This blog was written on June 3rd. It is 7:02 am. I just walked into the hallway where the senior portraits are displayed. A wave of uneasy melancholy washed over me. For five minutes, I couldn't understand why I felt this way, but as I passed the pictures of my fellow seniors, it finally clicked. The feeling wasn't just sadness at the thought of not seeing them next year—though that's certainly part of it. It was the realization that all these people, who once walked these halls and maybe even sat in the same chair I'll occupy next year, have been reduced to a photograph with a few words indicating their college. Some are proud to attend competitive schools, as they should be, while others feel embarrassed about going to a so-called less prestigious college. These portraits carry more than smiling faces; they hold something much deeper: broken dreams and four years of mental exhaustion. The images evoke the fulfillment of finishing high school, but the truth is, many ...
Click Play Theme to set the mood 🎧 While reading the ICE #1 prompt, I couldn't help but wonder who Benjamin Banneker really was. My wonder was driven by the thought that I had never heard his name, which was unusual, as he must have been famous enough to be a topic of an AP Language essay prompt and to have written a letter to Thomas Jefferson. I decided to do some research to uncover his extraordinary accomplishments, as I was curious after reading the fairly long list of his occupations mentioned in the prompt: Astronomer, SOS, mathematician, poet, etc. Banneker lived his entire life in Baltimore County, Maryland, where he farmed tobacco on a modest plot of land. Banneker constructed his famous clock when he was only 22 years old. In an age when timepieces were still somewhat rare in the American colonies, visitors came from near and far to see a working clock built by a young man of color. Famous political figures widely recogn...