#36 Post AP post

On the very day of the AP English test, May 16^th, 2012, I was extremely nervous yet I couldn’t really do anything to prepare me for it. I find this test extremely similar to the SAT critical reading sections. Except this time, the passages are harder to understand, more metaphors and symbolic meaning behind the message in the text, and longer without any breaks in between the reading. As for the pacing, I find myself pretty balanced that I didn’t rush through any passage due to the time constrain. However, there are still questions that I simply have to guess. Yet those choices are usually between 2 or 3 answer choices, so I guess it wasn’t that bed. As for the essay section, I find the doubt vs certainty essay extremely difficult due to my bad pacing for the first 2 essays, the synthesis and analysis essay. For the synthesis essay, I didn’t really do a conversional way as to go into 3 examples to support my point. Instead, I wrote the 3 paragraphs by first giving reasons why UPS is in danger, then the advantages of UPS and finally the ways to restructure the post office to save it from extinction. I hope I didn’t use any weird sentence usage and structure. I tend to write too long of a sentence with lots of subordinate clause that may be far from its subject. As for the analysis essay, I think I did a good job that I was able to include lots of facts and detail in the analysis. However, this essay took me too much time that for the last essay, I couldn’t come out with good examples to support my claims. Overall, I think I should be able to do fine on this test (hope so).

#37 Response to "What's Wrong with Gay Marriage"

In response to Katha Pollitt’s passage on “What’s Wrong with Gay Marriage?”, I find that people are seriously obsessed with the whole concept of marriage and pass through some complicated legal term in order to acquire such title or label that they are officially married. Why do people hope to gain through marriage? Do they want marriage in order to have some legal document to show others that they are legally bonded together that if they were to cheat on others, they need to face some legal procedure such as divorced and split their property? I guess marriage is more than simply dating like couples that it provides security to couple. To legally split responsibility of their wealth and kids if they were to have one, married couple can go through legal term if they were to have conflicts. Marriage is more than simply a testimony of eternal love and bond between people. It all comes down to money. I guess this is some issue regarding to why homosexual people are trying to fight for their right to get married. Living together as couple can easily turn to strangers the very next day. If they have kids, either side of the couple can easily walk away without taking responsibility. Most of the time, the lady would have to take care of the kids and the man would simply go away to find new dates. By marrying, women are better protected.

#36 response to Wenke "Too Much Pressure"

I totally can’t agree with what most students think cheating is acceptable. I totally agree with their argument that cheaters always win that they are rarely caught. Even if they are caught, they can wave their lowest grade out of the scale that it wouldn’t have an effect on their grade. Overall, the cheater can spend less effort and get a higher grade than those who study yet only get the 80s. Many times, people would just say, “Why do I have to place myself at such a disadvantage? I should start cheating as well to keep up with others.” This issue is fundamentally the school responsibility that they should enforce stricter rules and place harder punishment to those who cheated without letting the cheater felt they can escape easily that consequences for cheating is relatively low. I wouldn’t know if cheating is common in our school, but I would say there are indeed several cases where people cheat. I totally agree that no one in their life have ever committed any cheating. However, I will like to clarify what’s the definition of cheating. Cheating would be completely copying and plagiarizing other people’s work. In many cases, people are merely paraphrasing other’s idea when they want to take a look at other’s homework assignment. It is fine people can share works that by studying other’s work, it inspire creativity and makes oneself better. For example, would it be cheating if I wrote an essay based on what I have read in Shakespeare’s play? Would I be copying and cheating by incorporating some plots that share similarity to his play? No. Cheating is definitely bad. There are no excuses for it. However, paraphrasing is ok that at least you are putting the ideas down with your own word and have thought about them instead of just copying the answers down.   

#35: Defining Integrity

What exactly is integrity? According to Merriam Webster dictionary, integrity is defined as firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values. This definition is pretty legitimate and commonly defined by this definition. However, in our school, integrity seems to mean more than just firmly adherence to a code. It is becoming a slogan or a symbol for school that it was meant to mean honesty, hard working and being punctual to school or classes. The first time I have heard this word being widely used was after the school forced us to look at the movie “School Ties”. With this movie, it talks about how students need to face peer pressures and racial discrimination in order to maintain their integrity and moral values. I find it extremely suitable for this movie that students are supposed to follow school codes and conducts, especially for things such as cheating or lying. However, for me, integrity really means to have self discipline. With all the firmly adherence to code or moral or artistic values, it all goes down to whether a person can follow it personally to have good morality. To have integrity, it means the person has to be self conscious of what are the moral values, not just simply following the rules without really knowing why it’s implemented or enforced upon society.

# 34 Response to Leong's "Being a Chink"

Have I ever felt I have to protect my parents sometime in my life to defend them? Usually, it would be my parents that will be watching my back and constantly carefully monitor me to protect me from unnecessary harm, although occasionally they would want me to deal with problems myself to gain independence. Anyway, I can only say there are indeed some occasion where my parents were insulted or at least discriminated for their skin color and English ability when we went traveling in the state. I can totally understand Leong’s feeling. Trained with a second language at an early age, my parents are usually dependent on me when we went to foreign countries. Most of the time, I simply wished to stand on the side and let my parents struggling to do all the talking due to my shyness. I would often be scolded at for my impassiveness toward helping them when they struggle to communicate and understand some words, ranging from buying a Big Mac in Macdonald to reading a menu in a restaurant. Although our family was never been insulted with the word chink before, just simply the word “Chinese” pisses our family off. Many times when I tried to explain some terms for my parents in Chinese, the casher would suddenly whisper “Ha, Chinese” followed by some laughter or staring as if we were inferior.  Although he did not say anything else, just the word referring us as Chinese offended me. For me, I hated to be labeled the same as the people whom we have serious conflict with due to complicated political reason. Perhaps the word Chinese is innocuous, however it’s the way people use it in context and say it with sarcasm that makes me feel uncomfortable.

Mandarin endearment
親愛的~~ (dear one)
小可愛 (little cute one)
哈尼~ ( honey)

#33 School Influence

What exactly is the right amount of school influence on student’s life? What is the responsibility of the school on students? This is the very question that school have to ask themselves when they set up school curriculum. In many religious schools, school basically dominates student’s daily life. Students have to follow strict religious rules of the school and attend church ceremonies and follow the teachings of the bible, quran or whatever religion one believes in. In this type of school, people are told to obey their teachers respectfully and no one can ever question the authority. Besides teaching the students on academics, the school is also responsible in teaching students proper manners. However, in a more liberal school, students are merely taught with academics. Behavior problem is usually not the school’s problem but the parents. Outside of classroom, students are able to have their own social life without school interference. People are allowed to have intimate relationship between one another and couples are allowed in school. The amount of school influence on student’s life varies greatly on the curriculum, its background, and the social-culture norm the school institutes in. For example, in most Asian school, the school focuses on pure academic subjects such as math, science, literatures or history. However, in most school with western education, extracurricular activities such as team sports or volunteer plays a big part that the school provide for their students. It seriously depends on what type of school we are talking about.

# 32 The Earth is full

Paul Gliding’s speech “The Earth is Full” on TEDX is certainly inspiring that seek to raise awareness of the effect of Global warming and over consumptions in the world today. For me, Paul Gliding speech mainly uses metaphors and deeply describes how the world would end up if we continue our destructive behaviors to the environment. Unlike many speeches about Global Warming, Gliding decides to not provide any scientific data or statistical analysis to illustrate his point. Instead, he simply want the audience to imagine the future when our earth begins to die and unable to sustain overwhelming human activities. Despite how he decide to just make the speech fill with flowery, descriptive and philosophical languages, I believe he is just trying to use some emotional appeal to awaken some of the public who, even with so much scientific evidences provided, decides to believe that global warming is not real. I certainly agree with Gliding that this is a serious issue that if we don’t do something about it, nature will come back and destroy us. However, I believe simply talk about the effects is not enough. Gliding fails to make any suggestion of how to solve this urgent issue or at least talk about some of the programs that aware people tried to do to save the environment which are beginning to bring some positive effects in solving the issue. For me, Paul Gliding is inflating his speech with some fancy language and metaphors without solid content that seek to solve the issue at hand.