It's Literature Time

Throughout this next year, this blog will start to take shape to center around my next AP English course, AP English Literature and Composition. This is supposed to be the more difficult brother of the AP English classes. I'm proud to say that I'm going to be taking both in my high school years. Yeah, I'm taking other AP classes, but who gives a shit about those?

This is an English blog, after all. AP Lit is a notoriously difficult class in many high schools because of the absurd amount of reading you're required to do (and effective reading, at that). You're required to read a good amount of fiction novels, plays, and poems from various time periods with varying degrees of difficulty and style + craft. And no, they're not those "fun" type of books like Harry Potter and The Summer I Turned Pretty. The books you actually read are fairly challenging books that have complex themes and many literary elements, neatly packaged with that classic, confusing language. 

I'm not going to sugar coat it---reading Shakespeare is hard and takes a lot of patience. However, I think the reason we read a ton of Shakespeare is to become proficient at looking at complex text quickly to write an essay about it on the test. In reality, merely looking at the text isn't going help you write a good essay; rather, it's analyzing it and looking at it closely for a good, defensible interpretation of whatever the prompt is asking. If you can get good at understanding the basic meaning quickly, though, you have more time to read it closer and process your thoughts in planning the essay.

 If you thought AP Lang had a tight timer, then you may be even more surprised to know that AP Literature's timer is worse. This time, you only get 2 hours to do all 3 essays, instead of 2 hours and 15 minutes. This is likely because you don't need to read a bunch of sources, but you still have to read a work of poetry and a work of prose. If the poetry is complicated, good luck trying to read it fast and strip it for meaning in 40 minutes. Then, be ready to do that again for the prose essay. By the way, this is assuming that you split up your time evenly.

Of course, there are multiple choice questions, this time 55 for some reason. It's just another gauntlet you'll have to endure, but honestly I expect that now.

I received a guide book from my teacher that goes over strategies and tips for writing the essays, so I'll be sure to refer to that and report what I found helpful here. Get ready for a lot of  posts about a particular book or about a poem.

                                                                                                                     

Watching Dominator's "Making Breakfast" part 1, potato scene

 About 3 weeks ago, my friend posted 3 videos of him cooking breakfast on his YouTube channel. Today, I wanted to talk about the first scene of the first video.

 

From the first video, it appears as though he's using his phone to record everything, as evident by the lack of his two hands appearing in the frame at the same time. This makes sense, as he is alone throughout the videos and does not have expensive equipment that would allow him to attach a camera to his body. 

 

In the first part of Video 1, Dominic appears to be cutting some potatoes that were skinned off camera. He performs a cutting motion with a large kitchen knife and jump cuts to a frame of the potatoes cut in half. This was presumably done to save time on the video and because of a need for 2 hands. After this, the video cuts to him putting some avocado oil to grease the pan. It is unclear if the stove is on. In the next shot, he is placing the halved potatoes through a vegetable dicer with a clamshell-type mechanism. It is white and green. He continues to put potatoes through this tool to dice the potatoes, but eventually one of the potatoes gets stuck in the dicer because the bottom tank was filled. Initially, he tries to push the potato through, but it fails to move through. However, because he already applied force, it becomes wedged between the blades. Instead of emptying the potatoes into the pan to create more space, he forces it further. This makes the potato more stuck. Finally, he gives up and places the potatoes into the pan to create more space. Interestingly, instead of reattempting to push the potato through the blades with the empty container, he says to the camera "It got stuck..." and tries to pry it out with his hands. He claims that he "didn't think this through at all" and that you can "add it to the hot take of bloopers, wow". He gets it out with relative ease and cuts the potato by hand. 

 What's intriguing about this particular scene is the fact that he does not realize that the dicer is full, despite already cutting many potatoes beforehand. Also, it's strange that he didn't just put the potato back through the machine, especially since it was already 25% of the way through the blades. It's hard to tell from the video, but perhaps he didn't because potato became mangled from the blade or not in tact enough to go through the tool. It's funny, and should definitely be added to the bloopers.

 

More Zelda (Link's Awakening/Oracle) Inspired Dungeons

 Well, since I've been playing a lot of Zelda recently,  I decided to find more random images online and imagine they were dungeons. Here goes.

 

Level 1 

Bathroom Maze 

 

I imagine that each stall requires a small key to open and that the toilets warp you to different underground portions with puzzles. The mini-boss would be a hand dryer and the boss would be a toilet, obviously.

 

Level 2 

Love Library at San Diego State University

 

 When I visited this campus a while back, I remembered that the main library was a gigantic dome that goes deep underground for many floors. It was massive. Definitely a real-life Zelda dungeon. 

 

Level 3

Parking Garage

 

Multiple floors, dark, and a boss at the roof. 

 

I'll keep updating with more stuff later.  

Something I've been writing.

 This is a random line from something I've been writing for the Creative_Writing_Projects folder on my Mac. It's unserious and not really well-written. But, ever since I read a Redditor's play about "The Din Tai Fung Scandal", I wanted to give it a shot. Lol.

 

 

DEUTERAGONIST: What she gave you was a look. That’s it. Not a damn legal document. Not an invitation for sex. Not a damn wedding invitation. Just a fuckin’ look, bro. The rest? That was you, in your busted lil’ head. 

 

(Beat. MAIN_CHARACTER shifts.)

 

MAIN_CHARACTER: So what now, huh? I’m just the neighborhood creep? Some walking red flag? That’s who I am now?

 

DEUTERAGONIST: I’m not saying that!

MAIN_CHAR: You bullshittin’ me again, man.

 

Yeah, I know that's not really how you format a play. When you read a play in books/ebooks, it kind of looks like that.  

 

The Seed Satchel to Success

I thought I'd never be able to do it, but I did:

Yup. This little high schooler with Redditor writing skills actually managed to get a fuckin' five on AP Lang. 

Honestly, I didn't really feel too confident in my ability to do super well on this exam before taking it. I'd read my sample essays and think: Yeah, these aren't at all like the ones College Board puts out as actual good examples. I felt like my blog writing was just a way for me to tell myself I was getting some writing practice, even if it wasn't actually helping me. 

But looking at this score, maybe it did..? For all I know, this 5 could've been 1 point away from being a 4. A scoring scale this small could mean anything.  

Of course, I'm proud of myself for this. I feel like this fades a lot of (not all) doubt that I was actually O.K. at writing.

 I'm not saying that I am good at writing or that the learning stops here (as cringey as that sounds), I'm just saying that I can do a good enough job at writing to get by.

I feel it's better to be honest about my abilities. While I may have gotten a 5, my writing still needs a ton of work in certain areas. And I think I'm willing to work on that as I continue to write in this blog.

And as I prepare for AP English Literature. Yes, it still has 3 essays. And a lot of books. 

**BTW, I got a fuckin' five on APUSH too. Insanely shocked about that.

eBook Readers

Since it's summer, I have the luxury of a bit more free time to do stuff like reading. Don't get me wrong—I'm not some fantasy-obsessed bookworm who spends every waking moment buried in books. I read casually when I feel like I've wasted too much time on YouTube. I usually read general non-fiction because I like normal language without any over-descriptive wordy paragraphs. I wouldn’t say I hate fiction—Gatsby and TKAM are some of my favorites—but it’s not usually my first choice. 

Whenever I read, I almost exclusively do it digitally. Some people hate it because it doesn't give the same feeling as reading a normal book (obviously), but I don't mind it that much. Honestly, I don't really feel like buying a real book. Granted, I do miss the smell of the book, the feel of turning the pages and the satisfaction you get seeing your progress. The good part of the eBooks, however, is the vast amount of books you can carry with you and the ability to read at night. I can carry thousands of books in my pocket to read anywhere. I can adjust the font, size and the background color. Best of all, I can highlight and annotate the text much easier (without trying to awkwardly use sticky notes to avoid ruining the book).

Indeed, annotating the text as I read is perhaps the biggest reason I choose to read books digitally. Even though I'm a slow reader, I typically forget a big portion of what I read from any given book after a few weeks go by. If I'm reading passively and not interacting with the text (by annotating), I find it much harder to remember what I read and what my thoughts were about it. 

Let's take the example here with Mel Robbin's The Let Them Theory. 

I have simple annotations to provide a reaction to the text in a random e-reader on Arch Linux: 

Admittedly, this is a bit basic. You can make the annotations more interesting by converting the ePUBS to PDFS, which will then allow you to draw freely on the pages. Unfortunately, all the features that ePUBS offer on most software goes away (meaning no more dark screen or changing the font size). 

 

Just doing this made me remember a bit more of what I was reading. After I finished this book, I felt like I could better recall each chapter's main idea. If I couldn't then I had my notes and highlights to remind me what piqued my interest.

 

Give it a shot. 

Ummm..

Lifeguard: Can I get your name?

Kid: No.

Lifeguard: Umm... What?