Sunday, May 17, 2009

So AP Tests are done... I'm done with school right??

NO! As soon as the AP Tests got finished a got assigned a project in four out of my five AP classes. Now I don't blame the teachers for giving me work, but all of the projects just came at me at once and I got pretty overwhelmed. In AP English we have to read a bunch of essays and do reading notebooks on them, as well as write a video essay of some sort (but that's due in a while). I've got nothing in AP Calculus- I'm pretty home free from now on- and on the quiz on Friday I got 18/20 which I'm very okay with. In AP Statistics, I just finished the final project after seven hours of work on the computer. I started it on Thursday, when I handed out the survey which asked what show you preferred more- Seinfeld or Friends? I got 100 surveys back, and I analyzed them today performing several tests of significance and independence. The project is worth half of our final grade, and I think I did pretty well on it- well I did okay on it.

In my AP U.S. History class we've got two projects going- TWO! The first is due Friday. We are supposed to use a poster board to show someone's life. The good thing about it is that it can be anyone's life- past or present, fictional or non-fictional. The only limitation is that we have to have two full pages of data about the person. I'm thinking of talking about Stalin. Although I have been to Russia two times, I still don't know a lot about Stalin. He's a very complicated man and he made a very complicated Russia. His reign is very interesting to me as his industrial advancements are contradicted and overshadowed by his harsh policies and hostile treatment of people. I know that he was paranoid all of the time, and eliminated all enemies within Russia very quickly. When people ask me about Stalin, I think I should know more about him so I can tell those people what they want to know. This is a good opportunity and excuse for me to brush up on my Stalin history and examine his life.

The other U.S. History project is our final project. Our teacher left the door pretty wide open here, and we can do basically whatever we want. He said it can be as didactic as we want it to be, but I am leaning towards more didactic and in depth. However, I still want it to be fun and entertaining. I know my friends are reenacting a battle in history, but I think I want to do something else. I don't know, reenacting a battle doesn't seem very specific and doesn't catch my fancy. Nonetheless, they will probably do a really good job with it and make it really interesting to watch. My plan is to take five different wars and to take a song and change the words to show each war. The five wars are the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. I am not sure what songs I want to use right now, so if you have any ideas just leave a comment at the end of this entry- thanks! Also I am going to print off copies of all the words and give them to my classmates so they can sing along. This brings another decision- to write the lyrics to modern songs or older songs. These are some possibilities of what songs I'm thinking of doing: "I Kissed a Girl," "Bye, Bye, Bye," "My Heart Will Go On," "Eye of the Tiger," "We are the Champions," "The Circle of Life," "A Whole New World," and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." I want to do songs where everyone knows the tune, and I think that most people are familiar with those songs.

In AP Chemistry, we are doing a lab in which we have to identity which acids fit which element, given the characteristics found in the experiment match the characteristics of the element. This should be okay though because it can be mostly done during school.

So this is my life for the next few weeks. I am a little frightened because it is just a lot of work. However, I will be so happy once everything is all done. I'm going to be ready for summer.

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