2004-07-16
Grade Posting
I remember in October when the leaves where turning colour from vibrant greens to antique gold, when the breeze was slowly kissing my cheek with a cool breath, and when my shattered and transparent heart was barely healing, and the insignia upon my bosom only bared his name.
That October I began my Advanced Placement American History class with the sole purpose to prepare for the AP American History Exam. Slowly, I became adjusted to extended days and hours of arduous academic labour lasting until twelve midnight. After a few short hours of sleep, I would oftentimes awake at four-thirty in the morning--before dawn, obviously--to begin my day again. My days were filled with documents to analyse, and me patiently sitting behind one desk under the light of one lamp--night after night. The book, �The Enduring Vision�, began with the very beginnings of colonization and mercantilism. It went through the �Abominable Acts�, the outraged responses to tariffs, and I will distinctly remember �Lead, paper, paint, glass, and tea�, and �Taxation without representation�. I was there when Alexander Hamilton proposed the idea for a treasury and a national bank, which grew into the Bank of the United States that Andrew Jackson (may his name and memory be erased) loathed so much. I saw the birth of a two-party system of politics, the farewell address of George Washington, the introduction of that ghastly institution known as slavery, the cultivation of Frederick Douglass, the ardent fight of the abolitionists, and even the Emancipation Proclamation. I took my peaceful walks with Walt Whitman, I painted with Asher Brown Durand and the Ash-Can School Painters, and I went fishing with Henry David Thoreau on his beloved Walden Pond. The expansion of the west, the unlawful and unjust displacement of the Native Americans, the birth of corporations, and Teddy Roosevelt�s imperialism. A metamorphosis soon took place and we found ourselves in the �New Deal� era with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and later on we committed horrible atrocities with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the name of Democracy, and thus, a new age was born. This new age was soon dominated by physics, and names and countries such as Albert Einstein, Warner Van Braun, and The Soviet Union became permanent in our everyday vocabulary. �Red� paranoia was rampant, and we suddenly dove into Korea and Vietnam, only to lose miserably in the end. Internal problems also plagued us with Nixon�s Watergate and the Kent State Massacre. Lastly, I read Howard Zinn�s �A People�s History of the United States� to gain a clearer perspective on the history that we are making today.
The above are only remnants, because there is so much more that I absorbed in those seven months of class. Throughout those seven months, my physical and emotional health began to falter and I slowly realised just how much I was sacrificing for that particular class. How much was I willing to sacrifice for my five minutes of glory on college admissions? How much was I willing to sacrifice for more weight on my grade point average in order to carry that 3.9 to a perfect 4.0? How much was I willing to sacrifice for one spot on a paper that announced my AP exam grade?
I believe that I sacrificed my life, and after so much, I am rung dry of everything and left merely a shell for this:
I received a �4� on the exam. The highest score is a �5�.
I did it for that.