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My AP Literature exam experience was like a roller coaster. I set my alarm to wake me up at 7:00 but I accidentally turned it off and went back to sleep. When I woke up again, it was already 7:40! I quickly got ready and ran out my house with a banana in my hand. Needless to say, I sped like crazy to the testing center and arrived around 8:05. It turned out that I had turned into the wrong entrance so it took even more time to get to the testing center. When I finally got there, I told the teachers standing out the center what teacher and what period I had AP Lit. They gave me the room number to go to but when I got there it turned out that was the wrong room. They had told me the wrong room number! So Ms. Iton was there and she had to direct me to the correct room which was literally on the other side of the testing center. Nonetheless, I arrived at my correct room around 8:12 and the class was waiting on me to start the exam. I felt kind of bad. So I wasn’t in the best condition or mood when I took the exam but it turned out to be a lot easier than I had expected it to be. The multiple choice section was what surprised me the most actually. All the practice ones we’ve been doing in class were really hard compared to the kind of questions that were on the actual exam. Even the poems were relatively easy to understand. I actually thought about this after the exam, but maybe it wasn’t that much easier but I was just that much more prepared after taking AP Lit. Either way, I felt really confident about my performance on the multiple choice section. The essay section was next and I was feeling pretty good about that before I got to write. When I saw the essay prompt for the open question, I got a giddy feeling. The prompt fit perfectly with the novel Frankenstein. I talked about how the monster was exiled from its birth and how that sets off the entire storyline of revenge between the creator and creation. The other two essays with the poetry and passage ones were relatively easy too. I really like the Centry Quilt poem as I talked about how the quilt was more than a bedsheet, but a powerful object that the author uses to satisfy her nostalgic desires. The passage one with Henry Clarevence was the hardest essay in my opinion. I got a perfect picture of what kind of person he was and I felt like I did a nice job in relaying how the author accomplished this. Overall, I felt like I got a 4 or 5!

Ros and guil

Ironic—the perfect way to describe Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. It’s interesting to read a novel that I already know the penultimate ending to. The scene where Rosencrantz and Guildenstern discover the contents of the letter they are ordered to deliver to the British King is interesting to say the least. Until that point, both Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are mere pawns in the grander scheme of things. However, it’s like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern lose their innocence when they find out the content of the letter. The situation reminded me of the loss of innocence in All The Kings Men through the acquirement of knowledge. The idea of free will vs. fate is predominant in this play. After discovering the letter, Guildenstern convinces Rosencrantz not to disclose the content of the letter to anyone, including Hamlet himself. Guildenstern’s reason for doing this is that he believes in fate. He claims that everyone will eventually die so they must not interfere with things. This is highly ironic because it reflects what happens earlier in the scene where Rosencrantz thinks about jumping off the ship to go against fate. Just as he prepares to jump off, Rosencrantz begins to think that it could also be fate for him to jump off this ship. Similarly, Guildenstern believes that he is going with fate, and he is—to his own death. It’s important to note that there is a significant change in mood in the play. In the initial stages of the play, the question of fate and free will were presented in a purely comic way. There was no tension. However, towards the end of the play tension begins to emerge. The audience already knows that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are going to die—the source of the tension. I want to talk about Guildenstern’s death speech. His speech is eerily similar to the To Be or Not to Be speech by Hamlet. Both talk about how miserable life is and that death derives its power not from the nature of death itself, but the uncertainty of the afterlife. I really loved analyzing the to be or not to be speech for a past assignment and I think that really helped me understand this play even more.

I want to talk about the upcoming AP Lit exam which is only a week away! I have my first AP exam tomorrow and it still feels like it’s not real or something. The only AP exams I feel prepared are for the stat, lit, and macro econ. I think that for bio and physics I’m going to fail. Well AP exams this year are so much different than how they were last year because these don’t really count for anything. Nonetheless, I’m going to just take the test to the best of my abilities and see what I get!