The First Day

Dear Junior,

                I realize that your life is not ideal right now. What with your dad just dying and the constant, impending doom of the end of the world hanging over your head, I cannot even imagine how you deal with it. However, I come offering consolation for your current predicament by saying: be thankful you never had to experience the first day of AP English 11. Now, I know you do not know me very well, or at all for that matter, but trust me when I say you should be thankful.

First of all, I am possibly the most timid and shy person you will ever meet, with a heart similar to Rodney’s in my desire to treat people kindly. So I’m sure you can imagine timid, little old me entering AP English 11 on that first day of school after hearing all of the rumors. Oh, those rumors! Rumors spread by older classmates, siblings, and even teachers. All concluding that AP English was ultimately impossible. The work load. The discussions. The teacher. Each aspect of the class was twisted and mutilated into a fiery culmination of devastating fear and crippling apprehension. Or at least that’s how it seemed to me. So as I entered that first day, my knees shook miserably. My heart raced feverishly inside my chest that felt like an impossibly heavy weight was resting uncomfortably on it. As I entered the class it was dead silent. No one wanted to mess with this teacher. Not with all those rumors swirling around out there.

But what I have to tell you, Junior, is that I survived. It seemed overwhelming and miserable at the time, but I survived. And it was worth it. So worth it. So when you say things like “My whole life there never was a point to anything,” don’t hold yourself back to the joys in life (163). As difficult as situations may appear at first glance, there is always something good you can get out of it. And I understand when you say, “life has…always seemed a messy and heartbreaking and overall pointless affair,” because your life really has not been fair (143). Like the first day of AP English 11, we can all get caught up in the lies and fear that encompass our lives, but we need to learn how to deal with it in a positive way that will eventually help us. And when you say, “What difference does it make?...Die today, die a year from now,”  I once again understand where you’re coming from, but don’t hold yourself back from greatness due to your own indifference (244). So when the Voice says, “It does matter. All of it,” believe him/her (268). Please don’t go through life fixating on the times that you feel have destroyed you or the times where you felt hopeless and scared because that is no way to live a life. Be thankful that you didn’t have to undergo the first day of AP English 11, but be thankful for your own challenges in life. We may not see it at the time, but everything matters, and no matter how bad a situation may seem, if you try to seek the good in it, you will find something worthwhile. Please keep this in mind when you feel defeated and alone because everything really does matter.

Best Wishes,

                Nicola Zollinger

Blogging About Burls

            This weekend, I partook in the popular American past time of road-tripping. Lizzy Burl, the prodigy child of equally intelligent parents with juxtaposing accents of English and French, and I packed up the Burl family Odyssey and travelled down to Columbus. In Columbus, our plans were to visit her brother, David, at OSU, then travel to Hilliard-Bradley High School to watch our gymnastics teammate in the state tournament. As our journey began, so did the heavy droplets of water falling from the sky, haphazardly striking the windshield with an insurmountable force. Lizzy pointed out how mesmerizing these droplets were, as they defied gravity to sweep up the windshield, creating droplets that fussed around like constellations in the night time sky. This mesmerizing display enraptured us for the majority of the ride until we arrived at Goasis, or in Lizzy’s terms “A super gas station…with fudge.” After the luxurious pit stop, Lizzy broke out the biscotti, the Burl’s choice of car ride snack. After consuming the tantalizingly tasty biscotti, we arrived at OSU, where Lizzy and I played the roles of art critics as we wondered the student union. To get to the point, let’s just say that art isn’t the same as I thought it was.

 Next it was lunch time. After the whole gang was seated and picked out their various entrees, the waiter came to take our orders. Mrs. Burl, who ordered first, fell into a trap that many food connoisseurs fall into: memory loss. In her attempt to order a garden salad, she inadvertently ordered a Caesar salad…with Italian dressing on the side. The patient waiter paused for a moment, possibly attempting to rephrase the incorrect sounding words in his brain, and then cautiously questioned, “So you want a Caeser salad…do you want Caeser on the side?” To which Mrs. Burl responded, “No, I want a Caeser salad with Italian on the side.” She eventually got her desired salad and dressing, and for desert ordered a “banana slit.” The tolerant waiter inquired, “You mean a banana split.” Mrs. Burl flushed with embarrassment and concluded that, yes, it was the banana split that she in fact wanted.

 Now, our goal was to arrive at the gymnastics meet at 1:30, so as not to miss our teammate compete. However, in a typical late lunch haze, Mrs. Burl forgot where she and her husband had parked the car in the car garage. This resulted in a scavenger hunt for the minivan, which involved a frantic Lizzy thundering around from floor to floor in a desperate search. After fifteen minutes of intense searching, we identified the car and sped off with the hope of still making the meet on time. After communicating our teammates estimated time of vault, the GPS calculated an estimated time of arrival. The same time. Mrs. Burl anxiously hurried through the streets of a rural Columbus town while Lizzy and I hyperventilated in the backseat. When we arrived at the school, Lizzy and I sprinted faster than imaginable into the school, making complete fools of ourselves, and squealing to a halt at the front table to buy our tickets. In the process of obtaining tickets, our teammate’s boyfriend along with a group of his friends walked by and sincerely remarked, “You guys just missed her!” With a simultaneous jaw dropping mixed with disappointment, Lizzy and I turned back towards the door, only to hear, “Just kidding!” In the end, Lizzy and I had to wait another hour and a half to see our teammate compete, and it was definitely worth it. So is road tripping with the Burls.  

Searching Struggles

Every week I find myself pathetically staring at a blank Microsoft word document that in turn mockingly glares back at me. As I stare, I rack my brain for this week’s blog idea. Of course I need to try to be witty or funny or sincerely intelligent to honor the “AP English 12” part of my blog title. However, every week I struggle to come up with appropriate, engaging blog topics. Yes, my life is that boring. This week, however, I decided I would try to Google words in order to come up with a blog topic. Instead, I found a slew of humorous phrases that come up when googling certain words. Here are a few of the humorous ones topics that came up:

If you google :                     You might get: 

How Come                           My dog don’t bark

                                             My feet are always cold

                                             My turtle won’t eat

How to hop                           A train

                                             A fence

Why is                                  The ocean salty

                                             Kelly Ripa on crutches

Why is it that                       A cat accidently falls from the top

                                             The general public considers bribery to be immoral

                                             Men are responsible for the gender of their children

Why do                                Dogs eat poop

I’m scared of                       Driving

When do                              Babies roll over

My dog is                             Always licking me

My cat is                              Sneezing

My hamster                         Is fat

One time I                           Nibbled on a piece of cheese

                                            Saw Cady Heron

If my mom                           Were a platypus

White people                       Rapping poorly

What would happen if         A lake froze from the bottom to the top

When I smile                       My eyes squint

When I sing                         I sound like a kid

Certainly all of these questions are constantly on the mind of the American public, however, they did not provide me with a witty, funny, or intelligent blog. Better luck next week I suppose.

Teen Talk

Last week I was watching Teen Jeopardy, a much more entertaining rendition of the original Jeopardy game. This is because the questions are more applicable to the teenage brain, plus it is fun to see the teens embarrassed when Alex talks about their lives. One of the categories for that day was entitled “That’s An Understatement,” where the quotes or descriptions in the questions were exaggerated from reality. One of the questions in this category was, “Which character from Othello says, ‘My Lord, you know I love you’?” I immediately jumped off the couch and screamed “Iago!” I find it quite fun and even exciting when, through my daily travels, I encounter an AP English moment. In other words, a moment in the real world in which I have the ability to use my AP English knowledge in order to understand something, or when I understand something because of AP English. As our time in AP English begins to come to an end, I find it easier to look back on the experience with a more developed perspective. At the beginning of AP English 11, it is easy to get caught up in the whirl of rumors and expectations. And as the months progress into AP English 12, it is easy to forget what we are working towards. But now that the year is almost over, I can truly appreciate everything I have learned in AP English, and can see how the experience can apply to every aspect of my life, including Teen Jeopardy.

              

Essays vs. Data Sheets

Essays require more focused, intelligent thought.

Ugh!

The other day in English, I noticed that eleven out of the thirteen girls in our class were wearing boots, specifically ugg boots. I looked down at my own scruffily smudged converses, and wondered to myself were I had lost the memo about wearing boots. In High School, stereotypes always assert the idea of conformity, and the need for acceptance that one must have in their own society of peers. So much so is this acceptance amongst peers, that our class has 84.6% of the girls wearing the same style of footwear.   Similar statistics have appeared in the books we have read this year. For example, Gogol spends the majority of his life trying to fit in with society, and ends up losing much more than he anticipated from his self-centered conformity. Personally, I am not a big fan of boots, especially uggs. Some can definitely be cute, but it’s primarily the word that bothers me: “ugg.” It sounds like you have something caught in your throat; “uggggg.” Or it sounds like someone clearing their throat; “ugg..g..ggg..gg.” It is also the universal string of letters for deep disappointment; “uggghhhh.” These peculiar sounds that surround the name of the boot give off a negative connotation for the word, so I looked up the definition of “ugg” in order to clear some assumptions up. What I found for the definition was “a sheepskin boot or ugly.” Why would you choose to name your product after a word whose other meaning is ugly? Modern society is just so baffling…

Shhh...

A few weeks ago, I read a newspaper article entitled “The secret of life? Students have it.” The article describes a teacher who in 1999 shared her secrets of life with her business careers technology class at Stow-Munroe Falls High School. Every year since, she has asked her students to share their opinions about the secret of life. So, what do some students think is the secret of life?

- “Inside jokes. Late-night phone calls with best friends. Sleeping in. Waking up to a text message. Bonfires. Quoting movies. Drives to random places. Midnight trips to Walmart. Scary movies. Making a wish at 11:11 on the first star. Following your heart. Dedicating a song.”

- “Complimenting your enemy. Waterproof mascara. Best-friend days. Hearing that song that matches you situations. Never forgetting what someone said once their gone”

After reading these, I decided to think up my own list regarding the secret of life. Here it goes:

- Argyle socks. Dresses that twirl. Eating lettuce with chopsticks. Watching snow fall. Taking a nap with your dog. Reading by a fire. Melted chocolate chips at the bottom of a mug of hot chocolate. Seeing old friends. Making new friends. Dancing in your room when no one’s home. Getting a hand-written letter. Making someone’s day. Eating cookie dough. Eating cookie dough while your mom yells at you about raw eggs. Wearing pajamas all day. Puppies. Getting a sticker on an AP English paper. Running without getting out of breath. Road trips. Having no worries. Being in the hallway when no one else is. Sweatpants. Not having to put your contacts in for a whole day. Eating chocolate frosting out of the container. Eating ice cream out of the container. Making a snowman. Making gingerbread every time there is a snow day. Looking at old pictures. Looking at old pictures of your parents. Laughing. Listening to CDs in the car. Picking flowers. Growing your own vegetables. Singing when you are alone in the car. Rainy days when you are inside. Looking forward to the future. Priceless facial expressions.