eat some of that free candy. Maybe next year...

Dave Barry's Spectacular Satire

Dave Barry: Your Child Deserves A Halloween Costume By Calvin Klein: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/10/30/2469698/your-child-deserves-a-halloween.html

Dave Barry is definitely one of my favorite authors. Not only is he hilarious, but he also uses his humor to get his point across. In this article from 2000, he satirizes the Halloween experience, especially the process of selecting a costume. In the beginning, he sarcastically compares picking an awesome costume for your kid with how good of a parent you are. He then uses extreme exaggeration to show how other parents make their kids' costumes, and uses parody, showing the script for a morning news show with a crazy parent talking about their kid's costume. Next, he describes how boring Halloween costumes were when he was a kid, and contrasts that with how crazy they are now. He follows that up by sarcastically listing all of the weird choices for costumes that kids have if they buy one from a store. Lastly, he lists some exaggerated safety tips for the actual trick-or-treating, like carrying a fire extinguisher, not letting your kids go out at night, and checking to see if their candy is safe to eat by eating it. Barry is very sarcastic throughout the article, and he easily gets his point across that Halloween is a crazy holiday.

Super Bowl - Splendid or Substandard?

Well, its that time again. Time for the Super Bowl: the biggest sporting event in the world (or as the rest of Earth calls it, the United States of America). It's not known merely for the game, but also for the wild halftime shows and the knee-slapping ads. Let's start with the game this year. The Patriots and the Giants. Both are basically teams who you either absolutely adore, or who you want to see stabbed to death by a crazy mob of rabid humans. In my case, the latter would be reserved for the Giants. I HATE HATE HATE the Giants with all of my heart, because they are the rivals of my hometown heroes, the great Dallas Cowboys, not only America's but also God's team (sorry, I have to put that in whenever I talk about them). I wouldn't mind if the Giants won, though, seeing as it would make Jeffrey really mad :P And now we get to the halftime show. This year, it's Madonna who's up on the stage to entertain every living being on the continent. It slightly annoys me how the halftime show is always old-timers; but I realize that the largest demographic of Super Bowl watchers is old men, so Madonna isn't really a surprise pick I guess. And now, the ads. There's not really anything else to say besides, "Wow". Year after year, companies continue to amaze us all with the funniest commercials we have ever seen. I don't predict a change this year. What I do predict is a Giants 13-point victory. Whether you're watching the game because you actually care, you want to see Madonna dancing, or you want to laugh your butt off, have fun, and save me some chips.

PS Don't forget to watch the pregame, or you'll miss Kelly Clarkson keeping the tradition of messing up the national anthem alive!

Huck Finn

Well, I finished reading Huck Finn. I don't really have anything else to say besides, "It was ok." Before I read it, I thought I would probably hate it. I hate most classics, so it was a safe bet. But it was ok. Not the best book I've ever read, but not horrible like I figured it would be. Unlike many previous students who have read it over the years, I never fell asleep from boredom while reading it, so I guess that means it was pretty good. Huck's language was interesting to read an entire novel with, and it even had me talking like him for a day after reading it. The fact that Jim's speech was so weird made me really pay attention and stay concentrated on the novel, which is more than I can say for other books that I've read. It was full of action, which is good I guess. I even found myself being able to interpret some of the symbolism and satire, which I've never really been able to do with a book before. So I guess what I'm really trying to say here - and this is going completely against my better judgment - is that I actually liked it. I actually like a literary classic! I've never liked a literary classic before! This is crazy... Phew! That was easier to say than I thought it was going to be... Anyway, I'm not really sure why I liked it, its just one of those things where you come away from it with a good feeling. I guess its time to go read Tom Sawyer, and see if I can bring my list of literary classics that I actually like up to two...

Why Not Eat Insects?

So I was watching this talk, and I noticed that even though the idea seems pretty gross, this guy swayed me. First of all, his accent made you listen closely to everything he said so that you wouldn't miss anything. He used the whole green/red color thing, showing how much money insects currently save the economy in green, and showing the almost equal cost of the Iraq War in red. He used pathos by showing how eating insects could save the environment; in all of his pictures that contained people eating insects, they were smiling, looking like they were loving it. He employed logos much more frequently, though. He showed us how many types of insects could be eaten, and how much more nutritious than our meat they are. He got really effective when he showed how insects would be better than cow or pig meat, though. First of all, he said, for every 10 kg of feed, insects would yield 9 kg of meat compared to cows' 1 kg. Not only did he state this fact, he made the picture of the insects big and the picture of the cow small, to get us to side with him. He went on to state that insects would make less manure, which in turn would mean fewer greenhouse gases. With this statement, he's getting us interested in the environment as well! Dicke's most effective tool, however, is his humor. He entertainingly points out that we're already eating loads of insects and getting a lot of protein from them. Simple things like making a cartoon smell cloud come out of a manure picture and a video of someone making funny bug treats tickle the audience's funny bone. When he employs his point system for the insects, giving them a point for each issue they are better than red meat in, the audience howls with laughter. Even though his argument was kinda gross, it was extremely effective. Though insects might taste disgusting to our mouths, they sure would taste delicious to our bodies!