Reflecting

I was going to make my last post funny.  I wanted to include pictures and mock some of my classmates for their love of sliders.  But then blogger went down, and now I don't have the time to do that.  Besides, we're done.  No more school.  I won't see a lot of you again until graduation weekend, and the entire process is bittersweet.  Some people love Chagrin, but the vast majority that I talk to really want to leave.  I like a lot of people here.  I'm not cynical enough to say that everyone sucks and Chagrin sucks and it's so unfair going to a good school.  Sure, I got irritated with my classmates sometimes, but like I said, I won't be seeing most until graduation, and after that we'll be going to different schools. 

I can't believe how many seniors were lifers.  It's weird that everyone literally knows everyone since kindergarten.  I guess it should make our senior class stronger, but I almost feel like it's a disadvantage.  We pulled together at the end, but a lot of our planning went... questionably.  It annoys me that we might have the reputation of the grade that didn't do anything right.  We have a lot of smart and talented people, but the grades before and after us have better reputations.  I mean, we still count.  It's not like we've done anything catastrophically wrong.  We weren't the grade who got the administration to breathalyze every dance.  Grades before us messed up the pumpkin roll and the cops shut it down early.  We're living in the shadow of every grade before us.

Well, I should probably end this on a more positive note.  We're pretty much graduated.  We're going to college.  We have the whole summer ahead of us.

Best of luck, class of '11.

Stay chi11.

Dear Journal... This is the End

Dear Journal,

We've had some trusty times together through the course of AP English.  Remember that one time, when I wrote

     Dear Journal, today I start AP English?

          Dear Journal, this is a journal within a journal.  J O U R N A L C E P T I O N.

All jokes aside now.  I am going to miss AP English very much.  We started off as scared juniors, and have progressed to being the coolest kids in school.  Okay, that might be a slight hyperbole, but we deserve some recognition.  I've never learned more or worked harder, and it's sad to see AP English coming to a close.  I really feel like we've all become closer, or at least come to respect each other.  AP English unified us.  I found myself talking with people I never would have before, ranting about English and Data Sheets and other nonsense.  Sure, it was rough.  Near the end, I just wanted it over with.  But when I sat down to take the AP test and felt completely confident, I appreciated all the effort I'd put in.  And now we have only a few days left.

So ends the best English class I will probably ever take.  In college I'll have introductory writing courses which will probably seem to easy.  Hopefully I won't forget how to write, but I don't think that's possible, since the rules of analysis are burned into my brain by now.  Also, the quotes.  Etched in my brain forever.

Basically, Journal, I'm going to miss everything.  I hope that all of my classmates find success in their college endeavors, and that Ms. Serensky's senior class next year doesn't drive her crazy.  (They probably will, as I'm sure we did)

Yours Truly,

Sarah

Pictured: I am a nerd.

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Are you bored with your life?  Have too much free time?  Don't know how to analyze books and memorize quotes to annoy your classmates, teachers, and family with?  You should join AP English today.  AP English has ten special features guaranteed to make you stay up until the wee hours of the morning, and it's available today for the low price of your social life.

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3. And there's another exclusive feature!  AP English will allow you to memorize various quotes until you cannot eradicate them from your mind.  When you go to college, you will be chilling with some new friends at a party, you'll hand someone a drink (fruit punch, of course) or an innocent piece of cake, and when they comment on the taste you will blurt out "that's the triazolam."  You will not make many more friends this way and will probably lose the ones you currently have, but that's okay.  You're cooler than them now.
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How AP English will make you feel after you complete the AP Lit exam!

No Words, Just Comics

So I Guess that Everything Matters...

Out of all the books we've read this year, Ron Currie Jr.'s Everything Matters! was by far my favorite.  I didn't love this book the entire time.  In fact, you might say we had a bit of a love-hate relationship.  But in the end, this book affected me the most, and it was the only one that I actually enjoyed reading.  I found the allusions very modern and interesting, such as "your life is so blue it looks like a James Cameron movie."  This quote was both relatable and funny, while simultaneously depressing.  That's pretty much how the entire book went.  I'd connect with the characters, mostly Junior and Amy, and then they'd enter into depressing life situations and I'd get frustrated.  We always talk about how the books parallel our lives, and this was one book I was scared to see parallel my life in any way.  In the end, though, I got the sense from this book that it doesn't matter what I choose to do in life, since there are an infinity of possibilities and nothing is truly right or wrong.  In fact, "anything, anything, anything is possible."  It's easy to to give in to fear about the future, since "the theoretical snakes, theoretically lurking everywhere...trump them all," but the most important thing is to just continue living no matter what happens.  While Ms. Serensky would like us to "push the implications" in our essays, it's probably better not to do this in regards to real life.

image via imgur

PS: classmates who have posted pictures that they randomly found on Google images, be careful what images you link.  If you accidentally steal someone's copyrighted photo and they get ticked off, they can change the photo from the original source to something wildly inappropriate.  This happened to me...it was not pretty.  But I fixed it.  So just a warning.

But Really Though...

Top Ten Most Thrilling Academic Moments of My High School Career

I'm using very loose definitions of "thrilling" and "academic."  For the sake of this blog "thrilling" means exciting, chilling, or abnormally tremoring.  "Academic" means anything pertaining to school and/or theoretical or hypothetical; not practical, realistic, or directly useful (legit).  That said, I don't actually count many experiences as both thrilling and academic.  It's kind of a paradox.

1. Not failing my AP Chem test. This one kind of speaks for itself.  for anyone who has taken AP Chem... you know.  Also, not failing all other AP tests.  "We cannot all be masters," and I was and am content with this (Shakespeare 1.1.40).
2. That time when I totally got a ribbon from Ms. Serensky that says "I'm Special."  I feel like I need photo proof for this.  It will be posted.  A better ribbon, however, might have said "you seem to me to be in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection," but I can understand that all of that font probably wouldn't have fit (Wilde 31).
3. That time I didn't get in trouble for wearing short shorts and got an award instead.  "How very, very strange, this life" (Currie 164).
4. Deciding to go to art school despite working so hard on academics for years.  Backstory: sometime around sophomore year I decided I liked art enough to do it in college, and then last year I was kinda like "I don't [paint] accurately... but I [paint] with wonderful expression" (Wilde 1).  And decided to apply to art school.
5. The moment when I realized that 90% of high school classes have no application in real life.  Freedom.  "And so anything, anything, anything is possible" when you stop trying so hard doing things that don't matter to you and focus on what you will use in the future (Currie 302).
6. When I stayed up way too late working on a data sheet and then in a state of delirium started making phone calls.  Half of the data sheet was nonsensical.  Thrilling.  "It is awfully hard work doing nothing," and yet terribly easy to make a fool of yourself after two or three in the morning (Wilde 17).
7. The time that my team got 100% accuracy on a multiple choice game.  Never again.  This victory was "Not destiny.  Happenstance," as it only occurred one time and led to a curse falling on my team forever after (Currie 62).
8. That time that we all skipped school to go to a football game.  Academics at its best.  "O, blood, blood, blood!" cried all of the students who actually wanted school that day (Shakespeare 3.3.449)
9. Turning in the research project that we did sophomore year, typos and lewd comments included, and receiving a fantastic grade.  I think. My first thought was "I have not deserved this" (Shakespeare 4.1.241).  My second was "Oh well, I'll take it."
10. That time that I got a 9 on an essay while riding on a dinosaur and visiting my secret sandwich factory in Switzerland.  It was "either the grandest thing [I] have ever done, or the cruelest" (Currie 275).  That was a delicious and rewarding day.  Except for the dinosaur bites.  (Will provide proof for this as well)  (EDIT: Dinosaur ate my photo proof.  Will have to make you a drawing instead).

Proof

We've Been Hatin'

Of the many poems we have traversed throughout this year, my favorite was one of our first.  "Winter in the Summer House," by Robert N. Watson, had fascinating imagery, sweet metaphors, and IT DOESN'T RHYME.  I don't know if anyone remembers my assertion that I "hate rhyming poetry" from the beginning of the year.  While studying a fair amount of poetry with rhyme schemes has made me appreciate both forms, I still prefer the flow of non-rhyming poetry.  However, that's not my sole reason for liking "Winter in the Summer House."  I swear.

The sense of loneliness that Watson conveys in his poem really struck a chord with me, since the subject of the poem brought it on himself.  He ignored the women who could have loved him, and so he remains alone.   In Othello Emilia expresses the desire to "Let husbands know/ Their wives have sense like them" (Shakespeare 4.3.96-97)  In the same way that the characters in Othello see a demise in their relationships due to miscommunication, the subject of Watson's poem feels the ill effects of a past relationship ruined.

For some reason, a lot of what we've read this year has to do with romantic relationships of the dysfunctional variety.  "There is love, and then there is love," and the second type tends to lend itself to crazy (Currie 223).  Even the supposedly high-class characters of The Importance of Being Earnest have dysfunctional views.  However, the problems in these relationships all come from the men.  Cecily complains how "men are so cowardly," and blames them entirely for all that has gone wrong (Wilde 40).

Basically, we seem to really hate on men in AP English.  In our literature, they make stupid mistakes, Bunbury, steal plums, lie about their names, hear voices, and kill their wives.  Even the poor lonely man in "Winter in the Summer House" doesn't escape criticism, despite the fact that his current existence is completely depressing.  Basically, the assumption seems to be that it's a man's own fault if he's alone, because obviously he made some mistake.  It's not even like we're reading a bunch of feminist authors, since the majority of our books and poems were written by men.

Anyway, props to our small handful of AP English males who have stuck through all of this.  I'm sorry that our literature hates you.

I Googled "manliest picture ever," and I got Ron Burgundy.  I thought it was appropriate for the moment.  So to make up for all of the man-hating we've done, here is the manliest picture I could find in five seconds.