1. Burgers 2025

The Memories We Made I would like to start this blog off by saying congratulations to all of you for completing this year. We really completed “the hardest Ap at American High School” (not my words). We all worked hard this year to prepare for the AP test which we took this year and I would like to say good job to all of you. Next, I would like to thank you all for helping me get through this year. A big part of why I was able to make it through this class is because I had peers like you who were experiencing it with me. I felt much safer knowing I had the support of my classmates who have been experiencing the same thing throughout the year.  Now, I would like to talk about the memories that we made this year, starting from the first annotations of the year all the way to the AP test. My favorite memory from this year is undoubtedly the Gatsby party just because of the amount of fun it was, however, every class was much more enjoyable than I expected it to be. I thought that this ...

I remember first entering AP English Language and Composition, regarding it as just another typical English class with the usual timed writes, grammar, and a growing list of books that I would half-read and overanalyze in fear of out of box questions on the test. But looking back now, it is insane how much more this year has been and the profound character growth this class has triggered within me. It is not just that my writing got significantly better, but I learned the importance of knowing the why behind what we read, wrote, and talked about.  In the beginning, writing was extremely intimidating with the rocky beginning of passage analysis. Especially, the introduction of blogs on identity made me worried that I would need to understand who I really am as a person, but I am just a mere high school student trying to navigate through the myriad experiences I encounter. Through the race unit, reading powerful voices and real experiences, I realized how much I still had to learn a...

  We made it! We finally took our APENG exam! I’m really proud of you guys and how far we have come. I know we’re not supposed to comment on the exam, but I’m going to anyway. What are they going to do, cancel my scores? Mrs. Smith, look away!   I remember stepping into the testing room and anticipating the essay section. I had a feeling that I would like the prompts a lot, so I was pretty excited to write! First, I had to get through the MCQ’s though. We started around five minutes late, which was actually better compared to my other APs. I was also really stoked for the donut holes that Mrs. Smith brought us for the break. After everything was ready, it was time for the MCQ section. I actually enjoyed most of the MCQ’s, especially the one about loquats. The entire time, I kept imagining them as persimmons, but after talking with Anthony Zhou about it after the exam, I realized that I was heavily mistaken. I thought the passage was really wholesome and heartwarming, though, a...

Dearly Beloved (too soon?), We are gathered here today to mourn (celebrate) the end of a chapter—the end of our journey with blogging for APENG, a closing reflective of the end of junior year. Remember that very first blog? When the theme of identity seemed so daunting and we were still frantically wondering whether we needed an MLA heading on our post. But, slowly, as we explored our anti-prejudice texts and became more comfortable with the nuances and overlaps of the vast concept of identity, we dug a little deeper than just the surface level. It became less about having everything about ourselves figured out and more about coming to terms about the parts of us that contradict and don’t always make logical sense.  Or when The Great Gatsby became our main focus, and with context exploration and synthesis writing, we switched our attention to analyzing America—the famed “American Dream” and the gradual disillusionment at the state of the country. The blogs then became less introsp...

Photo Credit: 686 × 386 As the digital age begins to engulf us in its mystique , the line between reality and imagination gets ever so blurred. The world around us begins to look like the enormously large glass slabs, which we place in our pockets, the dystopian land Orwell had preached of. In all this chaos, as we get to technology almost fusing with us to become one disheveled amalgam, the concern of our memories and thoughts must be taken seriously. For instance, imagine if Virtual Reality devices get so good that we can’t tell what real is apart from what is digital and fake. This could lead to people living in the real world as though they were in the virtual world. Our thought ideas and subconscious as well as memories would be rewritten according to the assumption that both must be the exact something. There may be many benefits, but there could be dire consequences as well. If someone were to think that they were in the virtual world and pick up a gun to play a shooter game it ...