Mrs. Ho's AP Lang - 2021/2022

  Thankfully, the first semester of school is coming to an end in two weeks, and the great reward of a full two weeks off without having to worry about homework or tests is within sight. With such an extended amount of time off of school, a popular activity over winter break is to go on vacation. People go on stay-cations to nearby beach resorts, small vacations to nearby cities, or farther, larger-scale trips to luxurious destinations worldwide. Personally, I was never able to experience vacations over winter break. Even though I love the cold weather, my family does not, and we stuck to going on vacation during summer vacation. I longed to go on a winter vacation to a cold place and envied friends and classmates who were able to do so. This all changed, however, during winter break two years ago. My family began a new tradition where each year we would rent a house for a week, and then experience the surrounding area through both artificial experiences, such as walking around in ...

The other day, Mrs. Ho had us analyze the song Good 4 You by Olivia Rodrigo. Immediately after listening to the video, I was reminded of another song, Rodrigo's debut single and probably her most notable song, Driver’s License . The opening line for Driver’s License goes, “I got my driver's license last week.” Not only is this a very catchy line, but, for me, this is also a true statement. Last week I received my driver's license. After over a year of practicing driving with my permit, I was able to pass my driving test on my first try!  I left school early to go to the DMV to take my test. The sweat dripped down my forehead as I stood impatiently in the long line for driving tests. Although I think I am a great driver, I was not confident in my ability to pass the test. Fortunately, I only made very few mistakes, so I passed and received my driver's license. Currently, I am sixteen years old meaning, in Florida, I could have my license. In New Jersey, where I am fro...

     When I first started writing this, I wanted to talk about my new aerial tricks and flips compared to when I began this school year, but I think this developed into more of a reflection blog post. Semester one of our junior year is almost over! Only a few weeks left and then we have a break. I think I can speak for everyone when I say that this has been a tiring semester and that there have been many changes.      Personally, I think I grew a lot this past semester, both academically and mentally. As a student, I admit, my time management is still terrible especially considering I meant to start this two hours ago. Despite that challenge, I think I have still managed to learn other important lessons. Most importantly, I stopped stressing over every small assignment. I learned to work hard and get a good grade, but not worry as much. I truly realized that one small assignment or even test will not make or break my grade. This is one of the best academic ...

     Time flies when you’re having fun - that’s the cliche saying that everyone loves to use. However, this saying is extremely true, and I have experienced this first-hand this year. We are now nearing the end of the first semester of school, and time honestly couldn’t have flown by any faster than it has.      I don’t know about you, but to me, it really does feel like school just started. It feels like yesterday when I walked into school for the first time and saw all of my friends. It is crazy to think that that was now over three months ago.      The thought of time going by is a scary one and one that makes me question reality itself. It always seems like every year, time speeds up even more. It is scary to think that if time is going by so fast now, in the future, it will probably feel like time is passing at light speed.           I know semester 2 is much longer than semester 1, but I really don’t know i...

               God's green earth will never see a movie more brilliant than the masterpiece that is Pitch Perfect. Even a decade after its release in 2012, the jokes still hit, the plot is still gripping, and the music is still aca awesome. The musical comedy has since birthed two sequels, appropriately named Pitch Perfect 2 and Pitch Perfect 3, making up the best trilogy ever known to man. The most memorable part of these movies is the music. From the unforgettable covers/mashups including “Since You Been Gone”, “Titanium”, and “Magic”, to the original songs like “Cups” and the second movie’s “Flashlight”, the Pitch Perfect movies unarguably have the best soundtracks out of any movie franchise ever. Another outstanding quality of these movies is their humor. I still laugh audibly at every joke, even after hearing them numerous times. These factors make every second of these movies a work of art, but Pitch Perfect is more than just a musical ...

 Its basketball season, which means crazy amounts of conditioning and a crazy amount of time consumed out of my day from getting homework done. I love basketball season, working hard to become a better player, love the game, love playing other teams and the competition, don't get me wrong, but it can be so draining and theres just so much time I have out of my day.  Especially because midterms are coming up and we are just a few weeks away from winter break. There is a huge amount of work given to us to get done before this first semester ends. With school, all this work, and basketball it gives me no free time during the week. I am a big lifter and always lift six times a week and because its close to the semester ending and we have a bunch of basketball games late at night and practices it gives me no choice to lift most of the week. Besides all of the time consumed with hours put into basketball it does get me physically in shape for the long run, not muscular, but in tip t...

      In around a month or so, I will be moving houses. I know a lot of the people reading this right now have never been to my house, but the house I am living in now is pretty iconic to my family. We’ve lived in this house for over 8 years, or since I was around 9 years old. That’s a pretty long time to be living in one house.       While I am really excited to move to a bigger house, it’s going to be sad leaving my current house and neighborhood. Though it’s small, there has always been something special about my current neighborhood. It’s small, peaceful, and really nice. I have also loved living in this current house. It has a very open layout and has a lot of space so that my family has room. I am sure that the next family that moves here will love it.      The next house I am moving to is much bigger than my current home. It is a two-story house and has a lot of room. It has everything we need, and is completely worth the move, as...

Have you ever experienced that feeling of waking up early and getting ready for school on your birthday? Well, I have not.  My entire life I have been deprived of this experience and left wondering what it really feels like to have school on your birthday. As a child living in America with a birthday on December 31st, New Years Eve, I have never had school on my birthday since this day is  considered a holiday. When I was younger, seeing everyone get a birthday crown and have the entire class sing happy birthday while handing out cake was something I always wanted.  Recently, I have wondered what my birthday would be like if I did have it on a school day. I can just imagine waking up in the morning at 6:30am to my entire family singing happy birthday to me. While still half asleep, my mom tells me it's time to wake up and go to school. Super not excited to go to school but happy it's my birthday, I get dressed and ready to go to school. I probably straightened my hair, ma...

  Chanukah during the year Chanukah is here, and it is earlier than usual! Chanukah is my favorite time of the year because it is an eight-day long holiday. Each night I celebrate the holiday in the best ways. I always go to the parties that my Synagogue throws, spend family time lighting the Chanukiah, and eat latkes and donuts. On the first night of Chanukah, I went to the beach to watch fireworks and eat jelly donuts. It was a perfect day and activity to welcome in the first night. When I got home, I lit the candles with my family. That concludes the first night that welcomed in the holiday.  The second night of Chanukah, my friends came over and we went swimming and made sugar cookies! I have never made sugar cookies before this, and now, I will always stick to making them. I did not think they were going to come out tasty because of the lack of baking skills I have, but I can confidently say that they were the best sugar cookies I have ever eaten. I concluded ...

       Over Thanksgiving break, one of my friends since middle school and I went to universal for two days. I have not been to Universal since a couple of years before the pandemic hit, and I do not get to see my friend Dani often since we go to different schools.  Since it was the day after Thanksgiving, the parks, as well as CityWalk, were packed. The lines were over 100 minutes for a lot of them, including most of the Harry Potter rides, and their new Velocicoaster. Even the Dr. Seuss Trolly was over an hour, and in my opinion, that ride is not even good. We stayed at one of Universal’s hotels, so we got to go to the park an hour before it opened, and even then the wait time for Velocicoaster said 105 minutes, which is insane.  Universal has some special activities during the holidays, including a holiday parade that was sponsored by Macy’s, so it was just a smaller version of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, as well as a special light show on the H...

Most people I know have had a babysitter at some point in their lives. Whether that was when they were infants, toddlers, or all the way up to now. I was one of those people. I had a babysitter. Well, to be honest, she was more than just a babysitter. She did everything. She was like a third parent. Her name was Albena. She lost her battle against stomach cancer on June 22, 2020.  Albena had just moved to America from Bulgaria when she first started working for my family. I was ten months old. I read somewhere that people normally start to develop a memory when they are about two years old. So I literally can't remember my life without her. She watched me grow up. One time she told me a story of the first time she saw me walking when I was one year old. She told me that when my family got back from our trip to Israel, I walked into the house and surprised her.  I have no idea what my childhood would have looked like without Albena. My little sister, Eden, and I would always pl...

          When considering something to write about for our last blog of this semester I was set on finding something more interesting, not about school, and stress in our lives. Travel was the first thing that popped into my head.            Everyone has travelled somewhere, whether it was to somewhere in Florida, in the United States, or outside of the country. I find it to be super exciting. The thrill of going to a new place, learning a new culture, picking up a few terms in a new language, seeing the history of the place you’re visiting, taking part in fun excursions, and taking a break from our hectic lives back home is just what most are looking for. Personally I love to travel for all these reasons and more. There are so many adventures and new experiences that we can have when travelling. I can tell you, from all the places I’ve travelled to so far, I have enjoyed Costa Rica the most. My family and I rode ATV’s, r...

  I’ve been trying- emphasis on the word “trying”- to learn how to meditate and be mindful for the better part of two years, and even though I’m a long way from getting to where I want to be on my mindfulness journey, I still have a few tricks up my sleeve. The biggest factor that has helped me has been gratitude. Expressing gratitude for people and things in our life, even to ourselves can have benefits. People don’t realize how many opportunities they have to be grateful, and that’s a shame, because gratitude is a powerful tool that helps us be in the moment, and appreciate what we have. As we come out of the back end of turkey week, it feels poignant to mention the importance of gratitude. According to healthline, expressing gratitude contributes to health by lowering stress. This in turn strengthens the immune system, fortifying our body not only mentally, but physically. Another study cited by healthline shows a better mental health outcome after practicing gratitude. Gratitud...

     As we are slowly approaching our senior year of high school, we all need to start deciding about college. Recently, I have been thinking about what colleges to tour and what type of area I want to be living in.       This past month I went to New York to not only see my family but to also tour a college that was very interested in me for athletics purposes. As I sat down with my mom going to register to take the tour they ask the question: “What major do you want to pursuit”. There I go with my “uh oh”, since I have mixed emotions. There are 3 sections of me that I see myself majoring in, which include: media production, sports nutrition, and media communication. This school was so small that they don’t even have an undecided option since they sort of want you to know what you want to major in. After staring at the screen for a few seconds, I look at my mom and say “I have no idea”. Well, in the end, I clicked the option for media communication wi...

 Ori Shai 11/29/21 AP Lang                                                                                   Chanukah in November     It's nearly December, it's cold out, it's the end of the first semester of school, and it's time for some of the most loved holidays. The temperature has set in the mood for winter and December as it has changed from 85 to 65 degrees here in Florida. The chilly weather creates a feeling of nostalgia for me as I reminisce about drinking hot chocolate near the t.v as a younger child. I also remember celebrating one of the most fun Jewish Holidays, Chanukah.      Chanukah has actually come early this year. The holiday usually comes in around early/mid-December, but this year it came in la...

Anyone who knows me well knows that I love chocolate. My mom used to say that I love chocolate so much, I would “sell my soul for chocolate”.  It’s not just the actual candy chocolate that I love, but I also love anything that is chocolate flavored. For example, I love chocolate ice cream, cake, cupcakes, frosting, chocolate mousse, and so many more tasty and chocolate flavored desserts.  Even though I love chocolate so much, I don’t eat as much of it as I used to because I don’t like most American chocolates. I don’t know why, but it just seems like British and South African chocolate, such as Cadbury's, is so much tastier than American chocolate, such as Hershey’s.   However, there are a few occasional American chocolates that are actually really good. I like Ghirardelli chocolate and M&M’s, but I miss South African chocolate a lot.  I remember when I was a little child, my mom would pick me up from school everyday except Fridays. This is because on Friday...

  Ariella Green Week 11: This Time of the Year      Don’t ya hate the weeks leading up to winter break?      As a student, I find that this is the most stressful and rushed time of the year. Not only are there so many holidays that require us to visit our family, but we’re also wrapping up the semester while trying not to destroy our grades. Since there is so much to do, some of us probably weren’t able to enjoy our break. If I wasn’t babysitting or cooking, I was doing school work.       Thanksgiving break is the calm before the storm. These next few weeks will be filled with homework and studying. If we don’t do well on our midterms our report cards will not be too great, and if our report cards don’t look too great, then the colleges we apply to will not be too happy about that. They’re not kidding when they say that junior year is the most stressful year of high school.     ...

      I don't think there is anyone out there who truly loves standardized tests like the SAT or ACT, but everyone just kind of accepts that they exist and take them anyways. I have always wondered why so many people accept them because they really aren't reliable predictors of anything for college.     One thing that standardized tests claim to predict is future success in life. However, they are often very bad at doing so with only a 0.5 correlation with measuring future success with high scores. The SAT and ACT are good at discovering future academic success in college (the SAT adds 15% more predictive power than grades alone), but your future exists past college. These tests can't reliably measure perseverance, conscientiousness, or interpersonal skills, which are all traits determined to be important in most careers. The SAT and ACT show nothing to colleges about what kind of a person you are (if you study hard, if you like to hang out with friend...

  I am not the kind of person who likes to try new things. I eat the same things, I wear the same things, I do the same things, and I definitely prefer to watch the same things. Generally, I have two or three television shows that I watch each episode of on the day they come out, and I watch nothing else. Since these shows’ seasons have either recently concluded or have yet to start, I found myself without a show to watch. I looked on Netflix to see if there were any shows similar to the ones I already watch, but when there wasn’t, I decided to watch something completely new. Even after deciding to watch something new, I still wasn’t sure on which specific show to watch. I settled on the show Survivor. I had heard Mrs. Leibowitz talk positively about the show in the past and had read Ben’s blog post a couple of weeks ago about it, so I knew the show had to be at least somewhat decent. I watched one episode to see if I would enjoy it, and while it wasn’t spectacular television, I ...

     Although it has been just around 90 days since the school year started, it feels like it's been a year. We have all been working so hard to do the best we can in this challenging year. Not only is it our junior year of high school, considered the most difficult grade, but also we are coming back from a year of Covid. The pandemic gave us a year of virtual learning, so we did not get the entire learning experience we needed; most of us are still getting used to being back in person. The change in learning has made these past few weeks of school feel so much more exhausting than they should have been. Last week especially, many students expressed their exhaustion as Thanksgiving break approached. For me, these past two days have been extremely tiring and challenging because of all the tests and assignments teachers attempted to cram in before going on break. Now that it is finally Thanksgiving break, I feel like I can take a minute to relax, something that I have not h...

Thanksgiving break!!! Thanksgiving is coming up this week, and I could not be happier. I love Thanksgiving for many reasons but mainly because I get to enjoy my break from school in the best weather. Thanksgiving is always at the time of a year where there is a cold front. Even though we live in Florida and rarely get chilly weather, on Thanksgiving it is somehow always chilly. I usually finish all of the homework that I have to complete for the vacation on Wednesday, so that way I can enjoy my vacation without worrying about homework. When Thursday comes, I get so excited because it is Turkey day. Although I do not like turkey, it is still my favorite holiday. I start my family dinner at my cousins’ house at 3 pm. The earliest dinners I will ever have. We start off with appetizers and do not get to the main meal until 6 pm. My favorite dishes served at Thanksgiving dinner are the sweet potatoes with marshmallows and the cranberry dip. Depending on what time we finish dinner, we go to ...

          Some days, I feel lost and anxious, and it lingers for most of the day. I am the most undecided person about what I want for my future. You know when you have to fill out those forms on standardized tests where you put what type of major you’re thinking about. I have never put anything other than the numbers for undecided. It’s super overwhelming.            I have so many ideas of something I would want to major in and take part in as a future career, but I don’t know which one I would actually be good at and want to do. What should I do? Then I start to question, what if there is something else that I don’t know of yet and may be really good at and really enjoy? It’s a mess. I love music and movies, but it’s super hard to get jobs in those industries. Then there are more academic careers like something to do with chemistry and history. I also love animals and would enjoy doing something that includes them, the ...

I think I can assume that all of us have a fear. Some are rational and others irrational, but we have all felt scared before. Honestly, this past week has been stressful for me because of a fear of mine, but it gave me inspiration for this blog post, so it's ok! So my question of the week is what exactly is fear? According to an article, fear is defined as “the anticipation of pain.” First, it is important to separate fear from anxiety. Some of the differences is that anxiety tends to be more internalized and generalized thoughts where fear is specific and immediate. The problem is, fear is still a vague term. We know it's a feeling, but how do you analyze that? What comes first, the feeling or the reaction? Where does fear come from? Fear is a very concept idea and not very defined. A lot of the research is theories and not completely confirmed. There are many different experiments and research done based off of this. Some theories believe that the emotion of fear is first, ...

          With the holidays coming up, it may be hard to find the perfect gift, making the wholesome practice of giving to your loved ones feel like a chore. This, however, is not a problem for me, as I like to consider myself a gift-giving pro. From my extensive knowledge on the subject, I intend to give advice that will help even the most hopeless gift giver, give the best gifts this holiday season. First, you must know what not to get someone. The biggest and most common mistake you can make while gift-giving is giving someone something they already have and just don't need more of. My whole family is guilty of this one, with my dad getting a new frying pan every year, adding to his seemingly endless collection of frying pans that no one will ever use. Gifts like these might seem practical and thoughtful on the surface but are honestly sad excuses for gifts that the giver put little to no thought into (no offense dad,). An easy way to avoid making this...

Recently, I have started watching a new show called Manifest. The show is about a flight, specifically flight 828 that was mainly just like any other flight except for some unexpected turbulence. However, when arriving in New York City, the passengers, flight crew and captain  come to the realization that they have been gone for 5 ½ years. For everyone on that plane though, it's only been a few hours but for everyone else, it's been five and a half years of mourning, grief and believing these people from flight 828 are dead or have disappeared. Once landing, some met with their family, friends and loved ones while others didn’t but either way, time had passed, people had moved on and the world had changed.  Even though I am not far into the show and am only halfway through the first season, I really enjoy the show. A few days ago, while watching the show, I thought to myself, What would happen if I was on that plane? Now of course, this show is a supernatural, fantasy, scienc...