review: books... "Very LeFreak" by Rachel Cohn

rating: 2 out of 5

bottom line: a disappointment.

synop: Very is a techie in college that suffers from too-much-good-time syndrome: she excessively parties, buys stuff online with her maxxed out cards, gets drunk every night, and is promiscuous. In addition to that, Very is addicted to her iPhone, her playlists, her precious laptop, and El Virus, a guy she met online, that haunts her every thought and dream.

With her scholarship on the line, her friends decide to intervene: they take away her laptop, iPod, and send her off to tech camp. 28 days of electronics-free hell. No iPod, no iPhone, no IMing, no cell-phones, laptops, nothing.

Does Very have the strength to resist? or will she relapse?

Review: the synop sounds good. they all do. otherwise i wouldn't read them, now would i?

but i gotta say that this was a flopper.

the idea was really nice, and the beginning of the book was okay--i kept hoping that she would fall in love with Brian (her best bud that's also a [cute] techie). i mean he has feelings for her, she knows he does, but El Virus haunts her thoughts.

but the thing i'm not happy about is the ending of the book.

**SPOILER ALERT!!**

she ends up w. her roomate of all people. [we all knew that she was bi, but come on?! everyone loves a good best-friends fall in love book!]

the ending just left too much hanging: all the problems she had to deal with--her credit cards, school, ect. it was all ignored.

i mean, sure, you don't have to explicitly say it out loud and just imply it, but this implication-filled ending was unsatisfying.

NCP:Budget Cuts

ok, so i don't know if i've already ranted about this, but CPS is getting a huge budget cut because we are short money. you can read more about it here.

our varsity sports are being cut, which is completely ridiculous! (even though i don't play sports, it's just ridiculous--some seniors depend on them to get grants and scholarships into college!)

and now, i got an email on thursday saying that "all CPS drivers ed centers are closed until further notice."

i admit. i was in denial. i said to myself, "i wonder if this was a planned event everyone knew already, or was it all of a sudden. b/c last sat. i made an appointment w. them for this sat. now, the guy wouldn't have made an appoit. with me if he knew they would get cut off on friday..."

so i waited until friday to call them. thursday comes, (read the other part of my friday happenings here) and i had the surprize dental appointment in china town that absolutely could not be re-scheduled. so i went, and on the way there in the car, i called mather.

and i was SO surprized that their answering machine actually picked up!! (normally they let it ring until eternity.)

and it's true. CPS has cut ALL driver's ed centers until further notice. they are aiming for July 7th to re-open. suuuure.

IL is on the verge of bankruptcy right now! suuure we'll belive you.....(O_o)

but anyway.

so i really need you to vote for my school so we can get the $250K we desperately need.

here's the link: http://www.refresheverything.com/21cc

it's SO simple! you just have to register once, and you get 10 votes per day, and you can vote on an idea once per day!

25% of all teachers will be laid off the coming school year, meaning ~30-40 students per class!! if there's one thing i love about northside, it's the small class sizes.

varsity sports are cut. it's devastating. so many ppl are on the teams!

now Driver's Ed is completely cut. so the only option is for us to go private and pay for a driving school to teach us. and we would prob hafta start all over again since they would claim that "CPS standards may not meet their standards".

it's really amazing how far we've climbed.

we were previously 200th, and now we're #40!! but that's FAR from good enough. only the TOP TWO ideas get the 250k grant. we still have a long way to go!!

NCP: Pepsi Grant!

so, recently, via FC, my school notified me that they were in the running for a Pepsi Grant worth some couple thousand dollars, and i would like to put up this link to help them out (you can vote daily!!)

http://www.refresheverything.com/21cc

our school is getting budget cuts this year, and i will rant about that... right... now.

so, this year, we are more then a few thousand dollars short for funding.

every year, we have our cubby walk, which raises money for the school, but apparently that's not enough. at all.

our JV teams got cut this year, meaning no varsity sports.

many, many teachers will be let go of (i belive it was every one out of four teachers), so our class sizes will get bigger. which sucks, because one of the things i LOVE about NS is that our class sizes are relatively small.

and we were hoping for PCs for the entire school next year--i don't know how that is gonna happen. this year freshmen could choose to have them for an extra couple hundred bucks. and they are placed in their own classes so they do not have a priviledge over other students. nice. and they even use them for PE!!

i would love to get one for school. they would help out so much since i always forget hmwk @ home.

i mean, we seem like a new, rich-people school, but that's just cause our shool is new (it's only 10 years old! it's prob the newest CPS HS!!). that's why.

but our pepsi ranking went from 200th to 46th in a week, and we are far from being close to winning, so i will for sure do my part and vote daily.

it's SO easy!!

APUSH BREAKDOWN

ok. so this is what APUSH is:
Advanced Placement United States History

AP is a college-board backed program, equal to college-level studies. APUSH in particular is worth ONE semester's credit in college (IF you pass the APUSH exam, AND IF your college chooses to accept your credit; it's frustrating, like getting elementary school credit for algebra--YOU DID IT! YOU TOOK THE CLASS! YOU DIDN'T FAIL THE CLASS!! you just didn't meet that particular school's standards. but that's how it is.)

so, you basically take this class to pass ONE test: the AP exam. that's what it all comes down to--if you fail, it means there's no chance you're going to get college credit. that's all that matters--the AP exam.

here's the breakdown of the exam: it's
3hrs 5 min. exam total (185 min)
TWO parts:

1.) 80 multiple choice questions, 55 min. worth 50%

• 20% = 16 questions 1550-1789 (up to END of Am. Rev; Aztecs [cortez], incas, peru, columbus [hispaniola], 13 colonies [pocahontas, john rolfe, George II, Glorious Revolution, slavery, triangular trade, Navigation acts, Intolerable acts, boston tea party, lexington/concord, thomas paine, sons/daughters of liberty, olive branch petition, 1st/2nd continental congress, Constitution, bill of rights])
• 45%= 36 questions 1790-1914 (up to BEGINNING of WWI; War of 1812 [US v. GB; treaty of Ghent], Jefferson [louisiana purchase], Spanish-Am. War, Jackson, Mexican war [Texas; Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago], Civil warn [Lincoln, slavery, Ghettysburg Adress], McKinley [annexing Philippines/Hawaii], Teddy Roosevelt [Big Stick], Taft [dollar diplomacy], Wilson [WWI])
• 35% = 28 questions 1915-present (Post WWI-today; Wilson [14 points], Harding, WWII [FDR], Truman, Korea [Eisenhower], JFK, LBJ, Vietnam [Nixon ended], Carter, Reagan [conservatism])

2.) 3 Essays, 130 min. worth 50%

• 45% (60 min.): DBQ ea. 15min. REQ. READING time +45 min. SUGGESTED WRITING time x1 =60 min. worth 45% of your 50% essay grade; meaning 22.5% of entire exam grade
• 55% (70 min. total) Free Response 5 SUGGESTED thinking/brainstorm +30 SUGGESTED WRITING time= SUGGESTED to spend 35min. on each free response essay x2 =70 min. 55% (27.5% each); meaning it's worth 27.5% of entire exam grade; each is worth 13.75% of entire exam grade.

Scoring for MULTIPLE CHOICE:
1pt for every question right
-1/4 pt. for every question wrong (so there IS a punishment for guessing! but you also have to think about it: for every FOUR questions you get wrong = every ONE question you get right)
0 pts. for every question left blank (NO penalty for ommision)

Scoring For Exam:
Formula:

Mutiple Choice: Number Correct - (number incorrect x 0.25) = raw score (rounded to nearest whole #)

Essays: (DBQ score x4) + [(free response1+ free response2) x 2.44] =raw score (rounded to nearest whole number)

COMPOSITE SCORE:

Raw Multiple choice score (rounded) x 1.13 = weighted raw score

Raw Essay score (rounded) x 2.73 = weighted raw score

Last step: add up your two weighted scores.

Ranges:
180-114: 5 (dif. of 66) so it's the easiest to get a 5/5!!
113-91: 4 (diff of 22)
90-74: 3 (diff of 16)
73-49: 2 (diff of 24)
48-0: 1 (diff of 48)

here is the College Board Link for scoring/grade distribution: http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/history_us/exam.html?ushist



i herd from friends that college board determines the ranges for scores every year in order for students to be evenly distributed, like a bell curve.
and it's true!! http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/history_us/dist.html?ushist
HERE IS A STRATEGY FOR MULTIPLE CHOICE:

• there are FIVE choices.
• if you can eliminate even ONE CHOICE then you should go for it. if you can't, then it's better for you to leave it blank.

AP is very strict. they give you a list of books you can use to teach the class, and you have to adapt to writing DBQs, and AP-styled questions.

Here are the recomended study guides from my friends: the Kaplan, and the Princeton Review. I would buy the newest ones, b/c they offer more experience as to old exam questions/DBQs. The one that I used was Fast Track to a 5: AP US History, but Barron's is what's most popular, and widely available. Flash cards sound VERY nice, esp. with writing essays--you need to remember key events, people, elections, laws, wars, treaties--NOTHING is given to you for the free response except for a question, which gives you the setting and topic, but you're on your own from there, so in a way the free-response is the harder one of the essays.

but MANY students consider the DBQ to be hardest because you have to ANALYZE and use given documents, AND use OUTSIDE information from your own knowledge to write it.
a good essay has:

1. a good thesis. it's basically what you're saying. it just answers the question/promt
2. a good introduction that presents the setting: the period, what's going on, ect.
3. 1:1 ratio of given information (documents) and outside information from your head
4. uses MOST of the given documents (normally there are ~15 given) to support/refute claim; DO NOT SUMMARIZE documents--which i also tend to do--say why they are relevant/important.
5. don't forget about a conclusion! you don't want to repeat your thesis, but you do want to recap...the intro and conclusions are the hardest parts of any essay, i would say, b/c you've already said what you wanted to, and you don't want to sound redundant/repetitive.

but MANY students consider the DBQ to be hardest because you have to ANALYZE and use given documents, AND use OUTSIDE information from your own knowledge to write it.


a good essay has:

1.  a good thesis. it just answers the question/promt
2. a good introduction that presents the setting: the period, what's going on, ect.
3. 1:1 ratio of given information (documents) and outside information from your head
4. uses MOST of the given documents (normally there are ~15 given) to support/refute claim; DO NOT SUMMARIZE documents--which i also tend to do--say why they are relevant/important.
5. don't forget about a conclusion! you don't want to repeat your thesis, but you do want to recap...the intro and conclusions are the hardest parts of any essay, i would say, b/c you've already said what you wanted to, and you don't want to sound redundant/repetitive.

**they USED announce the time period for the DBQ, but college board stopped doing that a few years back (2000, 2002-3) b/c teachers would only focus on that time period. it's sad.**

APUSH stuyding...aka crammin

sooo.... this week will be ALL about APUSH. b/c

1. thursday i left my txt book @ skool. so i couldn't read chapter 42. so i coursnoted it.
2. so i read chapter 42 today. saturday.
3. i need to move onto chapter 43. and FINISH it b/c...on 4/19 i need to study for the mock exam.
4. so... 4/18 (2morrow) i need 2 study 4 the first DBQ part of the mock exam (4/20).... 1550-end of civil war
5. on 4/22 i don't have skool, so i'll study 4 the multiple choice part of the exam.
6. i need to do the 70s RRJ!! due ON 4/19!! so cruel!! searcy still gave us hmwk when she KNEW we had to cram and study 4 the exam... !! (TT_TT)

ADGENDA......................
4/20: 1st day of mock exam/ AP registration/ chem make up!!/ RRJ due!!
4/23: 2nd day of mock exam
5/7: (two weeks later) REAL AP exam

I herd from my friends JUST NOW that apparently, the Kaplan & Princeton AP Prep Books are the best. when i've been using the Fast Track To a 5 prep book for 3 weeks already. nice. the reason why i chose it was b/c it was the newest one...@ my skool library (2009) (the librarian was like, "We just got this yesterday!") it had quizes on the end of every chapter, it was compatible w/ American Pagent (the 14/15 edition, and i was using the 11th edition, so it's a bit off, but still compatible....)

but the stupid thing w/ it is that it's due in 2 weeks, and non-renewable. i checked it out 5 weeks before the real AP exam. but the librarian was kind enough to extend it 4 one week... still, it's not enough... 10 cents/day... (TT_TT) i'll just have to give them up, or find a new one from my local library... which i hope is well stocked...

last time for mid-terms no one checked out the APUSH prep books, so i hope this time no one checked them out either... as in, "gee, I hope that no local H.S. teaches APUSH...therefore no one would check them out".... but no luck... only one copy left... and i'll only get it if no one else checks it out before i do...(TT_TT) misery...