AP Test Stress

479 words

Imagine that you're sitting on the couch watching, I don't know let's say The Big Bang Theory, and they start talking about their scientific nerdy stuff which reminds you of what you're learning about in chemistry. This then leads you to think about how you really like chemistry and wished you would have taken AP Chem instead of AP Environmental Science but you just don't know if you could handle that type of AP class. Then you start thinking of how many you're taking next year and how you are going to have to take five AP exams and how that's absolutely crazy then

BAM!

You remember that your first AP exam for THIS YEAR is five days away and you are totally not prepared. Where did the time go? Just yesterday it was winter and snowing and....oh wait. Dang it, May! You made me think it was still winter and I still had months before my test!
Okay so this week's snowfall didn't really trick me into thinking I still had a while before my tests but it did sneak up on me. Not completely, though. I have been studying but I still don't feel prepared for my Friday one. AP Lang is a class where you can't just memorize flashcards like in biology or even history. Also, there aren't 'right' answers. Everything in LA is all based on point of view and opinion and if the person writing the test has a different opinion than I do, I'll get the question wrong. It's just stressful.
This year I am taking three tests: AP Lang (Friday), AP US Gov./Pol (Tuesday), and AP US History (Wednesday). The one I feel the most confident about is my Government test because this whole third term we have been working on reviewing for the exam and my teacher really helps you figure out a way to study that best fits YOU and how YOU work. I'm probably not going to get a five on the test but I'm hoping for at least a three! Right now I am just going through a ton of flashcards and notes that my friend let me borrow from when he took it last year. The flashcards are actually really helping. What a surprise, right?
So if you're taking an AP test in the next couple of weeks just remember to not stress out about it and continue to study in a way that works best for you.
Oh and here's a quick tip that I used when I took my AP Psych Exam last year: Don't study the night before the test. I just went to bed early and got a good night sleep. If you study right before you go to bed the night before the test, you'll stress yourself out and make it hard for you to sleep.
So yeah that's it! Good Luck!

~Skooogster(:

Crime is Pride...or is it?...

525 words

Think: all men make mistakes

But a good man yields when he

Knows his course is wrong,

And repairs the evil: The only

Crime is pride.

According to this excerpt from Antigone, by the classical Greek playwright, mistakes are bad; that they make you an evil person if you don’t go back and fix them. True, if you steal from a store and don’t feel a smidge of remorse this doesn’t apply to you because you are on track to becoming a serial killer. Mistakes that can hurt or harm others should be gone back to and fixed but what about a simple, innocent mistake? If someone was hanging out at the mall and thought they saw someone and called out to them but it turned out not to be who they were expecting, they don’t have to go up to the person and ‘repair the evil’ mistake. It was an honest mistake.

But there are also some mistakes that have created things we would never have invented if someone hadn’t let their mind wander a little too long. For example, the microwave oven. Percy Spencer was an engineer who was experimenting with radar and vacuum tubes when he noticed that the bar of candy that he had in his pocket started to melt. He decided to test this on other things like popcorn and ta-da! You have yourself an invention that is used in most homes in America every day. What if Percy Spencer hadn’t had a candy bar in his pocket that day? We wouldn’t have a microwave oven. It’s as easy as that.

A different example would be when two brothers tried to boil a pot of grain, they accidentally left it on for too long. When they went back for it, the grain had molded but there was something else, too: a dry and thick product. When the brothers the mold off, they were left with a golden brown flake known to every American household: Corn Flakes.

Now, I don’t know about you but I don’t know what I would do without my microwave oven or my bowl of corn flakes in the morning before school. I am glad that these people made the mistakes they had made. What if Percy Spencer had realized, ‘oh I have a candy bar in my pocket! Better take this out!’ or if the two brothers hadn’t left the grain on the stove for too long and checked on it regularly? According to the excerpt from Antigone, they are evil people and should have gone back and ‘repair the evil’. But they aren’t. Percy created a faster way to cook food which shaves off hours of cooking and the two brothers invented an easy and healthy breakfast that will keep you full all day. I wouldn’t say those were products of evil.

Yes, some mistakes are evil ones and the people that make them should go back and fix them. But not every mistake is bad. So many things that we use in our day-to-day lives were created because of a simple mistake that someone made. If you make a mistake, don’t fret over trying to fix it if it was something simple. Even if it was something big, you never know what can be born from just a simple mistake.

 

~Skooogster(: