I had my sister wake me up early again at 8 am to prepare for my APUSH (AP US history) test, but I didn’t really fully wake up and get out of bed until 9. The night before, I did what I could to review and have all the notes I wanted set up, and later in the morning, I set up my laptop and testing area. I decided to test in a separate room because I needed another computer/monitor. On my laptop I had it split screen with the google doc open in which I was writing my essay and the collegeboard website in which I could see all the prompts and documents. On the other monitor, I had it split screened with one side showing a long timeline and another google doc that had some tips and tricks on writing the essay. The timeline was one big google doc (50+ pages) that goes over material from period 2-7 (from colonialism to world war 2 since the prompt would only be over those time periods this year), and my friends and I all contributed to it. It was really long, but on the side it had a sidebar in which you could skip automatically to a specific time period or topic that you need instead of wasting time trying to scroll. Big props to my best friend who did a large portion of the notes and helping all of us out!
I was super nervous for this test since I didn’t prepare for it at all. One of my friends decided to not even take it today and to just take the alternative testing date in June because she felt like she wasn’t going to do well if she took it today. I thought about doing the same, but I wanted to get it over with and to at least try. Thank god I did because the prompt I got (there are multiple different ones) was one I could answer. My 2 categorical reasons I chose probably weren’t the best, but it was the first thing I thought of and I just went with it. They give you a total of 50 minutes to read the prompt and documents and then write your essay, with 45 minutes recommended for the actual test taking and to give yourself 5 minutes to submit your answer. I was able to finish and submit with 2 minutes remaining and with no technical difficulties. It was such a relief! My essay obviously isn’t the best essay ever, and it’s kind of a mess, but I did my best and it’s actually pretty good for an essay written in 45 minutes and as only my second time ever writing a document based essay for history. The first time was the night before, in which my essay really sucked. We never wrote a full dbq essay in class, we had only practiced the analysis of documents and writing contextualization and the thesis. I’m sure I passed and I’m proud :-) Now I just have the English test left, which is next week, and I have to write a rhetorical analysis essay. We’ve practiced this essay multiple times in class and also in quarantine (teacher has us write one essay each week). I’m not bad at writing the essay, however I sometimes struggle finishing within the time limit. I wrote the last essay for a grade today, and I hope I can write fast enough for the actual test day. One of my friends today wasn’t able to submit her APUSH essay in time because she took too long and waited too long to submit... I feel bad for her because now she has to wait and take it again in June :( AP season is so stressful for everyone, and this pandemic definitely isn’t helping.
I also still have my AP art portfolio to finish. Still need to finish the piece I’ve been talking about. I worked on it a little more today after not working on it the last two days so I could prep for exams. I honestly don’t know if I’ll get a 5 on this exam, I really hope so though because I spend so much time and effort into art. I want to get even better and it’s still discouraging to see everyone around you be so talented. But I’ll do my best to continue to practice :-)
Also, my concept of time was so messed up since I started being productive earlier today because of the test and also ate lunch earlier. By the time it was 4, I thought it was already nighttime because I’m so used to only being productive in the middle of the night. And because it was storming in the afternoon, it made everything seem darker. I ended up taking a nap though and that basically fixed the warped feeling of time haha.
And to conclude, some things that made me happy today: me successfully finishing my APUSH exam, my mom making sheng jian bao (they were delicious!! I ate so many haha), my sister baking bread, and it rained today! ^_^
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