Final Exam Revision-English 1010 PDF

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Very last final exam for English 1010...

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1 America Armenta Discourse Community Essay Original Score: 53 English 1010 12 December 2018

Final Exam Revision

I am not a genius. Being “book smart” did not come easily to me as the kids with straight A’s, 4.0 gpa, and a 36 ACT score who sat next to me in my AP Calculus class. I knew this as soon as the day I moved cities. I walked into my new middle school’s office. It was my seventh grade year. They welcomed me and conversated with my mother. They turned to me and told me that I was not just being put into a regular honors math class but into an eighth grade math honors class! I was shocked and had self doubt. Although I had good grades, I did not feel capable. I would be in a math class with 8th graders instead of 7th graders. My new counselor told me that the school and district were testing a different approach in regards to honor classes. Little did they know the amount of pressure they had put on me, but also what great amount of work ethic they were about to teach me that I would apply to AP Calculus. On the contrary of not being smart, I had a 4.0 gpa until 9th grade. My sophomore year I was excelling, yet challenged in 11 grade honors. My junior year came around and had a choice of either AP Stats or AP Calculus for my math class. I wanted to stay ahead with my ‘Honors’ group and stretch my knowledge, so I chose AP Calculus. I walked into the first day of AP

2 Calculus class and I felt smart. I was in the only perplexingly difficult class at the highschool, in my opinion, surrounded by some of the brightest kids. I sat there and hoped their knowledge and ability to learn things quickly would rub off on me. A woman covered in tattoos with crazy, blue colored hair walked in. She began talking, “ Hi guys, I am Miss Somers, welcome to your first day of calculus”. As she spoke, I recalled voices in the halls talking about an outstanding, intelligent teacher that was nothing compared to the rest of the math department. She looked different from what you would expect math teachers to look like. She went on to explain that the class was challenging. It is meant to prepare us for a four hour long test (AP Calculus) at the end of the year that would give us college credit if we passed with at least a three out of five. Finally, a beneficial class that made sense to be in. The first day all we did was take a pretest of what we already knew; easy. Then we started our first unit and it was not incredibly strenuous. We took our first test and I passed averagely. The weather got colder and I became ill. I had begun to wake up late, and missed important material. Calculus was not a class you could catch up on easily or just copy notes from a classmate and continue on with the class. The whole point of the class was to learn the material quickly and then prepare for the AP test to pass. I remembered I began shaking and freaking out, I even began to cry because of so much stress. Everyone was taking quizzes and understanding the concept and I could not. In that moment I struggled to catch up, over thought everything, and was hard on myself. Throughout the whole year my teacher, Miss Somers, would say “Calculus is hard! It's freakin’ rocket science”. She would tell us to not feel bad about ourselves when we fail. Failure is how we learn and improve. Miss Somers was teaching the whole class and I to be resilient. When I was told this, I looked around and realized I was not the only one struggling. I

3 realized I was not as smart as the kids next to me but I could work hard or even harder than them and improve a substantial amount. All in all because I started to believe in myself I started to work harder in AP calculus. I would go onto the College Board website and look up practice problems on my own time. If I was not given homework that day in class to practice then I gave myself homework. I would make flash cards and memorize as many functions, derivatives, and integral rules as I could. I initiated study groups in my class as much as I could everyday for at least 30 minutes, therefore my peers received help from one and other and the teacher. At that point, we were only 4 months away from the AP test day. I finally understood everything. The idea of calculus clicked to me, it was this amazing light bulb. We began taking 4 hour long practice test that mimicked the real AP test. We took them each a certain time apart. Subsequently, my test scores ameliorated with each test. My scores stayed within the third margin but increased with each test. All I cared about was that I had been passing. Eventually one day, Miss Somers reassured me that I would pass the AP test because she had recognized my hard work. She even began telling me to take a day to relax. I would show up to class and my classmates would begin asking me for help on problems. I was dumbstruck in those first moments. My peers wanted my guidance. I was a bit startled for many reasons; Like, I kept thinking to myself, “ what if I show them how to do it wrong? What if they think I'm dumb? Are they just testing me?”. In the end I just took a deep breath and all I needed to be was confident because I knew what I was doing now and I knew how to do it. The day of the test had come around and I had started to worry myself. I was getting nervous and almost backed out of the test. I told myself that I had to be resilient and believe in

4 myself. I went through the test and answered every question confidently. I even had time to double check and go over some of the question I felt were off. Eventually, the four hours were up. All the stress and finger biting anxiety I had felt disappeared. I was relieved but I thought to myself, “ I was worried this much for this?!”. I could not believe that one test or really one class taught me so much about improvement for myself. As soon as the test was over Miss Somers told me that she was proud of me. I felt satisfied, although I did not know if had passed the AP Calculus test because the scores were not released until July. I walked out proud of myself. I was apart of an amazing and truly challenging class. Two months pass and I checked my score on the College Board website… I passed! Exhilaration danced throughout my entire body and this feeling of anticipation was swept away. Not only had I been a part of an advanced placement calculus class, I had also passed the test and acquired math college credit. I passed with the minimum; a three out of five. I became a part of a group of resilient hard working kids who passed the AP Calculus Test....