Aftermath of the AP test

In all honesty at first I thought I did fine on the exam. Maybe because it was my last AP test I had left and by then I was just relieved that I was finished with everything. Granted I also think I did horrible on the rhetorical essay and argumentative essay because of how short both of them turned out to be and how long I zoned out during that period. The purpose wasn't hard to figure out and they did give an inkling to what it was in the prompt; you just had to expand on it more. However the speech was short and thus became the problem of trying to find good rhetorical devices. I did find 3 rhetorical device but when I was writing I found it hard to expand on my ideas because there was so little to explain, at least for me. The argumentative essay I knew I already wasn't going to do well on so that wasn't a surprise. I only feel confident in my synthesis essay and even then the more I think about it the worse I think I did. So in conclusion I don't think I did good.

The multiple choice my only regret was not skipping the first passage. I debated rather or not I should do it when I finished reading the passage and had no idea what he was talking about. I reread the first paragraph at least 10 times and I still did not understand what the author was saying and wasted too much time on the multiple choice because of my lack of understanding with the passage. Really only after I read some of the answers choices did I piece together that the passage was about history and how you shouldn't be imitated on the great achievements of the past and instead focus on creating your own history. I say this but honestly I'm still not even sure if what I said is even correct and I might have read the entire thing wrong. I think that in the future people who struggle with the pre-20th century passage should focus more on what the multiple choice answers says than the actual passage because at least with the multiple choice it writes it in understandable English and not useless complex sentences that only a few people can really understand. Also, an advice with the multiple choice if you really don't understand the passage try to find the choices which are most similar in wording because one of them is probably going to be right.

Descriptive Essay

   The aroma of the area hit me as soon as I stepped into the surroundings. The air had a sweet smell of burnt sugar followed by the smell of baked confections from the oven, prominent even from the entrance. The bakery was barren of life which most people would find strange if they didn't frequent the place and the only thing to keep me company was the cold, glass display right in the center of everything. The tranquility of the place was soon disturbed, however, when a gray feline stalked out from the back of the counter seemingly out of nowhere, and my eyes followed him to where he jumped on top of the only lone table of the entire store. His eyes glared back onto mines as I continue staring at him for a few seconds and I got the distinct feeling of a guard dog emitting from his tiny body daring me to do anything suspicious.

     Eventually, I turned my attention to what I came here for, but not before going over to the cat and stroking his dusty looking fur. His stiff back relaxed under my touch and his back arched as if gliding my hand to where he wanted it to be. I took a moment to appreciate how soft his fur felt and the different shades of gray that he had. It was quite relaxing and I would have spent more time if my stomach didn't start grumbling about the lack of substance that it didn't have all day. I went back to the display case where a line of bread, pastries, and cakes greeted me. My mouth drooled at the sight, but I patiently waited for the elderly woman to emerge from the back like she always does. I didn't have to wait long though when she appeared and the look of surprise suddenly appeared on her face when she saw me. I quickly ordered what I wanted: some cookies and a milk tea and left the bakery with a white plastic bag in hand. 

Argumentative Essay

Linda Chen

AP Language & Composition

Mr. Felder

31 December 2016

When our founding founders wrote the Constitution they had no idea of the many intruding factors of today’s society that would come into play of the numerous of controversial topics that loom over our day. With politicians arguing back and forth with what is the correct way to interpret the Constitution it is not a wonder that our politics is so divided in opinions. Of these topics, one that has sparked a long debate about is the concept of race. Although many people have agreed that our society is much more accepting than it was back in the 18th century, studies show that white people often feel uncomfortable talking about race and have high stress levels when they are in conversations about it. So why is that the case? This is because discrimination, even though viewed as rotten, is still ingrained into our system and will continue to be as long as our skin colors remain to be different.

Our society works in strange ways. What was viewed as socially acceptable in the 17th and 18th century was frowned upon at the turn of the new century. At the same time the idea of discrimination was never really gone because people still believed that one race was superior to the other. After all, why would people still be talking about it if it wasn’t important right? There is a saying called “history repeats itself.” While this saying is true at times, history does not exactly repeat, but is strikingly similar to one another. That is why the 21st century is vastly different from its ancestors, but is similar at the same time. We have moved on from most of our racist views but at the same time we have not. This is why stereotypes still exist and are part of our everyday society.

In addition, just by looking at our community today we can see how racist beliefs still grip the population. I mean just look at the recently elected president: Donald Trump. This man undoubtedly holds numerous of racist ideologies and isn’t afraid to announce them all out to the public. People either hate him or love him and obviously we have enough of the population to agree with him for Trump to have won the presidency. Although, not all the citizens who voted for Trump claims to agree with his racist ideas, they have willingly accepted it as perfectly fine for them to still be able to agree with him and look past it. Hence, it is clearly evident that discrimination is still alive and well in our nation because we can still accept racist ideas as okay.

In ways we discriminate ourselves as well. Look into any school and how people gather with one another. More often than not they gather based on either gender and of course race. Even in schools that boast racial diversity, people seek their own kin because they feel more comfortable with them rather than other. If I were to look at my own friends even I realize that the majority of them are Asians and back in middle school I would only hang out with Asians. Therefore, even if we were to deny that race plays no role in how we see people, unconsciously they still do even without you realizing it.

In the end, the outside matters more than the inside at times because it is the outside that people first see and immediately they have their own interpretation of what you are like at first glance. It is not the others fault that their skin color is different, but rather that society has already trained us to believe that certain groups are committed to act a certain way. Thus, discrimination will always be alive and well in our community as long as our skin color remains different from one another.

Second Blog: Corn-Pone Opinions

Rhetorical Analysis                                                                                                         
          In Corn-Pone Opinions written by Mark Twain, a well-known novelist, who expresses his mindset on the society of the late nineteenth century and reveals how the world revolves around conformity. Throughout his piece, he uses a series of rhetorical devices to help effectively verify his argument, some of these being anecdotes and rhetorical answers to broad questions. Anecdotes can grab the reader's attention immediately and this is exactly what Twain did by including it right away in the beginning. He explains the ideas of his childhood friend and refute it with his own points that he created as he grew up. In a way this anecdote also shows his argument in a subtle way because his idea was not inspired by his own mind but because of another human being. This demonstrates that even Twain's ideas on conformity are not at all original and he is also self-dependent on everybody else. In addition, Twain also uses rhetorical answers in paragraph 12 where he responds to extremely complex questions with a simple answer. This helps persuade the reader of his point because it proves how such puzzling questions about humans can be easily resolved through a mere idea that Twain states in his work.

Opinion Piece
          In a way I do agree with Twain's ideas on conformity, but to a certain degree. I do agree that people have this natural instinct to be self-dependent on others ideas and always follow what the majority does. However, I don't think that everybody is incapable of thinking for oneself. I believe that there are two types of people in the world: the majority and the minority. Twain saw the world the way he did because it is something that practically 99% of the population did. I believe that ideas come to life because of the minority; someone out there sparked it and because a good amount of people agreed to that idea, eventually becoming the norm in society. That one person might not be recognize and remembered in history books, but he/she was still the first to utter the words that changed people's viewpoints on a particular idea.

First Blog-Speech

     

Animal testing is the use of animals in commercial or scientific experiments. These experiments ensure that the product tested is safe for human use. Although animal testing have vastly improve medical research and benefit humanity by keeping them safe, animal testing is often brutal and inhumane. Defenseless creatures are subjugated to mistreatment by people and worse cases more often than not lead to death. According to PETA, laboratory animals are forced to inhale toxic fumes, are immobilized in restraint devices, have holes drilled into their skulls, have their skin burned off, and spines crushed. Thus, animal testing is a painful experience that animals shouldn't need to face.

Others might argue that animal testing is critical to the help of medical advancement since without it, vaccines wouldn't have been made and the majority of children would have died young. However, there are flaws in the system and not everything that works on animals have the same effect as it does on humans. A painkiller called Zomax that was used in the early 1980s is an example of this. When the drug was tested on animals they showed no ill symptoms, but when humans used it, it caused 14 deaths and more than a hundred life-threatening allergies. Therefore, animal testing should not be allowed because while they can result in countless of medical breakthroughs, not all of them are necessarily safe.









Some of Zinsser's advice that I followed in the previous 2 paragraphs are sexism, mood changers, and little qualifiers. Instead of constantly writing he/she in my paragraphs I used more broader terms that can refer to anyone such as humanity, humans, people, others so it wouldn't be limited to a certain gender. In addition, I started with a mood changer, however, in my second paragraph which I think makes my sentence more stronger instead of just connecting however with the previous sentence, resulting into a run-on. I also tried not to use too many little qualifiers which I noticed occurred frequently when I'm writing. After I reread my paragraphs, I deleted the little qualifiers that I didn't need but still had and I felt like my overall argument sounded much stronger.








Work Cited:

http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-experimentation/animals-used-experimentation-factsheets/animal-experiments-overview/
http://www.pcrm.org/research/healthcare-professionals/research-compendium/an-examination-of-animal-experiments
http://www.medicaldaily.com/animal-testing-long-unpretty-history-247217