APEnglish–Los Al

Period 4

Today started off with Annie and Brian getting in a fight with each other over a seat. All Mr. Eldridge said, “was it Adam or Eve that got them kicked out of the garden of Eden?” Brian was cheering and Annie was in a worse mood.

* Adam and team Cornbread were making a bunch of wierd hand gestures and flailing their arms.It looked like Adam was throwing food and Sean being his crazy self and surprisingly Eric Henson were snatching the air to grab little pieces of Cheese-Its or Chex Mix. I couldn’t tell.

* So then we started on today’s diciont:
“Once I am sure there’s nothing going on I step inside, letting the door thud shut”- Philip Larkin
Then Eldridge taught us some history about Larkin. He was a poet leaureate which was the top poet in England who worked for the king. Eldridge read us a poem that had the f word (don’t think I’m allowed to type it out) and about parents.

Anyways, the diction was focused on the word thud and its connotations. Then we had to replace the word thud with other verbs such as kicked, yahnked, smacked, clicked. Great stuff. At the end I heard Sean saying his list of words but all I could hear was the ooh sound that every word ended in. I think he used blew and grew. How the heck would a door grow? Maybe if it was wood and it was soaked in water?

* Ed sang that intro song to the Lion King Song (the one with the African voices) and I (tried to) looked it up and found that there was a Lion King 2. WHAT?!!! What other sequels are there for classic Disney movies?

* Then it was Hayley’s turn to talk about Antimetabole which reverses the word order
“Ask not what your country can do for you–ask what you can do for your country.” -JFK
Antimetabole reverses the words and changes the meaning (but not always)

*Mr. Eldridge asked why politicians use antimetabole. I forget who, but somebody said that it turns the tables on their opponents. Ronald Reagan was a famous president who used antimetabole a lot.

*Michelle had chiasmus, which is similar to antimetabole. As she was starting to read, a group started to whine about not getting their papers yet. Michelle attacked Eldridge for slacking off, which led to several “ooooh”s. Awesome.

Well, chiasmus is the repetition of ideas in inverted order but uses different words. An example: “To stop too fearful, and too faint to go.”

When Michelle ended her presentation, Eldridge asked her why it was important. After thinking about it she cam up with “so you can further learn.”

Eldridge then went to the board to talk about chiasmus and asked someone to read one of the examples. Tristan began to read the first sentence. Then he suddenly said a random sentence which I had no idea where it was on the paper. Mr. Eldridge then drew a diagram on the white board to show us why it was called chiasmus, which had something to do with connecting words with lines. Those lines created a cross which came from some ancient language which means chi (I think).

* Finally, Eldridge ended the day with the explaining the rationale part of the virtue essay, which hasn’t been assigned yet, so calm down you stress-cases, as Eldridge loves to say. He explained that we should go back to the dreaded Bedford Reader to do that part successfully. So all those weekend readings and assignments on definition or analysis weren’t useless after all.

If you’re up reading this and you happen to have Mr. Celestin, it’s good to know that I’m not the only one who didn’t do their Spirits yet. Crap.

Sean’s practiced technique of food consumption, AP style:

Period 5

Scribe Notes Wednesday Nov. 19, 2008

As we have all come to understand by now, today was once again unusual in Mr. Eldridge’s class. Class started with Chris learning that chairs without wheels generally do not roll well on tile. We soon got to work before Mr. E. came in, who proceeded to sit in a chair in the corner surveying the classroom. For some reason, he appeared to be dressed like a sports or Hollywood agent, with a blazer and sunglasses on top of his head. We began deciphering the Diction worksheet, which involved a person entering a room after it was empty and letting the door thud shut. Unfortunately, Zachglasser could not concentrate at all, looking quite forlorn as his eyes nearly filled with tears because Dessouky had not shown up. Suddenly, his face lit up like a small child as the door opened and Dessouky slyly hid his face with his hood in order to prevent detection from Mr. Eldridge. After Dessouky wandered around the class a couple times, we got back to work, when Erica told us that her “G-Ma makes some dank jelly!” After some more craziness, Shaina Denny! gave her trope on Apposition, with a vibrant purple apposition watermark on her paper that matched her clothes. Mr. E. asked her if she was related to Ben Stein (Bueller, Bueller, Bueller…) due to the great inflection of her voice. We got back to the diction worksheet, where I demonstrated to the class the difference between a thud and a slam by pounding on my desk with a fist and an open palm. The class contributed some awesome verbs to the action of shutting a door—among my favorites were head-butted, kicked, and trickled (perhaps the door became so hot it melted into a puddle?)

Some more hand gestures and odd sounds followed before Mr. E. motivated us by calling us the “weird 10%” of the school because we’re in AP. Then, we once again went over the dreaded Lady Montagu and her despicableness for writing such a complex letter. Mr. E. reinforced the importance of reading the prompt and understanding its requirements. He explained that 95% of the time the passage’s views will be logical, because most passages don’t argue that women should stay home and do housework or that racism is a positive part of society, unless the AP authoritarians feel like giving us a satire to screw with our heads or because they’re really racist.

One more task down, and to the virtue essay we went. Mr. E. was astounded by Dessouky’s outstanding memory that allowed him to remember the whole packet without even looking at it, and Mr. Eldridge also decided to clarify the difference between pre-writing and post-writing. After asking several questions to help us understand the essay better and getting little feedback, Mr. E. turned to the Gumdrops of Doom, who had trouble answering the questions and became labeled as the “Space Cadets.” He asked how many rhetorical modes we needed, and I foolishly said at least 1 (I didn’t realize this was obvious since the answer couldn’t have been 0) and the class settled on 1 or 2. Mr. E. was midsentence when the bell rang and everyone scampered off the door. Another adventure down, another one awaits tomorrow.

-Alex “The Kolkin” Kolkin

Filed under: Daily Scribe and tagged Antimetabole, apposition, Ben Stein, chiasmus, Diction, Ed Guo making trouble, Lady Montagu, Sean acting crazy, Space Cadets, What is Tristan doing?, Zachglasser