Jocelyn's English Blog

Response: At the beginning of the school year, I had to decide which elective class I wanted to switch into first period. I was interested in psychology, but I wasn't sure if I would actually enjoy the subject enough to take the AP version. After learning a little more about it, I realized that I genuinely enjoyed understanding why people think and behave the way they do. I shared my positive opinion about the subject and class with my friend. Later, the same asked me, "Why do you want to take AP Psychology especially after so many warned you about its difficulty and the teacher you would have?" I was able to explain and connect different concepts I had learned about to my actual life as well as telling that friend I had a lot of fun there so my opinion of it was a positive one. Summary: In class we read a story about a man who took the life of another soldier in the Vietnam War and how it haunted him afterwards. We discussed the morality and justification there might be ...

Response: For the most part, this class has been going well. I need to improve on managing my time with my six other AP classes so I can get the work done for this class faster. I haven't found the class to be super challenging yet. However there are definitely things we've done that I had to think longer about to fully grasp. I really enjoy the discussions we've had between classmates and I hope we get to do more of those in the future. Summary: We took a stance on whether or not we thought there was such a thing as a "good kill" and wrote a proper paragraph stating and defending our claim.  Reflection: The discussions we had prior to writing our paragraphs gave me practice on taking a position on a controversial topic and defending it with reasoning and evidence. Writing the paragraph in a time limit as helped give the experience on what it'd be like writing during the AP exam. In the future, I can use this experience to better address complex issues and ful...

Response: I enjoy class discussion the most. I like hearing my classmate's opinions on different subjects and their own perspectives on what they believe. I have great classmates that can have educated discussions and state their views without posing their own opinions as fact. They're also really smart and often make me consider things that I hadn't thought of before. That's what makes them really great to work with and talk to.  Summary: In class, we reviewed paragraph structure again and then chose a stance on whether owning things can be detrimental to one's sense of self and whether we thought extensive knowledge counted as owning something. Then we supported our claims by writing our experiences, observations, and readings about the matter.  Reflection: Our lessons today can be useful in the future as it taught me to develop a claim and support it with personal experiences, observations, and readings to get my point across better. I can use these types of evid...

Response: Something I will never fully understand is why the universe exists in the first place. I've learned a great deal about how the world began and how it continues to change but there is still no definite answer as to why there is something rather than nothing. God or The Big Bang theory explains how the universe came to be but not its reason for existing. As people develop better technology and discover more about space we may be able to answer some more questions about our world. However, the enormous size and complexity of the universe makes it difficult to believe that I will ever understand it all.  Summary: Today in class we took notes on paragraph structure overview including how they should be at least ten sentences to properly state and support a claim. We also made claims and then supported them by writing down our own observations, experiences, and readings. Reflection: This will be useful for the rest of the year because understanding paragraph structure helps me ...

Response:  The most creative things I've ever made was a walk in art installation a couple years ago. The idea behind it was the progression of man. As you walked through the room pieces of mirrors dangling from the walls reflected small pieces of you to see. Once you made it past the first wall an afterimage of you was projected onto the wall like a colored shadow. Passing each wall left an image of you on it and as you're about to exit you can see almost all your images and how your position changed as moved throughout the room. This stands out to me as my best work because of the scale of it. It was such a large room and took a long time to get all the pieces together including setting up the system to project the after images all throughout. Summary: Today in class we listened to and pulled out the rhetorical situation from Trump's speech about border control analyzing both his tone and the methods of persuasion he used.  Reflection: Analyzing the rhetorical situation h...

Response: Living in Atlanta has really showed me how different people's lives can be when they live so close together. Lakeside and its surrounding neighborhoods are situated in a nice quiet suburban type of area however you could drive less than 15 minutes and be in a bustling city. Atlanta is also one of the most culturally and ethnically diverse cities I've been to as its full of a lot of minorities including immigrants. It's taught me to be open to listening to other's life experiences but also not take one person's story as fact. If someone was unfamiliar with out city I'd want them to know it's full of close knit communities and the people love going out and having fun but will also be there for each other.  Summary: Today, we listened to and analyzed K eisha Lance Bottoms' s speech as mayor after the BLM protests had turned into riots that were destroying the city, seeing how she used the rhetorical appeals and situations to appeal to the communit...

 Response: One thing that makes me different from people is my overwhelming need for community. Everyone likes company but at the end of the day most people enjoy their alone time to relax. I become relaxed when I'm around the people I like so I always want them by my side. This also fuels my drive to do certain things that would give me more time to be around my friends or to receive validation. Academic validation is one of the things I enjoy the most and it pushes me to take harder classes and work harder to keep my grades up to get it.  Summary. Today in class, we watched different videos some being excerpts from movies and analyzed their rhetorical situations and the appeals they used. Afterward we took a quiz that included reading comprehension and understanding claims.  Response: Being able to recognize the rhetorical situation and find things like the speaker, purpose, and audience can help you understand something even without knowing the full background or in th...

Response: During exam season last year, I was a week out from all my AP exams and it was my first time taking more than one AP exam in a year since freshmen are only allowed to take one. Multiple of my teachers decided to assign final projects and test guides due that week. I had so much work to do and felt completely lost on where to start so I'd be able to get it done. It was stressing me out to the point of me having a panic attack. I had to take a break, collect myself, and make a plan on what to do so I could move forward. Summary: Today in class we worked to identify different types of claims in an actual article and categorized them. Reflection: Being able to pull out claims from an article is such an important skill so you're able to see what the author is actually arguing for. Deciphering what type of claims they are and what point the author is trying to make with it can also help show how much evidence each of their opinions has supporting it. 

Response: When I was a child, I fully believed ASAP Rocky and Travis Scott were the same person. I've always had a hard time remembering both faces and names. I'd mix up real people with fictional people and vice versa. I thought the same about Nicki Minaj and Cardi B. I'd also confidently talk about these people despite not being able to differentiate between them. Summary: I was out sick and unable to get the information about what we did in class before posting. Reflection: Missing because I wasn't in class.

Response: In freshman year I had a large friend group made up of people from multiple schools. We'd all hang out every Sunday, and eventually there was a divide because the girls who went to the same school were closer to each other than the ones who didn't. Two of the girls accused a few others of purposefully excluding them, and they argued a lot. My goal was to get them to understand that seeing each other every day at school just made some people closer. However, I should've acknowledged that they were right first and then asked what we all could've done better like in the example of how to get out of a ticket. Summary: Today we read parts of the book Thank You for Arguing and discussed methods to argue more effectively.  Reflection: Understanding different methods of arguing can get you a lot farther than getting loud and in people's faces all the time. It'll also help us recognize when someone is trying to use these methods on us.

Response: A couple of months ago I wanted to convince my parents to let me go to a concert on a random school night. I tried persuading them by saying how cheap the tickets were and how easy it'd be to get to the venue and back. However, I found pathos to be most effective in this case. I complained about how stressed I had been with it being exam season and how I hadn't had much time to relax. They gave in after I played up how much the stress was getting to me, and I got my concert trip.  Summary: Today in class we went over ethos, paths, and logos and shared the meanings behind our names.  Reflection: The presentations from others showed me how much value different things in our lives really hold. I had never thought about it before because my name doesn't have a personal story, but it was really interesting to hear how much it meant to others, showing how two people can have the same thing and cherish it drastically differently. 

Response: I think I'll have to debate the extent to which the past has had an effect on the present. There have been people in all of my social circles that only look at current circumstances to decide what they believe as truth. It is likely the number of people like that will increase as I grow older. Despite that, I firmly believe the truth can be subjective based on personal experiences and perception. I know it can be hard for people to consider factors they themselves have not experienced, which is why I believe I will have to argue for the influence of the past in my adulthood.  Summary: We took notes on the rhetorical appeals and reviewed examples of them. Reflection: Seeing how ethos, pathos, and logos could be used in real life was important, as a lot of adulthood is arguing to convince other people about things. Reviewing the rhetorical appeals can help you argue better so you're more likely to get your way. 

 I have a couple of goals to achieve this year to better prepare myself for college prep and senior year. I hope to get at least a 4 on all my AP exams, preferably a 5. I'm learning to not procrastinate to get As in all my classes as well. I also want to learn to study and manage my tasks better. I'm hoping achieving these goals will satisfy my need for perfection and make my college years easier.