TOW #30 Letter to Incoming APELC Students

First of all, congratulation on joining this class. You’re probably a little intimidated by what you’ve heard, but that’s also probably a good thing. It’ll make you work harder. There is no doubt that this class is a challenge, but if you make use of the resources you have available to you, and are prepared to work, I guarantee you will be happy at the end of this school year. You will have a much better understanding of the English language when you leave.

            The first thing you have to realize is that you probably aren’t up to the level of writing you need to be in order to get the grades you want in this class. But that’s okay, none of us were last year. But Mr. Yost isn’t going to let up on you because you’re new to writing at a higher level and in a strictly-timed setting. What he Ms. Pronko are going to do is make themselves available for you when you need help. That is the most crucial piece of advice I can give you. CONFERENCE WITH THEM. It’s scary to have the teacher who is going to grade your work look through your essay and critique it, but trust me, it is so much better having him do it in a meeting then on the rubric for Sapphire. There are also all kinds of online resources and examples if you need them, as well as dozens of students that took the course last year and can help. Don’t ignore the help available to you, it is hard to improve if you do.

To succeed in APELC, you need to go beyond the writing aspect of the class as well. You need to read. Take advantage of the TOWs and find things that will test your abilities to analyze. I tried reading the original paper describing the discovery of the Higgs Boson, authored by over 100 particle physicists. I understood maybe twelve words. But as I worked through it I could still recognize the rhetoric we learned in class. It’s everywhere, and the more you look for it, the easier it will be to find in the in-class and AP passages. Also, if Mr. Yost gives you an assignment to read, don’t just read it. You need to understand it. Very well. Because the tests aren’t easy unless you put in the time to slowly break apart, analyze, and digest the passages. It gets easier as the year goes on and you learn a lot more about rhetoric, but if you try and appreciate the quality of the texts and comprehend how and why they were written, you will be a far more capable English student when you end the year.

So you’ve probably heard that this course is tough. I won’t lie, it is. But it is so worth it in the end. If you’re worried about grades, the letter you receive at the end of the year will reflect the amount of work you put into the class. I’m excited for you, you’re going to learn a ton this year.

TOW #29 Ants Compared to Humans

     One of the major arguments of Ants: Nature's Secret Power is that ants are just as successful, if not moreso, a species than humans. While underestimated because of their dimunitive size, ants have a tremendous presence in world ecosystems and dramatically alter their landscape and the animals around them. While their direct impacts are not as clearly visible as the ravaging domination of people, ants are certainly as influential a force and as successful a species as we believe ourselves to be.
      Humans are an extremely new species in the world, as our species evolved only about 50,000 years ago. Ants have proven themselves over a much larger span of about 130 million years on the planet. Whereas most large animals experienced a massive extinction event about 65 million years ago, ants continued to survive and eventually thrive. The longevity of the ant, and its ability to spread to all seven continents in the form of 14,000 different species is a clear indicator of the success of the organism.
     One can also measure the "success" and "influence" of an animal based on its impact on the environment around it. Humans have enormous agricultural industries that have selected and bred plants and animals to feed and serve us. We have tapped environmental resources for our own use. But so have ants. As demonstrated in the documentary, ants farm, garden, and reap the rewards of their stocks. When in Honduras I saw an enormous colony of leaf cutter ants. Their colony was so massive that it had worn tracks in the dirt during its leaf-cutting process. In South American fields, these same ants can decimate fields that humans try so desperately to maintain and develop. Additionally, in Ants: Nature's Secret Power, ants were seen carrying tree resin to their homes in order to use it as a disinfectant. Ants can harness and control their environment in the same way humans do, but have been doing so for tens of millions of years more. Their organizations are so effective that plants have even evolved to house ants because their influence is such a positive attribute that it is selected for in the slow and painstaking process of adaptation.
     Humans also prize their ability for innovation. However, ants too have amassed significant biological and engineering feats. Ants have created systems of air conditioning, create vast structures in dirt, sand, and wood, are able to manipulate their bodies to store food for each other, create floating rafts or flowing liquids, and are massively strong (capable of clinging to glass at forces that would kill humans and able to carry 50 times their own body weight). Ants have developed their world and bodies to make themselves more successful, and represent natural ingenuity comparable to that of humans.