Connor's Corner

  Connor Franklin When I signed up for AP Lang last spring, I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting myself into. I had always been fairly good at writing essays and analyzing texts, so I wasn’t too concerned about the difficulty or how the course would challenge me. As I had come to understand it at that point, AP classes weren’t exactly difficult in their material but rather challenging in that they gave students tons of material to memorize. However, walking into my first day of Lang in the fall of 2023, I found something completely different. The class didn’t focus on learning the best test-taking strategies or writing the most essays we could. The class wasn’t based on objective truths, but introduced discussions where we would try to get a handle on the “best” truth yet never seemed to find one that we all agreed on. In AP Lang I found myself participating in lively debates on all matters of things both related to test material or, - if Mr. Barron felt like it - somet...

Throughout my 11 years at Boys’ Latin, I’ve been shown a multitude of movies in the classroom. Everything from “Chicken Run” to “Minions” to sex-ed videos has graced the projectors, or occasionally, those super old TVs 2 feet deep that teachers have to wheel in on big carts. Regardless of the form they’re shown in, the movies have varied drastically in quality from something barely beyond that of Mr. P’s video production class to Oscar award-winning films. Tim Nelson’s “O” sits firmly in the middle of that range.  The Movie “O” took home $19.2 million on a budget of $5 million and was released 11 days before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which in hindsight, probably hurt its performance. Regardless of the release date, the $5 million budget is clearly shown in the movie. Most scenes take place in a dorm room or the bizarre aviary that keeps showing up, with the basketball sequences taking up most of the budget. I’ll give the film a pass for this though as Shakespeare's Othello is mos...

“Try to imagine that everyone you know is dead when you’re writing this.” This process certainly seemed to work for Jennette McCurdy. Throughout her book, she is very open and honest with the audience. That couldn’t have been easy for her, but the advice seems to have helped. In her memoir, McCurdy discusses at length the perils of being a child actor, her struggles with alcoholism, anorexia, bulimia, and her sexual experiences, often very graphically. This works for the novel as it helps the audience get a deeper insight into the life and experiences of Jennette and even helps us sympathize with her even more.  If I were to write a memoir, I don't think I would be as open and honest with my audience as Jennette is. Even though I know that the advice is supposed to make me write more truthfully and be more transparent with my experiences, I know that’s a load of BS. I wouldn’t be able to ignore the fact that strangers would be reading the things that I would be writing about. I k...

       In her memoir “I’m Glad My Mom Died” Jennette McCurdy writes in chapter 42 about getting her first apartment away from her mom. While Nickelodeon is paying for it, the apartment is still hers and she is excited to have a place of her own finally. When Jennete was growing up she had to sleep on the floor of her house on a Costco mat with her brothers. The house she grew up in was filled with all kinds of random stuff because of the fact that her mom was a hoarder and kept things that had no business being anywhere outside of a trashcan. So it’s safe to say that this apartment represented something special for Jennette. A chance to finally forge a path of her own apart from her mother and get out from under her shadow. I had an experience somewhat similar to this when I went to summer camp many years ago. For three weeks I was going to live on a college campus and take an economics class. As it was my first time away from home for an extended period of time, I w...

Complexity and satire are found at every level in Gulliver's Travels. From the simple lessons found in Liliput to the layered and complicated opinions expressed by the Houyhnhnms. I think the best of Swift's satire is somewhere in between these two mediums in Brobdingnag. When Gulliver is bought by the King and Queen of Brobdingnag, he tells them of his travels and discusses Europe. He expresses his pride in English values like religion, scientific advancement, and government. The King listens intently to what Gulliver has to say, and then replies that the Europeans are “odious vermin”. Gulliver finds this response striking and thinks that the King simply can’t understand the complexity of English culture. He observes that the kingdom of Brobdingnag doesn’t have many books and their laws cannot exceed more words than there are letters in their alphabet. However, the King can see what Gulliver can’t, which is that European culture is full of greed and pride. The English...

       It's almost depressing recognizing the parallels between the rope dancing in Jonothan Swift's  Gulliver's Travels  and sports in our world.  Gulliver's Travels  is a collection of stories about the journeys of a man to different mysterious worlds and interactions with strange creatures. On one of these adventures, Gulliver finds himself in the world of Lilliput where everything is miniaturized. Lilliput is ruled by an emperor, has a government, and a complex society that is very similar to our own. Lilliput has differing political parties, a class system, and even a rival society that they actively fight against. From his place far above their world, Gulliver observes these traits and tries to make himself as useful as possible and even takes pride in being a high-ranking member of society. However we as the reader can see that this is nothing more than a grim allegory for real life. For example, the way that the Lilliputians are viewe...