Blog Post #5

            The AP Lang exam was not at all what I expected. I honestly didn’t think I’d be able to fully sit through a 3 hour exam, having to write 3 essays and do 55 multiple choice questions, but I did it, somehow. I think I at least got a 3, so at least I passed. I definitely did not do amazing on the multiple choice though. The first and second passage were very hard though, and I wasn’t able to finish all the questions, I had to randomly bubble in C for the last 5 questions. The essays were very nice though and I think I could smoothly form my responses to the prompts. I messed on one part for the argument essay though; I wrote about Trump and I think that was a common response for a lot of students, so one of my reasons wasn’t very original. I think for the rest of the other essays, I did a pretty good job.
            The environment during the test was a little annoying though. People kept entering and leaving the room, and slamming the door every 10 seconds. It took a while for everyone to find their seats, because there were so many seats and it was in alphabetical order in the gym. I honestly just wanted to get it over with so I just tried to do my best so I could go home and sleep. The test cramped up my hand so badly, I couldn’t hold a pen for the next 2 hours.

Blog Post #4

There’s this park near my house that leads out into the beach. Sometimes in the summer, I would go to clear my head and sit at the beach’s shore. In the evenings, I’d head out for the park. The temperature would start to drop, and goosebumps would raise to the surface of my skin but I wasn’t bothered; I just wanted to watch the sun set. As I made my way towards the beach shore, the trees started to sway from the gentle breeze and the leaves whispered gentle melodies heard all throughout the park. The wind picked up its speed and I picked up my own pace as well, until I broke out into a full sprint. I started to run across the enormous football field separating myself from the beach. I felt the wind blow through my hair as I ran with all of this free space surrounding me. I felt the soft green grass under my converse with each step until it turned even softer and sand sprayed behind me. I made it. I took a moment to catch my breath and sat myself on the sandy shore. The sun was already starting to dip behind the horizon and the sky was glittered with splashes of soft hues of pink and gold. I felt like I was right where I needed to be, nowhere else. From my little beach, I could see the bridge that stretched from one side of the city to the other. Bright lights littered the entire structure as fast flashes of all different colors zoomed across. The water reflected an effulgence of all these colors combined as its smooth waves lapped the shore. I laid back and felt the warm sand against my skin, hugging me like my blankets that’ve been heated up by the old heater pressed up against my bed. I smiled and watched the sky endlessly drift off into the horizon.

Rhetorical Analysis of “Corn-Pone Opinions”

In the text “Corn-Pone Opinions” by Mark Twain, the author discusses the reason why people conform to society and act like everybody else. Throughout the text, the author uses rhetorical devices such as nostalgia and allusions to help develop his purpose. Twain states that “Fifty years ago, when I was a boy of fifteen… I had a friend… he was a gay and impudent and satirical and delightful young black man - who daily preached sermons from the top of his master’s woodpile, with me for sole audience… I can never forget it. It was deeply impressed upon me” (Twain par.1-4). The author uses nostalgia to introduce his purpose to the audience. By using phrases such as “fifty years ago” and “I can never forget it,” the author looks back on the memory of this past event where he heard something important when he was younger that stuck with him, which he further develops on as the text goes on. By recalling this past event, the author introduces the question of why people conform to society’s standards, and helps further elaborate his purpose.

Mark Twain uses allusion to help expand his purpose further. The author states that “We may continue to admire them, but we drop the use of them. We notice this in literature. Shakespeare is a standard, and fifty years ago we used to write tragedies… but we don’t do it anymore now. Our prose standard, three quarters of a century ago, was ornate and diffuse; some authority or other changed it in the direction of compactness and simplicity, and conformity followed, without argument” (Twain 12). Twain alludes to Shakespeare, which is a reference to the famous playwright who wrote popular tragedies; by doing so, the author references this idea that a long time ago, it was normal and accepted to write tragedies, which had complex and fancy diction, but nowadays people do not write them and our language is more succinct and straightforward. This depicts how people have always conformed to social normalcy and it still happens today.

Throughout the text, the author analysis this idea of herd mentality and that a lot of people do not have original thoughts; they just do what everyone else is doing. I agree with this claim, because it is human nature to conform and act like everyone else to prosper in society. If a big group of people are doing something, an individual will feel compelled to do the same thing or else they will feel uncomfortable about disagreeing with the majority. If people do not conform, they will stand out and will be made to feel like outcasts, which would be detrimental to their place in society. However, there are still some individuals that do not conform in society, and they can stand out in a good way; they can be the first to do something, which would provide a new opinion on a topic that everyone else had one universal opinion about, and could lead to new change.

Blogger Post #1

Abortion should remain legal in all 50 U.S. states.  It is a woman's fundamental right of whether or not she wants to get an abortion if she becomes pregnant. The fetus is a part of a woman’s body and she is the actual person holding the fetus, so it is her ultimate decision if she wants to keep the child or not. If this right is taken away, a woman’s right to choose what happens to her body is taken away, and they should be the ones to make the choice about when they want to have children at their age, financial & domestic situation.

While it’s understandable why some people might be against abortion, it still doesn’t give them the right to try to take away a woman’s choice to do what she wants with her body; yet some religious people and men still tend to argue that abortion is murder, and that fetuses can feel pain when they are being aborted. According to the court case Roe v. Wade, the term “person” (as it’s used in the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution) does not include the fetus, and a fetus does not have the same equal status as the mother until the point of viability, or when the fetus is born alive. Therefore abortion cannot be murder, because a fetus is not a person. Fetuses are also unable to feel pain during abortions. Abortions are only usually performed before the 24th week mark of the pregnancy, and according to the 2010 review by Britain's Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, "most neuroscientists believe that the cortex is necessary for pain perception,” and the cortex is not fully developed until the 26th week of pregnancy, when abortions are no longer allowed to be performed. According to many studies, fetuses can only feel pain by the 30th week of pregnancy.

In On Writing Well by William Zinsser, the author writes about the many valuable strategies that can be used in writing. I used his teachings on contractions, which states that “Your style will obviously be warmer and truer to your personality if you use contractions like “I’ll” and “won’t” when they fit comfortably into what you’re writing” (Zinsser 115). I used it in when I wrote “While it’s understandable why some people might be against abortion, it still doesn’t give them the right to try to take away a woman’s choice to do what she wants with her body,” because it made more sense and sounded more natural to me instead of using the formal ‘it is’ and ‘does not’. Another writing technique I used was credibility, which states that “Credibility is just as fragile for a writer as for a President. Don’t inflate an incident to make it more flamboyant or bizarre than it actually was” (Zinsser 116). I used it throughout my writing, especially when trying to prove my point; instead of just using my own words to support my argument, I used real studies and cited my proof for each point that I made. I also used Zinsser’s teachings about the semicolon, where he states that “...the semicolon brings the reader, if not to a halt, at least to a considerable pause” (Zinsser 113). I used semicolons to put a pause between two relating ideas to separate them.