Blog Post #3 If my life were a fable...

To illustrate my life as a fable, I have chosen to outline two small experiences that I've had.  That's it: just two.

The first is a story of my hometown: Mason, Ohio.  Being recently named the seventh best place to live, Mason is pretty close to a small garden paradise -- but I didn't always think of it like that.  As a young kid I somehow convinced myself that I had to move to California.  I thought that everything there would be better: the weather, the education, the technology.  But when I visited San Francisco on vacation for the first time in my life, I saw a slightly different story.  I took an apple from the tree of knowledge, and learned of the poverty, hippies, and other things strange to me that existed in the real world.  Unlike Adam and Eve, though, I was able to return to my hometown, and realize that the grass really isn't greener on the other side.

Another story, which just happened a few weeks ago deals with a very complicated issue: racial relations.  For most of my young life I had always assumed the best in people.  I had always assumed that everyone was kindhearted enough to want to give and receive gifts from a knothole in a tree.  Until one day at the shoestore in which I work, an elderly woman made extremely degrading comments to my African American coworker.  As if an innocent man had been convicted right before my eyes, I instantly lost my innocence.  Though most of our population is filled with Atticuses, racism is not dead.

Blog Post #2: Diagnostic Test

I took my first practice AP "diagnostic test" today in class.  It was a bit strange getting to take what is essentially the final exam for a class that you have just started, but I really liked it for a few reasons.  For one, it very simply outlined essentially what the class is all about, and what we will learn.  But perhaps more importantly it assessed very clearly my skills from the very beginning of enrolling in the class.  From the start of the class to the final AP test in May, I will be able to very clearly quantify exactly how much I improved my skills in taking this course -- something is very rare in an English class.  But not only will I be able to see exactly how much I improved in the raw score, but I will see exactly in which areas and specific skills I improved.  And from this diagnostic test, I can quite clearly see which areas need improvement.

The most obvious are in need of improvement is the recognition of each type of literature.  This is most definitely because I have never been in a class that has given detailed differentiation between specific types of poetry and literature.  This is painstakingly obvious in the very first question -- which distressed me initially.  When asked simply which type of poem the passage was, I was alarmed to realize that I had never heard a formal definition of any of the answers and was left only to decide with my rare hearing of the words in context -- if at all.  An ode, like ode to joy?  A sonnet, a ballad, each sounding like a type of poetry but for the life of me I could not tell you the difference.  But will all the confusion, I was quite reassured that I could simply shrug it off for this test, surely I'll learn the difference in the class.  Of all of the mistakes made in the diagnostic exam, these types of questions clearly seem to be the easiest to correct.  By the time of the test in May, I hope to clearly know all types of poetry and literature, and be able to get every question of this type correct on the AP test.

A slightly more subtle mistake that I often make is with concentration.  With especially long passages, I seem to have less endurance and occasionally gloss over important details.  With an very small, highly metaphorical passages, I can easily tackle each complex turn in focus or tone, but with long, drawn out pieces, the main idea is extremely convoluted.  To me, it seems that with more words, there can be more problems and more ways for the reader to trip up or be misled.  With a short poem though, nearly every line is important; so there is not very far you can wander off to.  By the time of the AP test, however, I hope to improve my ability to sift through the "junk" to find the meaningful phrases and ideas.  I will hopefully have the same scores on sections with short and long passages -- and hopefully they will both be high!

So there are my goals.  This diagnostic test has done great things as it has clearly quantified the areas that I need to improve upon.  As I complete AP English, I will focus on learning how to identify different types of literature, and I will improve my focusing and sifting ability on lengthy passages.  With these skills in mind I am sure that I will learn a lot about literature and how to read it in this class, and hopefully get a 5 on the exam!

Blog Post #1: Rationale for the Design of this Blog

My blog has gone under a few changes, and is now custom designed.  Though it is still quite simple and minimalistic, every detail was chosen purposefully.  It is not crowded with details or put behind a giant watercolor because that is not me; I am a simple man.  In fact, the only picture to be found is a small silhouette of a few birds peacefully taking to the sky.  This picture is not to be stared at for its beauty -- after all, it is nearly just as plain as the rest of the blog.  It is meant to be a symbol.  A symbol for nature, a symbol for power or transcendence.  I prefer these simple designs because they are open to interpretation.  Anyone can see something that they like in it, whether its nature, elegance, power or any of the other interpretations that could possibly result.

This theme is continued much more subtly and personally with the background color of the blog.  This creamy color reminds me of the aging and yellowing pages of my favorite book: The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.  This translation of a beautiful french piece is quite famous for its various interpretations, and minimal detail.  This is one of my favorite writing styles because the lack of detail makes the piece extremely intimate.  Without being bothered about unimportant descriptions of appearance or other superficial things, Saint Exupery describes only the personality of each character.  This enables the reader to essentially implement personal details into the story, instantly making the story and its morals extremely applicable.  This is a style of writing that I hope to implement when I write posts for this blog, so I hope that I will be inspired by these small details every time that I write a post.

Welcome to my Blog

Hello, my name is Jack Lund and this is my new blog that will house many of my future assignments for my AP Literature and Composition class.  My senior year at Mason High School is going to be pretty crazy with AP classes, college applications, cross country, track, and a multitude of other extracurriculars that I participate in -- but I wouldn't trade it for the world.  I love every activity and class that I participate in, and I hope that I am going to love writing in this blog for class as well!