Blog Post #3: Story of My Life

There is no single story that represents my life and who I am because I am not the same as anyone else but there are stories that capture different parts of who I am. One of them is Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I basically felt like I was raised in a cottage with seven dwarfs being that I am the oldest of five kids in my family and that there are seven people in my family. If my life was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs then I would be Snow White because she was basically like the "mom" to the dwarfs. She was constantly looking out for them, disciplining them, and keeping peace within the household. My position in my family definitely effects the position that I take during group work whether that is a good or a bad thing. I am used to calling the shots at home so I often become a dominator in groups and come off as way too bossy. On the other hand, I also tend to take on the role of the harmonizer because I have plenty of experience with settling conflicts.

While Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs represents how I interact with others, Aesop's fable called The Crow and the Pitcher reflects some of my personal skills. This fable is about a crow that is dying of thirst and comes across a pitcher full of water but the water is too low for him to dip his beak in and drink so he adds pebbles to the pitcher until the water level raises enough to be reachable. Just like the crow, I am determined. You can always count on me to work hard and to not give up without a fight. Similar to the crow I am also a problem solver; I am constantly thinking of new and creative ways to get things done. I often find myself taking on the role of initiator/contributor in groups because enjoy sharing my ideas with others and getting their feedback to improve them.

Blog Post #2: Test Reflection

After taking the practice AP exam today I found out that there are a lot of things that I can improve on over the next couple of months. Going into the exam, I had no idea what to expect. I hadn't taken AP Comp last year so I wasn't really sure how an AP English test would be set up and what the questions would ask. Overall I think that I did a little bit worse than I expected because I got a 55% but it was just a practice. My strengths were identifying literary devices and finding our the meaning of the literature. In order to do better next time, I am going to set some goals to improve my weaknesses.

My first goal is to improve my vocabulary. The test used a lot of vocab words that I was not familiar with. I noticed that a lot of the words used on the AP exam are the same as the ones used on the SAT. There are websites that have vocab lists from the SAT that I can make into flashcards to study over the next 8 months so that I will be more prepared. To make this into a measurable goal, I can try to reduce the amount of words used in the questions that are unfamiliar to me. On this test, there were 14 words that I didn't know used in the questions. I would like to lower that number by 3 or 4 every time that I take a practice exam.

Another thing that I struggled with was analyzing the text. To be more specific, I had trouble noticing a lot of the details in the literature that helped to answer the questions. My second goal is to become better at analyzing and interpreting literature and I can measure this by how many questions that I get right on the practice exams. In the "Thinking About Literature" chapter, there were a couple of tips for analyzing literature so I hope that with more practice and reading in the textbook, I will become better paying attention to the details in literature.

My final goal is to spread out my time wisely when taking the test. It only took me a little bit over 30 minutes to complete the test today. After grading my test, I wished that I hadn't rushed so much on the exam because if I would have used the extra 20 plus minutes that I wasted after finishing then I may have done better. By the time that I take the actual AP exam in May, I want to be able to comfortably finish this section of the test within just less than an hour so that I can make use of all of the time given to make sure that I am confident with my test answers.

Blog Post #1: Design

When it comes to blogs, design is almost everything; with graphics you can control what people will think of your blog before even reading the first post. When people look at my blog page, I want them to feel relaxed and interested. I used one of the watermark templates that has a meadow with the sky and a flower thoughtfully placed in the top right corner as the background. These graphics are very natural and simple. Through the basic simplicity of the design, I want to portray that my blog posts will be short and sweet but yet full of insight and carefully planned. The light blue and green colors in my template also help establish the intended mood. According to an article on color by Kendra Cherry, blue is "often described as peaceful, tranquil, secure, and orderly." The orange-red color used for my links puts emphasis on them and distinguishes them from the rest of the blog because of their warm color. The white font of my title corresponds with the white flower in the corner and creates a uniform, pure feel.

The two main fonts that I used throughout my blog are Indie Flower and Puritan. I used Indie Flower for the title and main headings because it looks a lot like my own handwriting. Indie Flower is also a more artistic, curvy font and according to an article on typography by Carrie Cousins fonts like this can "quickly establish a mood and work best when used at large sizes."  It's simple, neat, feminine, and asthetically pleasing. It also gives the blog more of a natural, traditional pen and paper feel.  I did not use Indie Flower as the font for my posts because it can be hard to read in the smaller font and could distract readers from the content of my blog posts. I chose Puritan for the blog posts because it is modern and professional but not over used and more unique than other similar looking san serif fonts.