Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Testing Tuesday

Hello everyone~!
    First of all: Happy late Easter! I hope you all had a great weekend/holiday! I know that I did. We went over to my grandmother's house for Easter; my grandparents, aunt, cousin, uncle, mom's cousin (second cousin?), brother, sister, mom, dad, sister's boyfriend, and I were all there. It was pretty fun! What all did you guys do? Go anywhere, meet anyone?
    So, this week at school, all of the sophomores across the county are taking the Gateway. In case you didn't know: the Gateway is an essay that you have to write and pass in order to graduate high school. There are two different essays -- Biology and World History. Yesterday, we took the science one. It wasn't terrible.... well, it wasn't good, either. But I suppose it could have been worse. See, I would have been okay with just about any topic (ecology, parts of the cell, etc.) except for genetics. Genetics are horribly confusing. Whoever decided that high schoolers should have to learn about genetic variety, structure of DNA, and expression of genes/traits is a horrible person. And of course... the one topic that I was desperately hoping not to receive was the one I was stuck with! But, hey, I did manage to write nearly 5 pages! Hopefully some of that writing answered the questions I was given. The Gateway is graded on a scale of 1 to 5; 3 is passing. I'm pretty confident that I got at least a 3, but it would take a miracle for me to receive a 5 on the genetics essay.
    Tomorrow, I'm taking the World History Gateway. I'm not sure what topic I'll get for that one, either. But, it has been narrowed down to three possible subjects: the Byzantines, the Mongol Empire, and the River Valley civilizations and technologies. Personally, I'm hoping for the River Valley topic; they were a lot of fun to learn about, so writing about them shouldn't be too hard! The Byzantine Empire wouldn't be super terrible, either. So the only topic that I'm not wanting to write about is the Mongols. They did so much, and there were so many different leaders! How am I supposed to remember who was who, and who did what, and where exactly they invaded? I'm sure that the documents they give us will help, but I'm still hoping for one of the other two main ideas. Good news is, though, even if I do have to write about the Mongols, I'll probably still do better than I did with genetics. There are a lot of names and dates to remember about the Mongol Empire, but hey, that's likely the most amount of detail they'll ask for. If I can, I'll definitely add more (you do get graded on previous knowledge and development of ideas, after all), but I won't have to worry as much about remembering every little thing.
     Well, wish me luck!
      ~Mattie

     UPDATE: Just got to AP World History. My teacher just said that she made a mistake, there are two other possible topics we might have to write about tomorrow that NO ONE IS PREPARED FOR!!! They are: the Indian Class Structure, and Latin America in general!!! THIS IS NOT GOOD. I REPEAT: NOT GOOD. I NEED STUDY TIME BUT GATEWAY IS FIRST THING TOMORROW MORNING!!!!!

1 comment:

  1. Hi Mattie,
    MAJOR OOPS on Teacher's part. Here's hoping you've got some tantalizing material to study that'll just tuck itself happily into your brain ready to be transformed, if needed, onto paper in perfect form!

    Glad you had a nice Easter.
    Mocha and I had a quiet day at home, topped off with a splendid (and looooong) conversation with a friend in California.

    Now TODAY'S weather is the kind everyone always hopes we have on Easter: PERFECT.

    Keep us posted on how you've done on your tests!
    Ms Lu

    ReplyDelete