Final Reflection

In my year of AP Lang I have seen my writing grow and progress in many ways, from style to vocabulary.  A major indicator of said growth is that I have more of a personal style and voice to my writing. No longer do I feel as if my writing is generic and commonplace, indistinguishable from the writing of my peers. The blog assignment was most helpful in my development of my writing style. Unlike the journal project, where one could rant, curse and write almost incoherently for lines on end, the blog project set some rules creating substance to the entries. While I still possessed the freedom to write what I wished, I had to keep the foul language at bay and be aware of my audience- the World Wide Web. These constraints helped me to better articulate and form my blog posts, giving them more substance than a private journal entry.  Because of this I believe my personal voice and style of writing flourished in my blog posts.

Nonetheless, I need to improve on forming and articulating an effective argument. Creating and integrating support for my arguments remains a difficult task under a time constraint. In addition, more grammar can be implemented into class. While I may be an effective writer as a whole, I have trouble with grammar as it relates to my writings. For example, in-depth lessons on compound-complex sentences or subordinate clauses are unnecessary. However, comma splices (which I probably still have within this reflection) and how to use various punctuation are topics that can be implemented next year to improve the class.

Overall, the most meaningful and memorable activities, I felt, were the projects that left a physical, tangible mark on the world. The class project, where a whole group of independent, haughty teens could come together to create a children’s picture book in a matter of days is simply astonishing.  I can pop in the DVD into my computer to see my Scarlet Letter adaptation whenever I please.  On the internet now and forever is a website satirizing teen pregnancy.  These assignments are the ones I will remember about the class in five years’ time. 

UGA v. UNC Chapel Hill

I may be good student, but I’m not Harvard bound. As of now, my favorite past-time is to look at colleges. Due to a variety of factors-homesickness, cost, and prestige, I have come up with my top two colleges of choice- UGA and UNC Chapel Hill. I don’t want to be an engineer so Georgia Tech is out of the question. When I think of Emory all I see is a bunch of future doctors holed up in their dorm rooms studying- not my type of people. I’m applying to both UGA and UNC and if I happen to get accepted into both, well I’ll have a dilemma on my hands. Here are the pros and cons of both.

UGA Pros

• Close to home. (Meaning when I start crying for my mom, home is only an hour away.)
• I will most-likely be accepted
• UGA football. ‘Nuff said.
• Athens’ music scene
• All freshman dorms, make friends easily
• Hope Scholarship
• Better school education-wise than say Georgia Southern or Florida.
• I already love UGA

UGA Cons

• Huge Greek Life
• Less prestigious than UNC, GA Tech, or Emory, i.e. I can do better
• Less diversity
• No dental school

UNC Pros

• Better school than UGA
• Has one of the best dental schools in the country
• UNC basketball
• Less Greek Life

UNC Cons

• Cost
• UNC only accepts 18% out of state students
• Far from home
• My sister lives in North Carolina
• Boring city
• Not totally in love with UNC

See my dilemma? I visiting both schools this summer on a college tour of the southeast with my mom, but only time (and an acceptance letter) will tell which school I’ll decide to attend.

Almost Fatal Distraction

A few weeks ago, I was introduced to the works of Gene Weingarten, and later to his article Fatal Distraction upon recommendation by Mrs. Smith. I am not a parent, nor plan on being one any time soon, but I understood. After reading, I asked my mother if she had ever forgotten me in the car, and she quickly responded no, almost insulted. My mother is an organized, head-strong woman. My aunt-not so much. While by no means is she an unfit mother, she has managed to raise four girls ranging from age nineteen to age four, but with four excitable girls, she is bound to forget something someday. A one day it was her youngest, Aliyah. Don’t worry Aliyah is still alive, a bubbly and joyous four year old. but around three years ago my aunt almost suffered from a fatal mistake any parent could make. This story is passed around every year when they come to visit, laughed off as an Oh-My-What-A-Day! type of story, but upon thought, the scope of this problem affects parents everywhere.

Three years ago my aunt was driving home from the grocery store with three of my cousins. The windows of her mini-van were open, brining a much needed ocean breeze. My cousins live in St. Croix, a tiny Caribbean island owned by the United States where it is always a warm 80 degrees year-round. My second oldest cousin was twelve at the time. In the car seat was the youngest, Aliyah. She was maybe a year old. Next to her was her caring older sister and closest friend, my second youngest cousin around age four. They arrived home and began the dreaded chore of taking the groceries up the stairs and into their second story apartment. Aliyah, a quiet baby, waited patiently in her car seat. One-by-one they huffed and puffed as they brought the groceries up their stairs and into their home. Once they finished, they began to put their groceries in their respective places.

The whole task took around 10 minutes from start to end, and once finished they plopped down on their couches with a sigh. Five minutes passed and my aunt asked my twelve-year old cousin where was Aliyah, thinking she had taken her out of the car seat and into the house. My cousin responds with a shrug, yet at the same moment understood the look of terror on her mother’s face. Both she and my aunt rushed downstairs and threw open the door to the mini-van. There Aliyah lay, pink-faced and screaming. Fifteen minutes later she was playing, laughing as if it never happened. My aunt was mortified and crying. My twelve year old cousin parented Aliyah for the next couple of hours, and assured her mother they all forgot about the baby and she thought no less of her. In mere seconds, my aunt’s world turned upside down. While this story is passed around at the dinner table, never will my aunt forget the possible outcome of her almost fatal distraction.

Work- Part 2

If the Seller is my least favorite type of customer, the children are number two on my list of least favorite customers. Let me preface this by saying I love babies but hate children when they hit age five and up. They’re no longer chubby and cute, they’re little assholes. They are the sole reason as to why the children’s section looks like a tornado blew through it, and even if we fix it back up, it turns back to a disaster the next day. I feel like a Mom cleaning up after them. They yell and scream, and throw books on the ground, while their exhausted parents just softly say, “Stop that.” They don’t. I hate kids.

I love my Regulars though. There’s this one guy, a little chubby, who comes almost every Sunday around five o‘clock. He picks up a sci-fi books and reads on the couch, never buys a book, just reads. I pretty sure he’s a little off in the head considering he doesn’t drive, and the fact that before he leaves he goes to the bathroom and screams. He yells, as if maybe he’s singing, or having a conversation with some non-existent person. You might think he’s dangerous, but I don’t. He seems harmless for the most part. There’s another women, old, black, and soulful, a grandma-looking type. She’s so sweet, she knows me by name, and asks for these obscure books we rarely ever have. And there’s this little boy who comes in maybe twice a month, for the past maybe four months, asking for The Invention of Hugo Cabret. We never had it before, but now it just came in. I can’t wait to see him again and tell him that we finally have it.

The day goes by and I’ve listened to Don’t Stop Believing and some Blondie song maybe three times each. I know them by heart. I answer phones automatically with the same greeting, and they ask me the same questions on the other end of the line- a book, directions, how selling books to us work. I answer with fake enthusiasm and with the same script I have created for each question they could ask me. Callers are all the same. The day’s almost ending, I count the drawers, take out a deposit, write my hours down. Turn off the lights, the open sign, and the radio. I lock the door, and check it once, twice. I go home not remembering anything about my monotonous, repetitive day at work. Except I remember my Regulars. My Regulars offset the Sellers and the kids and make the drear of my job worth it.

Work- Part 1

It is precisely 3:36 PM and I’m working at the bookstore. On a Saturday. I usually don’t work on Saturday, but I decided to switch with my coworker, a young, college-aged aspiring writer, who decided to go to some Steampunk nerd-fest in Roswell today. I love my job, I really do, but I hate the customers. On Sunday, when I usually work, it’s so slow, so when a customer comes in I freak. How dare they disturb my peace? So working on Saturday is a pain, when it’s busier and I have no free time. I’m typing this behind my computer. It looks like I’m doing something bookstore related, but no, I’m complaining about my job. Well I’m not really complaining, I’m just commenting. I have the easiest job in the world, sit for eight hours in quiet, and do nothing most of the time. All for eight dollars an hour. Yet I love to complain.

After about a year and a half of working here, my job has become robotic. Automatic. I walk into the store, lock the door behind me. Open up the bookstore program on the computers. Check email. Print out internet orders. Make coffee and hot water. Play around on my phone until it’s opening time. Turn lights on, unlock door, put open sign on, turn on classic rock/ oldies radio station. No one really comes in for the first thirty minutes, so I’m on my phone again. First customer of the day. I grit my teeth. A kind “hello” is my standard greeting. If they have a nice face I add in a “How are you?”. For people from school who I sort-of know, the standard greeting is “hey”. If they linger near the counter, I add in a “Can I help you find anything?”

Typical browsers and buyers are my favorite. The sellers, not so much. I see them waddle in with their Publix tote bags, oversized Whole Foods paper bags and boxes and I curse them out under my breath. “Got some books to sell?” I say with a smile when they come in. I’m so good at fake smiling and laughing at customers' bad jokes I sometimes scare myself. Mostly yellowing, creased, and ripped I go through their books one by one if they're close by. If not, I toss them back into their box. Sometimes I get a rare find, a textbook or something worth buying. Most of the time they hand me a box of dusty books with the occasional dead shriveled spider mixed in. I give them their total. Most of the time they’re content with my offer, sometimes they’re not. “That’s it?” some of them say in disgust. They walk up with me to the front counter and demand for me to tell them why their books are shit. I say this with a smile of course. I’m not fazed in the slightest. Come at me, bro.

That Kid.

I have no idea what I’m going to do with my life. Though while someone older will exclaim, “You’re still just a baby!” I beg to differ. In a year’s time I’ll be lost in the crowd of thousands of college freshman on a campus, and to be honest, that scares the hell out of me. Why do I do it? Clubs, APs, community service?  So I get into that same foreign college, alone and terrified. It astounds me how hard I try. Yet I have yet to make some sort of decision to what I want to do with my life quite soon. Psychology, dentistry, dermatology? UGA? UNC  Chapel Hill? Vanderbilt?

For some reason I think high school is the big finish. Take AP classes, do well, and you have succeeded in life.  But this is not true. Graduation is only the beginning, and if college is more rigor than a few AP classes I’m screwed.  I’m so burnt out; I don’t even want to think about graduate school, let alone medical school. I’m tired of school, of trying to be the best, and ever so slightly failing, because there will always be that one kid who’s better than you. Who tops your 4 with a 5. I never win, and I’m getting sick and tired of trying. That kid needs to just leave, graduate early, go to college with people who are actually academically on par with themselves, and just once fail. Just flat-out fail. And you know what? I’ll smile.

I’m jealous, of course, who wouldn’t be? I’m jealous that I have to bust ass for my grades, my SAT scores, my AP essays, while they just breeze on through.   It’s a challenge to compete with them (and with myself just as equally) to be on top. I’ve exhausted all my efforts into being the best in high school that I don’t even know want to think about college. I have no idea what I want to do with my life, I’m so used to just being the best in high school.  

I’m tired of competing, but it’s a game, and I love it. When I study my ass off and I get a 97, and that kid gets a 95- victory. Sweet victory.

I figured I should get started on this as each blog post is time-stamped and whatnot.

I guess I’ll give my thoughts on my education. Since elementary school I’ve been ingrained with this simple chain of events:

1. Do well in school.

2. Go to college.

3. Get a degree.

4. ?????

5. Profit.

Can someone please tell me what happens in step four? That period when you live on your own and have to pay taxes, pay bills, buy a house, get a job, get an entry level job and work your way up? Yeah students may be educated in the precious art of Human Geography, Music Theory or some other B.S AP class, but we need some experience in the real world. This is my greatest gripe with our education system. I have no idea how to manage money, and live on my own, or what a 401k are- things that actually matter when you get out into the “real world”. And somehow, magically, I suppose, I will walk into the real world with my college degree and a house, a job, a car, and my tax returns will fall onto my lap.

The U.S. education system is based on academia, not functionality. Trade schools and community colleges are looked down upon.  Students are grouped by age and not academic achievement. Higher achieving students slowed down by the lower achieving ones. The lower achieving students are rushed and forced to meet standards.  Students are trained for standardized test from the beginning of their education. Going on Home Access I can view my ITBS and CRCT scores from as long ago as the first grade.  From remedial to AP classes students are taught not for enlightenment and growth, but for a test. (But don’t take this the wrong way Mrs. Smith, I still want a 5 on the AP exam, and my writing has gotten pretty awesome.) Yet I take these classes in order to get into a good college (step 2), not caring about the class, i.e. Human Geography, but for the title- Advanced Placement.

While I’m not exactly a fan of mandatory classes, I think all schools should provide some sort of Personal Finance Class. All students from future doctors to future fast-food workers should learn how to live in the “real world”, the elusive, fictional society students seem to think is so far away until they are thrust into it.  And as a student I will now put off worrying about the real world to study for my AP exams.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, for me, has always been a children’s book. It seems like a children’s book since the only previous time I read this book was in elementary school. Of course I read an abridged version, which called Jim a slave -rather than the elusive “N-word”- and omitting parts seemingly unfit for children. In this way, I never understood the true meaning of the novel until I read the unabridged version, and the real Adventures of Huckleberry Finn read like a whole different novel.

Twain creates realistic characters susceptible to society’s norms and traditions. Huck goes back and forth whether or not to turn Jim in, his final decision to free Jim, he believed would cause him to go to hell. Learning and connecting with Jim, I became sympathetic with his plight to become free. He was always loving and thankful of those who helped him, regardless of the situation he was in. Tom, however, served as the child-like and imaginative; not fully understanding the situation and danger Jim was in lest he get caught.

What I liked most about the novel is that while the situation Jim and Huck was in was almost dire, it was riddled lighthearted- almost childlike- adventure. Using satire and comedy, Twain depicts southern society from the heavy alcohol use, to family feuds, all along the mighty Mississippi River. While the novel reads as a humorous comedy at times, Twain has the ability to make his theme clear; racism and slavery was an immoral aspect of American society. 

TED Talk: How to Tie Your Shoes

Upon browsing through the TED Talk website I was bombarded with information on innovative subjects and science topics to advanced for me to understand, let alone keep my attention. “How to Tie Your Shoes” was a breath of fresh air.

“How to Tie Your Shoes” by Terry Moore was the first 3-minute TED talk ever given, and the argument he presents is stated and better understood at the end of his talk. However, Moore begins establishing ethos with his audience calling them innovators, intellectual and worldly. Once established, he goes on to say that perhaps they have been tying their shoes the incorrect way. Moore then proceeds to show the incorrect way of tying shoelaces, followed by the correct. Using logos to prove his point he demonstrates that when pulling the laces of the incorrect knot, the shoe bow aligns itself on a vertically the shoe. The correct shoe knot, when pulled, aligns itself horizontally and looks visibly stronger than the incorrect commonly used one. This thus persuades the audience that the correct knot is, in fact the better knot to use.

The overall atmosphere of the talk is humorous, as an audience of intellectuals have more significant ideas to be aware of than tying a better knot. TED Talks usually provide influential and informational ideas, Moore provides one seemingly mundane and insignificant. However his argument, once stated at the end of his talk is clear and serves a greater purpose than why one knot is better than the other. He states a small victory like tying one’s shoe the “correct” way may give way to the many significant and meaningful ideas like those shared on other TED Talks. As one of the first Talks ever given, he provides an overarching theme and purpose for future TED Talks. He ends with “live long and prosper” accompanied with a hand gesture to which the audience laughed, but I did not. One Google-search later, I found it was the Vulcan Salute from Star Trek. The salute fits well and further establishes a relationship, to an intellectual, science-y, and therefore probably Star Trek-loving TED Talk audience.