2020 AP Exam Essay
Don't worry I'm not going to make you read an entire essay that I know was not so good. I'm just going to include some excerpts that include some mistakes that I want to talk about.
-Zachary
Introduction Paragraph
Dirksen’s position on the issue lying before congress is made brutally clear very early on in his speech. The civil rights bill is set as a goal that lawmakers since Herbert Hoover have been punished for pursuing. He alludes to the way that Hoover was “castigated” and “calumniated” for trying to enact a civil rights act.
Body Paragraph
Dirksen uses a very steady sentence structure throughout his speech, with some short abrupt sentences woven between his otherwise long and flowing ones. He uses these short sentences to draw the listener’s attention to what he is saying. This rhythm in his sentences makes Dirksen’s speech flow much more smoothly and it allows for his ideas to penetrate the listener’s mind much more effectively.
Conclusion Paragraph
As the speech comes to an end, Dirksen states his purpose once more in order to drive home his point and avoid any twisting of his words. He also uses especially unique punctuation in his final remarks in order to grab the reader and the listener’s attention.
What's Wrong With It?
This essay is a rhetorical analysis of a text that was provided to me in the exam. Now that I am looking back on it, it has become glaringly clear why I failed this exam. There is no introduction to the essay. I didn't give any context or introduce any ideas to the reader. I just threw you in the deep end of the information.
What Could Be Better?
This body paragraph is actually not bad at all. My analysis of the rhetorical strategies the author was employing were actually pretty solid. The issue here is that you, the reader, have no idea who "Dirksen" is. There is a huge lack of context here.
Final Notes on the Essay
The concluding paragraph of the essay was very long winded. It was mostly talking about the ending of the text that I was provided and not actually concluding my argument. Finally, I think that I've improved in a big way since this essay was written.
UN Speech Contest Entry
This next artifact is a speech that I wrote as an entry to the UN Speech contest. I was given a prompt which was something along the lines of: How can AI Technology be Applied to Benefit Curacao? I did research on the topic and wrote the following speech. I was then picked as one of three finalists to present my speech at a UN event. The audience included the Prime Minister of Curacao along with several other Government officials.
How Curacao Could Benefit from AI Technology
Good afternoon to Prime Minister Eugene Ruggenathe, members of the Curacao Consular Corps, and other distinguished guests. My name is Zachary Rodrigues and I attend Curacao American Preparatory School.
The 5th Industrial Revolution has only very recently begun, AI technology is very young. The idea of Artificial Intelligence dates back to 1956 when John McCarthy first introduced the programming language still used in AI today. AI has a giant number of applications that would benefit any country that took advantage of them.
AI technology itself is incredibly complex and hard to understand. In essence, it works by combining large amounts of data and intelligent algorithms, which allows the software to learn automatically from patterns in data. Eventually, with enough training, AI software will be able to learn in an almost human capacity. This type of computer learning can be applied in many ways to improve daily life.
An important issue in Curacao is traffic safety. AI technology can help make this problem easier to control. Software exists right now that can monitor a person’s driving habits and alert someone if that person is being unsafe. This can be used by business owners whose employees drive cars or trucks for the company. The software, with the use of a camera, can detect phone use, where the driver is looking, and how fast the car is moving. Using all this data and parameters set by a supervisor the software can detect when the rules are broken and immediately alert a human.
The government could use AI in a multitude of ways in Curacao. AI software can be used to boost tourism in Curacao. It is being used to make translation programs much smoother and faster. The software can be taught a language and how the grammar and composition of that language works. In Curacao, software like this can be used to break barriers between English, Dutch, Spanish, and Papiamentu. The learning computers can even learn how to speak the languages so that they can speak the translations.
AI also enhances automation in many types of labor. Tedious tasks that take humans a very long time to complete can be passed on to AI. In Curacao, for example, I see government workers manually painting road lines. If a truck was equipped with AI and the necessary hardware, all the workers would have to do is drive that truck down the street. The software would be able to calculate exactly how much paint to dispense and how wide the line should be, based on information entered once by workers.
AI does have some drawbacks that we need to be aware of as we try to use the technology for improvement. While computers will eventually be able to learn how to do certain tasks, they will likely never learn how to feel emotions. This means that a computer in control of something that could hurt humans could be very dangerous. Self-driving cars are a good example of this issue. If AI software is told to drive the car to a location as fast as possible it may try to drive to that location at max speed and hit a pedestrian on the way. We as humans need to teach AI software to take into account the world around it. All of the things that could possibly go wrong with all types of AI inventions need to be variables in the software’s programming.
I believe that Curacao would greatly benefit from AI technology if it were implemented on the island. Many of the issues that affect the entire country could be solved or at least minimized by AI. The only limitation AI faces in the world is the fact that it can become unsafe if it is not closely monitored. AI is otherwise, only beneficial to the world.
Unit 1 Project ENC 1101
My very first project for ENC 1101 was a really good starting point for the class. The assignment was pretty simple. We had to write about what we wonder about writing or questions we have about writing. We read a few sources about concepts that students often misunderstand or perceive incorrectly. I think what I was able to come up with connects well to the claims that I made in my personal writing theory.
What is Good Writing?
The “Lone Genius Model” is the most interesting writing myth that we discussed in class. It is the commonly held belief that “good writers” are able to sit down and write perfect pieces of writing with no bumps or obstacles. Yumna Samie explains some of those obstacles and how to get over them in her video about the writing process. She explains that all writers can have a hard time getting started. Whenever I experience writer’s block I usually just take a break from the writing and think about something else for a while. I always imagined that there must be people who don’t experience that frustrating wall that I so often deal with. That idea pushed me to believe these made up “Lone Geniuses” must not experience writer’s block, because if they did how could they ever produce good writing consistently? My general wondering about writing doesn’t end with the Lone Genius model of writing, that was only my starting point. I am going to go over several questions about writing that have been raised in my mind since we started our discussions in class.
The discussions that we’ve had in class over the past couple weeks have led me to wonder about questions like these: what is good writing? Is good writing good grammar? Does good writing mean different things to different people? These are all questions that I don’t know the answer to. I have bumped into these questions and others like them throughout my high school career. Whenever I had to write an essay for English class I would focus on one aspect of my writing at a time. For example when writing a first draft, it would usually be pretty good because I would take forever to write it. My ideas would be very fixed and short because I wouldn’t let anything flow. Instead, I’d decide what I was going to say in a very finite sort of way and then put a lot of work into saying it in the best possible way. The flaw with that method is that I don’t let myself put out all of my ideas and my writing may be lacking substance.
Why have I always been graded on my first drafts if they weren’t supposed to be good? Why did my English teachers always make it seem like we were only meant to make minimal revisions after our first drafts? Now that I have a new perspective on writing I am realizing that my teachers requiring my first drafts to be relatively close to my final product was very counterproductive. I’ve never written in this new free way and it is very strange to me. Actually using the writing process was never really taught to me. But I was taught all about it, the typical five steps: brainstorm, plan, first draft, revise, proofread. The issue has always been that teachers never encouraged me to actually use those steps in a productive way. Harsh grading on first drafts always encouraged me to make them as close to perfect as possible.
On the other hand enforcing deadlines on first drafts and helping students follow the writing process has been one thing my teachers have done. When there is a deadline for the first draft it forces you to just sit down and just write. Especially if you are running a bit late and need to get it done. When you let your ideas flow, it becomes clear how you are actually supposed to use the writing process. I’ve never done it but I can only imagine how strange my first drafts might be if I just wrote down everything that came to mind.
The structure that I’ve been taught to write in also raises a few questions for me. Why is the five paragraph essay the first and only format that is taught in elementary and high school? It’s not even the most versatile way to write and it’s very trapping for students. I was only writing in that format up until my senior year of high school. I only learned to begin diverging from that preset format because I was in an AP English Composition class and I was forced to write differently. The essays that I wrote were different but I still wasn’t using the writing process in an effective way. I want to learn how to effectively use the writing process to create quality work.