AP Lang: From Microcosms to Modernism

     One observation I will take away from junior year is that being naturally good at something doesn't always guarantee success. Raw talent needs to be harnessed, honed, polished. It's easier said than done, which I learned the hard way this year in AP Lang. I knew I had a knack for writing. I kicked off the year with a 6 on my first timed writing. I was complacent. Then I got another 6. And another 6. I grew less complacent. Another  6. Complacency vanished and left behind the stinging realization that, yes, my writing was good, but it wasn't great. It took me a while to understand the problem, but after being exposed to a wide variety of sources, from student samples to celebrated novels to inspirational speeches, I knew what I was doing wrong. I wasn't taking risks.

     It wasn't easy for me to break the rules, and it definitely took me a while to come out of my shell. Luckily a few things helped to ease the burden. Being spoon-fed each rhetorical device and sentence pattern gave me confidence to try them out in my own writing, especially in the "no-pressure" environments of journals and blog posts. Soon enough, the training wheels had disappeared and I was crafting stylized sentences without even realizing it. Constant analysis of great literary works showed me that writers always have a motive and that they're not afraid to take every opportunity they can to persuade their audience. In my papers, I strived to mimic their methods, ever so conscious of my tone, my diction, my appeals. Getting kicked out of the nest and diving head first into my first "real" research paper showed me that striking a balance between style and logic can be tricky: incorporating too much evidence makes a paper sound like a laboratory report, while omitting too much weakens the strength of the central argument. The research paper was a debacle (and LiveBinder was a living nightmare), but I finished feeling more confident in my writing than ever before. I have no doubt that I will carry the experience I obtained from the research process far into my college years.
     AP Lang stretched me as a writer. It forced me to learn how to crank out convincing and entertaining essays in half the time that I previously thought possible. It pushed me to experiment with my writing -- with my ideas, with my style, with my organization of details. I don't think there could have been any better way to improve my writing skills than with a year of AP Lang experience -- the only addition that would have helped would have been extra feedback and comments on assignments (something us AP students are always eager to see). I know that I will leave this class a better writer than when I stepped in the door on the first day of August. There is not a doubt in my mind.

Favorite Literary Movement

     The American literature we have read and studied this year has been, to me, more interesting than appealing. I know that seems a little contradictory, but it's true. I found the progression of writing fascinating, the changes and tweaks from movement to movement intriguing. I was impressed with the writers' mastery of capturing their time period, as well as creating a definitive style. So congrats, Hawthorne, Franklin, Thoreau, London, I applaud you. But I wouldn't buy your books.
     That's the thing. While reading, I enjoyed the fact that I was picking up on how and why the authors wrote their prose, but I didn't particularly enjoy the actual book. Okay, okay, Huck Finn was decent, but I'm not so keen on the whole realism movement. So where does that leave me for this blog post?
     Though I'm not overwhelmingly obsessed with one particular literary movement, I think I have to declare Modernism as the winner. Why? Gatsby captured my heart. It didn't hit me until I was finished with the book and confirming my suspicions about symbolism and all that jazz via Shmoop. I realized that Fitzgerald was a literary genius and Gatsby was this never ending puzzle of hidden meaning and commentary and importance. The night before the Gatsby test, all I wanted to do was read the whole book again -- it was kind of like the feeling you get when someone points out some tiny detail in a movie that you didn't notice and your first instinct is to go watch it again from start to finish.
     I'll admit that I wasn't crazy about The Old Man and the Sea, but I appreciated how Hemingway could convey such huge ideas into such simplistic writing. That's truly what I like about Modernism: hidden meaning. It makes literature more interesting, more challenging. Another plus is that Modernism was at its height around my favorite historical time period, with World War I, World War II, and all that good stuff.
     So there you have it. Modernism takes the cake. But if and when Harry Potterism is created, I'm updating this blog post immediately.

American Dream or American Nightmare?

Ask the average person what the American Dream is and you'll hear the typical, elementary response: a white picket fence and 2.5 kids -- maybe even a golden retriever thrown into the mix. You would have elicited the same response from me, too, just a few weeks ago. After reading The Great Gatsby and looking over all the evidence from the classroom debate, I have come to the conclusion that the American Dream has more to it then some white paneling and children running rampant. To me, the American Dream stems from the belief that in America, one who works hard and seizes every opportunity has the ability to rise up in society, to succeed, to prosper. This is why millions upon millions of people have staked their claim in the land of the free and the home of the brave -- to live the Dream. Some argue, however, that the Dream is dying -- or that has long been dead. Head honchos of colossal corporations are hogging America's wealth, they say, and making it extremely difficult -- almost impossible, even -- for the average Joe to be as successful as he should be. The poor are getting poorer while the rich are getting poorer -- and perhaps more corrupt, as Fitzgerald points out in Gatsby. I don't know all the facts and figures, and I'm certainly not an expert on the subject, but I think that we should not be so quick to declare the age-old Dream dead. Opportunity is still around every corner, whether it be in the form of scholarships, the growth of home businesses, or the explosion of Internet successes. The average American is far wealthier than their ancestors -- it is commonplace for a family to live in a comfortable house and own a computer, a TV, and at least two cars. Sure, corporate giants may be enjoying a larger slice of the pie, but it is only because they are slyly maximizing every opportunity they get to make more money, to push the envelope, to become more successful. It is them, ironically, who are making the Dream more lively than it has ever been before.

Research Paper

It was grueling. It was exhausting. It was a little bit tormenting.

Most importantly, though, it is over.

The project itself, I have to admit, was actually interesting to me. Most people (including me, guilty as charged) usually skim until they find what they need or just use the handy dandy Ctrl+f when sifting through research for papers like these.Maybe it's an appreciation of other works due to my own interest in writing, or maybe all the rhetorical analysis is growing on me, but I found myself actually fascinated by the ideas pointed out in the literary criticisms. 

Interest abruptly turned into frustration during the compilation of sources into the huge tangled web of ideas that became my paper. It was extremely difficult to figure out how to convey all these complicated and intricate ideas in a simplistic and understandable way -- to sort out the jumbled mess in my head and somehow make it make sense on paper.

The trickiest part, though, was getting it all done in such a short amount of time. The week of the due date was some serious red alert, this-is-not-a-drill, super crunch time. Cranking out an outline, rough draft, and final paper -- seven page paper, mind you -- in the span of seven days had to have been a new personal record. I felt as if the weight of the world had been lifted off my shoulders after pressing the final submit button to turnitin.com and thus ending the traumatic sequence of events that was my research paper.

When it was all said and done, and I could look back on my paper without bitter feelings of resentment, I felt a sense of accomplishment. I went from tentatively figuring out what an annotation was to busting one out in a matter of minutes. I became a whiz at MLA citation. I wrote by far my most complex and sophisticated paper and realized how far I have come -- even the difference between my research paper last year and this one is astounding. Since I thought I had it all figured out in 7th grade, I am excited to see my writing continue to improve in leaps and bounds.

Valentine's Day - much better than the movie

So what's my strong, stubborn, unwavering opinion about Valentine's Day? Well, ever since I graduated elementary school and left behind the cute crafts and homemade mailboxes, Valentine's Day has held little significance for me. There hasn't been much to look forward to, nor much to dread. I actually found myself bored in the sea of pink and red, candy and chocolate, hearts and balloons. That was, until I hit high school. Recently I have discovered that Valentine's Day is one of the greatest forms of entertainment offered over the course of the entire year. And this year it was better than ever. Twitter fever, prom season, spoiled girls, and awkward relationships all came together and created one of the most eventful and hilarious Valentine's Days I have witnessed to date. I think I enjoyed sitting on the sidelines more than I would have enjoyed having an actual Valentine (excluding my cat, of course). There were girls who wouldn't stop talking and tweeting about Valentine's Day since the beginning of February, who had already informed their boyfriends that they expected nothing less than a James Avery ring and candlelight dinner, and who donned so much red and pink that they looked like they purchased the entire Valentine's aisle at Target. There were other girls who declared the holiday as Single Awareness Day and who I half expected to come together and riot outside every restaurant decorated with hearts and other ooey-gooey paraphenalia. There were boys who seemed to spend their entire savings on gifts for that "special someone" and who I watched in horror as they were hopelessly rejected. There were boys who ruthlessly used the holiday as a way to stock up on their candy inventory. There were some who laughed, some who cried, and others who cried from laughing as the onslaught of prom manifested itself in the holiday, sparking the drama that will undoubtedly continue until the dance itself. And there were people, like me, who sat back and soaked up the real life soap opera in a mixture of amusement, disbelief, horror, and delight.

Satire - the funny kind (who knew?)

After relentlessly researching for an adequate piece of satire on the Internet (typing in "satire," "funny satire piece," "political satire," etc. into various search engines), I stumbled upon theonion.com. After reading a few articles and watching a few videos I was thoroughly confused... either the editors of this newspaper were publishing their articles from an asylum or they were on some sort of hallucinogen. Then I realized... it was all fake, or in AP Lang speak, a site solely dedicated to satirizing modern society. I ended up settling on the article Alarming Study Finds More Than 12 Instances Of Racism Occurred Last Year, which had me laughing from the title. The tone of the article was sarcastic and lightly mocking from start to finish -- and was jam-packed with rhetorical devices. Hyperboles were scattered everywhere (from "I can understand one, possibly two racially charged comments uttered in the heat of the moment, and then quickly recounted and apologized for; people make mistakes, after all. But more than a dozen? That's inconceivable," to "In the only high profile event of its kind, an intoxicated man at a Plano, TX bar openly declared that President Obama, who is of African descent, should "go back to Kenya where he belongs," spurring a swift investigation by the Secret Service.") and irony was evident in virtually every sentence ("researchers had been operating under the com­monly held assumption that bigotry on such a massive scale was a distant relic of the past"). The devices were not only effective, but they were just plain funny ("Describing the data as 'extremely worrisome,' the research team detailed a staggering five occasions on which white people walked faster after noticing a black teenager walking behind them..." - come on, that is hilarious). I was seriously laughing out loud at a few points -- not because I think making fun of African Americans is funny, but because this article shows just how ridiculous and racist our society has become.  The Ku Klux Klan may not be running rampant, but stereotypical comments are conjured up in our minds as soon as we see a black dude with saggy pants or an Asian scampering around with five textbooks. No matter what we say, we all know deep down that prejudice still plays a large role in our society... and in our own minds as well. This article, while being laugh-out-loud funny, made its readers reevaluate their perspective and consider thinking about what they say before they say it. Cause let's face it, we probably see 12 racist comments about Obama on Facebook without having to even look for them.

Fast Forward

Febuary 5th, 2032 is just another typical day in the life of Mattingly Marie Blahblahblah, a 36-year-old orthodontist living in San Diego. She wakes up every morning at 5:30 am in order to get to work on time -- except for Fridays, of course, because anyone who is their own boss would never work more than 4 days a week. After making breakfast for her 4-year-old Jocelyn and 2-year-old Brady, she says goodbye to her husband, Mr. Blahblahblah, and heads to the office.

Even though winter is still going strong, the weather is beautiful – the sun is just beginning to peak out of the trees, and a cool breeze brings the fresh salty scent of the ocean to the Blahblahblah residence, a stacked stone two story house with a huge flat backyard. Mattingly pulls out of the garage in her 2030 black camaro convertible – top down, of course – and spends the half hour drive to work on the phone catching up with her brother, who just returned to his home in Dallas after covering the Super Bowl. Work is pretty uneventful, except for taking off one twelve-year-old girl’s braces, who was so ecstatic that she left the office with a huge smile still painted across her face. Mattingly meets up with her husband for lunch at In-n-Out burger – their favorite restaurant – and irons out the details of where to vacation for spring break. After settling on schlepping to Florida and taking the kids to Disney World – because, they both agreed, Disney Land just isn’t the same – Mattingly returns home to work and Mr. Blahblahblah goes back to the Blahblahblah residence, where he designs his latest architecture project in his home office. Mattingly closes up her practice around five and stops by the AT&T store on the way home to pick up her new iPhone 42 (Brady had given the old one to their golden retriever as a chew toy). She pulls into the garage around six o’clock, and walks in to see that dinner was already on the table. She sits down with her family and listens to everyone’s latest stories – Mr. Blahblahblah complains about an annoying client, Jocelyn recites three Disney princess stories in full-fledged anguishing detail, and Brady rattles on about something to do with a dog who had a rake – or maybe it was about a frog in a lake. Mattingly sits back and took it all in, smiling to herself, and daydreams about what the next twenty years had in store for her.

Huck's in Luck

When I started Huck Finn, I wasn't so sure. Actually, I was sure -- sure that I wouldn't like it. It was right after reading another novel. It was long. It was a sequel to a novel I've never read. It was all about hillbillies running rampant on a river and talking in some hyphenated mixed-up language that kinda sorta resembled English. So yes, I was skeptical to say the least. But I stuck to it and kept on reading (not by choice, of course). About halfway through, I realized that I actually liked Huck. I caught myself laughing at him and Jim's antics, and found myself flipping page after page to see what happened to the duo. It turned out to be a pretty quick and easy surface read - analysis and interpretation, as with any literary classic, was lengthy - and I ended up enjoying the novel. Maybe it just comes with experience, but I really feel like I'm picking up on a lot more than I used to. Spotting all those literary elements like foreshadowing and symbolism was almost as easy as playing I Spy with a six year old. Picking out the themes of the novel - not so easy. The whole message about racism and slavery is pretty in-your-face, so I knew that Twain - being the literary genius that he is - had a few more things up his sleeve. I did a little bit of digging, pondering, flipping to random pages, etc. before I fully grasped what he was trying to say to me.
What I stumbled upon makes me think that I need to read the whole book over again. As it turns out, Twain isn't just pointing fingers at the racists - he questions the importance of religion, education, conformity... the list really does go on and on. The jabs he makes at the inherent flaws of human nature were so subtle, so crafty, so brilliantly planted that I guess he convinced me to agree with him before I even realized what I was doing. If Huck Finn hadn't been so successful, I'm sure that Twain would have been a fantastic psychologist. Or politician... but he probably would have made fun of them too.

Talk TED to me

I spent quite some time sifting through the talks on Ted.com until I stumbled upon Gever Tulley's 5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do, which not only had a title that caught my eye but also ended up being entertaining and thought provoking (and made me wish that my parents had let me do some of these things when I was younger). Tulley argues that in order to have a safer society, parents must allow their kids to do dangerous things. Makes no sense, right? Wrong. Through a thoughtful and carefully put together presentation, Tulley convinces his audience that a little bit of danger can be a good thing. Well, at least he convinced me.
While running through his "five dangerous things," Tulley concretely appeals to logic, settling the nerves and potential fears of his audience. For instance, he explains that throwing a spear helps children improve attention, coordination, and predictive ability, while allowing them to enhance their muscular, visual, and neurological skills. Keep in mind he's talking about handing a child a spear... but his fascinating facts and valid points make it seem perfectly fine. 
Tulley establishes some ethos right from the get go. He has some fancy pants career title but, more importantly, he founded the Tinkering School, a place where kids can build their creations. The guy obviously has some experience dealing with children and letting children deal with danger. He continues to prove his credibility by knowing his audience and how he needs to conduct himself in order to be as persuasive as possible. He speaks informally, with an overall lighthearted tone- undoubtedly having a caring and serious undertone when it comes to safety issues and dishing out the facts.
Tulley's use of humor is, in my opinion, the most prevalent appeal in the presentation. He starts off by admitting he does not have any children, but "borrows" his friends' children from time to time. Throughout the course of the talk, Tulley ingeniously incorporates funny images into his PowerPoint - there's a picture of a kid in mid-air jumping off a bunk bed as he argues that "kids will always find ways to be dangerous, even if we try to shelter them" and a baby in the driver's seat of a car as he mentions that danger "is fun for the whole family." The audience never failed to burst out laughing when any of these images were presented, thus easing the tension and easing their concerns. Tulley even employs some satire to make his point: he pokes fun at the "overly protective" safety implementations that are in use today (the marshmallow wrapper that said "children should always be seated and supervised while eating" was the one that really got to me).