Kars 4 Kids

Every day I have to wake up early, usually for school, I use the radio as my alarm. I give myself about 30 minutes to wake up listening to a program, sometimes WAMU, or lately, a local sports station. Oftentimes this process allows me to get up nice and slowly. But lately, as now I'm listening to commercial radio, I have to listen to commercials. Most people would say it's not the end of the world, and normally I would too. But sometimes, for about a minute, it feels like my life is coming to an end. There is some non-profit organization called "Kars 4 Kids", which does something with old cars to somehow benefit kids. Anyway, they have a jingle, an infamous jingle. It's been on making people deaf for a few years now, and it frequently brings about a rude beginning to my day. My prospects for a good day take a huge hit once I listen to the Kars 4 Kids jingle. I'm now starting to just shut off my radio.

Here's a link to the jingle. Note: If you want to leave this post with your ears intact, I'd recommend not clicking this hyperlink.

Of course, I know you did click on it so now I will explain to you the problems I have with the jingle and the organization as a whole (although everything I know about it comes from the commercial). While I might have made it seem more out of tune than it actually is, when the voices of the kid and the older guy are still ringing in your ears next month, you'll wish you had never clicked the link. This image kind of sums up my reaction, only, I can't drive my bed of a cliff. Sorry I have to link to the Blog because the image is too big.

So the commercial tells me to dial 1-877-Kars-4-Kids. First, they don't even specify if one should dial the number "4" or the preposition "for". Second, I'm pretty sure telephone numbers are supposed to be only 10 digits in the United States. They've got their consumers dialing 12 plus that additional "1".

More importantly though, what do they mean by "Kars 4 Kids"? Because it seems like they want me to donate my old car to let a six-year-old drive. There's a couple problems with that. First of all, six-year-olds can't see over the steering wheel. And secondly, it's nearly impossible for somebody not to drive off a cliff after hearing the jingle. Presumably the car that they were supposed to donate is now deep in a valley.

So if they don't mean for me to give up my car for a kid to drive, then there is only one other possibility. This has to be some kind of orphanage where they sell kids for cars. They don't specify how many cars for a kid on their website, but I'm sure I could find out easily with one simple dial of "1-877-Kar-S4Ki".

I have big ambitions for my rival business, which has a very similar jingle. "1-8-7-7 Beer for Kids. K-E-E-R, Beer for kids. 1-8-7-7 Beer for kids. Donate Bud Light today!" Admit it, you sang to this.

I found a confirmation that indeed Kars4Kids does not sell kids for cars. Therefore they must sell the cars for the kids to use for recreational use. Here's proof.



Here's a parody of the jingle. I feel that if I were to waste my mind finding new lyrics to the jingle, I'll bet I could come up with 50 in an hour.

A piece of my documentary reflection

Documentary Project Reflection

My group did a documentary about what the United States should do in the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Coming into the project, I can go as far as to say that I didn’t know that there was a conflict between the two nations. Honestly, all I knew was that the Middle East was having problems. Now I am definitely keeping up more with U.S. foreign policy.

Part of the reason I ended up with those two was that I wanted to submit a video to C-SPAN and nobody else in the class did besides them. Had we started the process on the first class of the year, then presumably more groups would have wanted to enter the competition. I think that is one way to improve the project. Since our group did most of the work outside of school anyway, it would have been helpful to get the assignment earlier. I could have then gotten ahead of the research and then contributed more. Otherwise, I could have been in a different group that submitted. One way to make groups next year would be to divide up the class, with those who are prepared to put in extra work and want to submit to C-SPAN on one side of the room, and those who just want to do the process mostly in school on the other. Then the big groups could do brainstorming sessions, and each nominate one idea for a vote. Depending on the size of the group, the individuals could vote to nominate a certain amount of them. Then, like we did in Ms. Fillman’s class nominating the CAP Hollywood films, people could rank their top three choices. Because much of filmmaking is collaboration, ranking the top three people they would want to work with would also make sense. Then you could make groups based on similar interests.

Dagger!

I finished my homework just in time to hear one of the greatest (worst) calls of a sports announcer of all time. The Washington Wizards were down by one point against the Detroit Pistons with what I recall was about 12 seconds left on the clock. After the ball is nearly thrown out of bounds, Martell Webster is able to tap the ball to Trevor Ariza for a contested 3-point shot at the buzzer. He puts up the shot, and much to the amazement of just about everybody in the arena and presumably at home, the ball hits nothing but net. Steve Buckhantz, the Wizards play-by-play announcer, clearly thought it went in.

He shouts his signature line, "Dagger!" This one happened earlier this year, but unlike Wednesday, he didn't walk away looking like a total fool.


I consider that a pretty exciting call, and I'd definitely definitely replay this video. Now this coming video of what happens when a "Dagger" goes wrong never gets old. Forget that the Wizards lost the game; this was ten times better than a win!


Now here's what this scene looked like to me. I'm being perfectly honest. I wasn't exactly sure what had happened, but it for some reason just didn't look like it went in. Maybe it's because by the time I was able to process what had happened, I saw no Wizards players celebrating and saw a Pistons player with his hands in the air, as if to celebrate. I caught on what felt like about 15 seconds before Buckhantz, and as a result, I was on my couch dying with laughter. I had totally forgotten that my favorite team had just lost a nail biter.

Anyway, I will give Buckhantz credit for generating a highlight from that lowlight in his life. "The dagger has been retracted," said Buckhantz. 

Real News #2

Here's my second post of "Real News."
_____________________________________________________________________

The first news is courtesy of the Huffington Post. So... Montana never ceases to amaze me. Now all of the "moose[s] and antelope[s]... killed by a car [can] be harvested for food." This a fantastic new law, because now the animals' families won't feel that their loved ones died in vein.
_____________________________________________________________________

A little boy calls for help! This is pretty funny. He didn't want to go to sleep so he called the cops. Not exactly sure how that would hep his cause.

________________________________________________________________________

This was an incredible shot... by a cheerleader.

Got my pants dirty!

For the one-week video project, we were given a prop to make our story about. We got a nest with little eggs glued in it, so of course, we knew right away we were going to film this outdoors, around a tree. We decided the best use of the props would be to have the nest fall out of the tree, and for somebody to catch it. I volunteered to act.

It was a very cold morning, but we already had our script made so my group went outside. With the help of the storyboard, we were very efficient, and got the filming done in about 30 miserable minutes. I dove for the nest, though the intention was not for me to catch it. Instead, it would land on my back. Since that is nearly impossible to do, we had to do the best job we could to make it look somewhat realistic. Obviously every viewer knew it didn't really land on my back, but that helped create the little hook, of me diving arms outstretched, then fading out, before the next shot where you can see where it lands.

After I had done a couple dives, my group thought that was enough, but I insisted on one more. And unfortunately, I landed it some wet dirt (I wouldn't quite call it mud). I ended up with a grass stain and a dirty pair of pants. Maybe I should have listened to my group.

I thought it was cleverly done for what we had, because while it didn't look realistic, in my opinion it was still pretty entertaining. The last shot was supposed to reassure the viewer that the whole thing is indeed supposed to be a joke. By the way, that thing with three legs that looks very much like a tripod is actually a small tree, so don't mind it.

Overall I thought this was a fun project. I didn't think we needed three hours to brainstorm, write a script, and storyboard just a minute-long video. I think if we had done the pre-production stuff in an hour and a half and the filming the other 90 minutes, people probably wouldn't have had to stay to edit after school.

Google Drive

Yesterday I discovered the magic of Google Drive. While it has been around for some time now, I never understood how helpful it is.

Before I decided to learn about Google Drive, I didn't understand how it differed from Google Docs. After all, isn't that also storing data in a cloud? The tutorial video for Drive really only described Google Docs. And in reality, it is not majorly different, but there is an addition that could be very useful. Google Docs can now be edited offline. If you enable it to do so, Google Drive will run automatically when you start up your computer. Then it will sync all data from the cloud to your computer. It does, however, keep it as a Google Doc. If you want to make a .docx file you can do so by exporting it from Google Docs. But now you can open up Google Docs offline. If you don't have internet access, Google Chrome will open up and Docs will work like normal, except that until you get internet connection back, changes won't be saved on the cloud. But it will all save on your computer and then sync with the cloud once it can.

The benefit of Google Drive is big, and I'm sure Google is still making improvements on it. I'm not to acquainted with it so I don't have much to say, but I'm loving what I'm seeing. Now I won't lose files!!

Basketball Trick Shots in Silver Spring

I do live just a five-minute walk away from Downtown Silver Spring, but I didn't really want to film myself going into the movie theater, eating a Chipotle burrito, etc. because I thought there would be plenty of videos of that kind. Instead, I put together a collage of basketball trick shots. While I don't spend much time doing shots of that sort, I do really like to play basketball. This is my hoop but it has been a popular attraction throughout the neighborhood since we got it about eight years ago.

My brother filmed this for me using a Flip Video. I recognize it isn't in widescreen, I will try to fix that for future videos. I tried iMovies '07 for my recent video for English and had a terrible experience. I felt helpless at times: clips would change lengths at will, it crashed frequently, the transitions were not good, so I went back to iMovie '06. I found this upbeat song and thought it fit well in my video.

I had some shots planned out, and many of them took a while. The bike one was difficult for me because I had to maintain an acceptable velocity to make the shot look decent, I had to stay under control (I crashed into the curb several times), and I had to catch the ball and make the shot keeping one hand on the bike. This shot took quite a while. Then there were some other tough ones like the one where I juggled a soccer ball then kicked it into the hoop. I actually made it on the first try when I was demonstrating what I would to do. Then it took five minutes to do it again. In addition to the challenging shots, the cold was another factor. We broke the filming over three days because while I might have been in a t-shirt and shorts, my hands were freezing.

Other shots were improvised. I had a stretch where I did as much and I could. That's when I did the 360-layup and some other shots.

Dialogue never factored into the video. My brother was had some funny comments from behind the camera because he understandably got quite bored. I might upload some of his comments as well as some of my bloopers for a weekly post soon. Sorry my dialogue was not a little more creative.

Real News #1

This is a weekly blog post segment where I go over some of the recent "Real News."
_____________________________________________________________________________



So... this is an outrage! I'm getting ripped off of one inch of bread. Time to boycott this business. Subway, you've lost a customer.
_____________________________________________________________________________

Is Google Responsible for Killing a Donkey? I'm glad to see Fox is staying away from politics and giving that donkey the recognition it deserves. I'm sure its family really appreciates that act of kindness. Anyway, how did somebody get this footage? Who happens to be looking at a street view of dirt in Botswana? Anyway, the witnesses of this murder were unfortunately not able to attend Google's trial.
_____________________________________________________________________________



Though the concept of somebody getting stuck like that is quite funny, it's hard to laugh after the experience she went through. That would be miserable to be trapped, unable to move your head for hours. Now she has a story she'll never forget.
_____________________________________________________________________________

CBC adds a new twist to twist to the Lance Armstrong case: reportedly this criminal used rugs. I wasn't able to find the video footage of this newscast, but if I were to guess, I would say it was a typo. Most likely they were trying to give the viewer a new angle on the story, informing us that he used mugs to drink the water to swallow his performance-enhancing pills.

Speaking of mugs, would you buy one of these?

When I don't know what to do... ( Random Blog Search #1)

There is the occasional week when I have no idea what to write about. This is one of them, so I've decided to start a new series where I find a random blog and right about it.

Here it goes:

6:27 PM-- Well, I encountered my first problem. I've been to 5 blogs and they are all in other languages, including Spanish and Finnish.

6:35-- I give up!! There is so much garbage or stuff just pertaining to a person's life. I'm now going to try going to Google Blog Search and type in a key word.

6:39-- I plugged in "israel palestine documentary" into the Google Blog Search engine, not with the intention of watching a documentary, but with the hope that somebody may have reviewed one that I could later go and watch. Sure enough, I was linked to a Blog post with a review.

6:43-- I am now going to use the Diigolet to annotate this post. Haven't read it yet. Hope it's at least somewhat interesting.

6:45-- Well... it's hardly got any information. Time to return to the results page on Google and try again. I feel stupid.

6:48-- I found an article on the Huffington Post. At first glance, it looks to be a news story but I'll find out when I annotate it.

7:34-- I had to eat! But I'm back now...

7:42-- I am finished annotating! You can see what I did.

7:44-- In brief, this article talks about two Israel-produced movies and how they were so successful. The movies' techniques are very different. One was made with six retired directors of Israel's spy agency talking. They were informally dressed, but B-roll footage made the film appealing. The other was made by an amateur filmmaker with his camcorder, filming his daily life.

7:53-- Well... that wraps up this post. The process should be easier in the future now that I know what my approach is. I shouldn't have to make this into a log of my time. I did it this time because I knew I would go on a wild goose chase because I had very little idea what I was doing, as you can probably tell by my vague introduction. From now on, I'll go to Google Blogs and type in some key words related to something that interests me or just words that pop into my mind. I'll click on a link that seems interesting, glance over the article to see if it's worthwhile, then annotate it. I'll then write my post and summarize the article in a little more depth than I did today at 7:44. This post was more of an experiment. Going forward, I might do videos as well, but this is all if I don't have anything noteworthy to write about.

8:00-- I am out.

Indoor Soccer

I am preparing to go to my Indoor Soccer game at the Rockville Sportsplex. Indoor soccer is very different from outdoor, which I play in the spring and fall. My MSI Classic team finished in 2nd place last outdoor, season, but are 1 and 2 so far indoors. We are playing against college students, so our struggles are probably justified.

Indoor soccer is a way faster game than outdoor. But the main difference is the rules. First of all, there are no out of bounds unless the ball hits the high ceiling. The walls are not only used to keep the ball in play but also to serve as a way to pass. The fields are by estimate about 3/5 the size of a regulation field. The games are on fake turf and is played 6 on 6. Substitutions happen the same way as they do in hockey: during play, unlike outdoors when the play must be dead to make changes.

As you can see by the picture, the spectators can watch from either the ground floor or the second floor.

I'm mostly a field player but I do occasionally play goalie. They are both fun. This fast paced game forces me to be on alert every second I'm in the game. Also, it makes keeping possession much harder. There's rarely time to hold onto the ball and wait for teammates to get home. In a split second, an opponent will pick your pocket.

I've played indoor for five years now and the game has changed drastically over that time. For one thing, shots are much harder and with so few players on the field, players get many looks at goal. Also, players can kick the ball all the way across the field in the air.

The shortened field and the fast paced action lead to exciting and usually high-scoring games.

    

Documentary Project

I'm working with Jacob and Jasper on a documentary project about what we feel Obama should do about the conflict in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Out of the three of us, I'm definitely the least knowledgeable on the topic. But I am quickly learning, and have a better understanding of the current conflict as well as the history. I've made several note cards on Noodletools already.


I do have experience with documentaries as I made two in 8th grade, one on sleep, which I did with a group, and one on exercise, which I made on my own. I will be useful when it comes to the format of a short documentary.

We have a couple of interviews scheduled. One with Mr. Freeman and one with some dude who has prominence and some position that is hard to remember the name of.

Right now there's not much else to say. We're using Freeman's interview to help guide our script. Not my choice but I'm not going to argue against the other two who like that idea. Not a big deal, that approach should work fine.

I'm Stupid

I missed my post due by December 9th and I feel stupid.

It's a simple reflection due once a week and I blew it. This was unfortunate as well, because I had recently posted two or three posts that hadn't been graded. I guess that's luck of the draw. I hope this won't affect me in the long run because it was a mistake, and this was an exception to my normally consistent posts.

Remembering to do the assignment is key, so I've set two alarms for Friday and Sunday to remind me to post, just in case I forget, like in this instance. When I have an interesting post, I will probably not need the reminder. Last week I had an interesting topic on plagiarism and posted that immediately.

As I was going over ways to update my Blog, I found the "Monetize" setting. Should I do it??? If I kept this Blog running by the end of the century maybe I'll have some money sent in the mail. Can't say I'm a hit. Maybe it's because of posts like these.

Well... so long.

My First Experience With Copyright Infringment

Last year, at the end of units in U.S. History class, we had to do Student Initiated Assignments. We could choose any topic related to the unit we had just covered. Then we could put together any kind of presentation we wanted. At the end of the Gilded Age unit, I decided to make a short documentary video on Andrew Carnegie. It only included pictures, text slides, music, and voice overs, but doing research on Carnegie, capturing audio, and editing took around three hours as I recall. After I finished, I uploaded it to Youtube, sent the link to my teacher, and never returned to the video again...

That is, until Thanksgiving weekend, when I got a message from a stranger. The person wrote: "Hi There. Can you tell me what software you used to build your video? I am impressed and would like to use it too." At first I was very confused, because I didn't even realize I had allowed the public to view my video. Then it dawned on me that I had actually made an informative and reasonably catchy video that could benefit students trying to learn more about Carnegie, and others who are curious to see what people on Youtube have to say about him. For the first time in just over a year, I decided to check out my video. I watched it and realized that I had made it for entertainment purposes, so I created a couple of unnecessary text slides. While I was mocking my rather stupid intro, I looked down at my view count. I over nearly 450 views! While this is a tiny number relative to the millions some videos get, I haven't uploaded a video with nearly this many hits. 

Then I thought, This silly first ten seconds takes away from this otherwise interesting documentary. I remembered we were taught about a Youtube video editor in this class. I figured out this basic software in a couple minutes and removed a little from the beginning and end. The new edits are finalized and the old version can no longer be seen by anyone but me, I assumed. Here it is (by the way, hitting the "Like" button wouldn't hurt):



I wanted to see if my video would be high on the list of search results. First I searched "Andrew Carnegie" and I was able to find my video on the third page of results. Not bad, I'd say, considering that Andrew Carnegie is one of the most prominent figures in American history. Next I tried "Vertical Integration," where my video was fifth on the first page. Finally, I typed in "Andrew Carnegie Vertical Integration," and my video appeared first on the list. Right under it, however, was a video with a cover picture of stacks of money, a picture which looked awfully similar to the one I used in my video. I clicked on it, and sure enough, somebody reuploaded my video. This one came before the edits so if you want to see the outtakes, you may:


I messaged the user and requested that they take down the video, and I filed a copyright claim to Youtube. It did anger me that somebody would plagiarize my video and take credit for it, but at the same time, I do see it as a compliment because somebody thought it was good enough to want to take credit for. They seem to have been doing an Andrew Carnegie series based on their channel's videos. I filed this claim on Saturday, Novermber 24, so I expect Youtube to take action soon.

Update: So, as you probably saw, the video had been removed by Youtube! Too bad you won't get to see the intro now.

CAP Congress

I will admit that while I did not have a blast during the week of CAP Congress, I thought I was a good learning experience. I realized how difficult it is for a bill to become a law. Even in CAP which seems to be almost entirely liberal, it was still not easy to pass bills. The food MOCWAS brought in on Wednesday represents the bigger idea that bill sponsors will do everything they can to get their bills passed. In Congress, it was difficult to do something with all six bills in two days. We did not really have time to focus on each word of each bill, but there were clearly loopholes, which swayed my vote. At least once I would have voted differently if more time had been spent improving the bill. I was bored because rarely was a vote in doubt, even on amendments. Nonetheless, I now have a better idea of how Congress works and how every little word in a bill can be subject to debate.

The Real Fall

Today I biked on the Capital Crescent Trail and got a great chance to see fall. Too bad I didn't have any kind of camera with me, because it was a nice ride. I don't know if it's just me, but I feel as though trees are losing their leaves at a wide range of times. When I did my "Capture the Fall" video, I was having some difficulty finding many leaves. Some trees still had all their leaves. But then some had no leaves at all. In the areas with many trees, leaves were coming down everywhere, including on my head. In hindsight, this weekend would have probably been a better time to make my video.

Local Passion

THE BLACKOUT RETURNS

I've been waiting for five years now! DC United is finally back in the playoffs!

I've never thought Major League Soccer was one of the best soccer leagues in the world, nor have I thought DC United was one of the best clubs in the world, but I have been a fan of this team for about eight years. While I have started to pay more attention to the English Premier League and a little less to the MLS, I've stayed attached to United. The reason for this is the local passion. Soccer is hardly recognized in the U.S., and most people who do enjoy soccer keep up with international teams and leagues, and understandably so, as the quality is significantly higher. But this is what keeps me a fan of United. There is a section of fans in RFK Stadium, who spend entire games singing and jumping. Sometimes I'm right it, sometimes I by my TV. The fans have so much passion, but so do the players. Few individuals in the league are making enough money to be set for life. What most of these players are after is not a celebrity status or tons of money, they want to pursue the game they love. A

As you can see by what I wrote, I still to this day don't know exactly why I love DC United so much. All I know is there is something about the passion of the players and the fans, which makes supporting this team very exciting.

Poem: The Color Blue

The Color Blue

A Masterpiece By Ross

Blue, Blue, O wonderful blue

The color of the sky

The color of the ocean

The color... of blue cheese.

There are so many shades of this wonderful color

There's light blue

Dark blue

The color of jeans (assuming they're blue jeans)

Blue, a powerful color
A primary color
A color that can help make others

What you saw there was Blue
Blue doing what it does best
Blue acting unselfishly
Blue wanting to bring more colors into this world
Blue, just being blue

If you are ever feeling blue
Just remember: blue is feeling you
Its complimenting you on your selflessness
Telling you: while you may not appreciate yourself at the time, others do.

Blue, Blue, O mighty color blue
You always know what to do
You turn me green when I have the flu (best line right there)
You even help me tie my shoe. (rhyme)

Blue...
Blue...
How could I live without you? 

[President]-isms

This week, during the presidential debate, Mitt Romney delivered a classic. Responding to a question on pay equality for women, Romney said that while assembling his cabinet after being elected governor in Massachusetts, he was not pleased to see that his staff only sent him male applicants. He then proceeded to talk about his response. "I went to a number of women's groups and said, 'Can you help us find folks,' and they brought us whole binders full of women." This binder must have been pretty cramped. 

Romney's gaffe inspired me to search for some occasions in which other U.S. officials have misspoken.

Ronald Reagan on his recent trip: "Well, I learned a lot....I went down to (Latin America) to find out from them and (learn) their views. You'd be surprised. They're all individual countries."

Here's a map of Latin America:

Latin America includes Mexico and all of South America

As I'm guessing you can see, there are multiple countries in this image. What amazes me is that it took Reagan a trip to Latin America to figure that out. And we can't forget that this president was best-known for his foreign policy. I wonder if he thought he was ending a Cold War with all of Asia. 

Here's another one from Mr. Reagan: "Trees cause more pollution than automobiles."

I was going to just let this one speak for itself, but then I found this image describing Reagan's claim:

This tree is breathing out CO2

 
Here's a quote from Joe Biden, which, at first glance, may not seem too bad. He was introducing Missouri state Senator Chuck Graham: "Stand up, Chuck, let 'em see ya."

The only problem with this is that Graham happens to be in a wheelchair. I will give some props to Biden, however, as he did manage to recover from his blunder and give the man a warm welcoming. Take a look:


Just a little slip up from Joe Biden, nothing too bad. Still, it's quite funny: "The next President of the United States — Barack America!" It's a lot funnier of video:

Last up, one of the best gaffers of all time, Mr. George W. Bush. I'm going to pick a couple of my favorite from a long line of Bushisms.

On the topic of teaching to a test, Mr. Bush goes off, but unfortunately for him, what looked to be his most powerful line, turned out to be a topic of jokes for years to come: "You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test."

Clearly having good grammar isn't a requirement to pass literacy tests. Here's a short video compilation of Bush on education (this quote is included):

 
Here's another Bush quote and it's a doozy: "Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country."

I want to say he was trying to refer "love" to the profession, but, well... it came out all wrong.

CAP Debates

The debates started as an interesting assignment but ended up as a real disappointment.

I cannot think of another assignment in which the work I put in could not in any way reflect my result. I'm not sulking about my grade, which wasn't terrible, but I'm frustrated by what high standards we were held to. We spent 30 minutes in NSL class listening to classical music about a river, and that was all the instruction we got on how to debate. Maybe a few minutes of pointers but we got no real practice.

To describe the effort I put in: I worked each minute we were given in class, including through the breaks, and spent most of my Friday after school preparing for the debate. Then I spent several hours on Sunday practicing speaking. I felt there was little more I could do. I clearly do not have a knack for debates, but got little help in school. Now my grade in each CAP class is taking a hit. I find that quite unfair.

I came in with a huge disadvantage, as my group was the first to go. As I watched later debates, I realized several aspects I could have done better, like citing my sources while speaking. Had I presented day two or three, I would have surely made adjustments. So why must I be held to tougher standards?

I'll be the first person to admit that I was far from perfect, but I had never participated in or watched a debate until the presidential one.
 
Last year we had interdisciplinary assignments, which were a nice way once a quarter to take a break from ordinary classes. The work we did was for the most part interesting, and was hardly monitored, much like the debates. The only difference between these two is that last year if one did his or her work and put in effort, an A was easily achievable. It was nice to have one grade in which our effort controlled the result. I expected the debates to be similar, and I was not lacking in effort. So I was left with the question: What could I have done?