Meeting the Third Bachelor: Synthesis (C)

Last but not least of the three essays on the AP exam is Synthesis. Synthesis did not feel like a strong suit of mine, even though I somehow scored a 6 on the mock exam without ever being taught it. The synthesis was 100% a DBQ in disguise, and I hated it. DBQs were the downfall of APUSH last year, and while I excelled at them this year in AP World, the English version was a bit different.

When Synthesis stepped out of the limo, I knew it was fake. There was something weird about it, it was definitely not here for the right reasons. Maybe it had a girlfriend back home or something, or maybe it was taking on the role of somebody else... the DBQ.

Personality: definitely not it's own, it was saying everything it thought I wanted to hear, but really I just wanted to get to know it.
Looks: very tall seeing as it was 6 documents long and had 5 pages reserved for it on the AP exam...
Brains: can't decide what side it's on but it can tell you what side you're going to write on!
Score: 3/9 for annoyingness and boringness.

Synthesis reacting to my first impression of it

My previous knowledge about the DBQ helped me drastically on Synthesis. With Synthesis really just being an English DBQ minus the "past historical connection" I was able to go from studying DBQs third period to writing Syntheses sixth period.

The Synthesis essay SUCKS I will warn you. It isn't necessarily a difficult one to write, it's just that with the AP Lang curriculum we are so encouraged to express ourselves and talk about our opinions and differences 24/7. Synthesis just does not give us that same mindset. The Synthesis essay is so boring to write because all of the information is given to you in 6 ish documents, there's barely any room to pull from your own brain and emotions, and the AP writers almost always lead you to choose to write a specific way; no matter your viewpoint, one way will always be easier to write than the other.

The Synthesis essay will make you procrastinate like I did sadly, this was the worst part.

When something is so boring it simply takes longer to write. I can barely focus on one thing for very long, like the squirrel I am, making Synthesis my least favorite out of the three essays.

There is so much and so little that I could write about the Synthesis essay. I could write "I hate it" over and over again for three pages worth of text or I could insert my favorite gifs here, but instead, I'll share a little more about what Synthesis did and didn't teach me.

No, not you Synthesis. Here's why Synthesis did NOT get a rose from me...

1. It was boring to read and even more boring to write.
The Synthesis documents always took forever to read because of all the information inside or they took 5/15 minutes to read because there was little to no information and no one knew what the F was going on. For example, this Monument Synthesis, where my group had no idea how to use this photo as a source.

However, thanks to McMahon and the countless amount of student reading our class read throughout the year I think it is safe to say that now if faced with a difficult source or document in a Synthesis essay, I would be able to decode it enough to write at least a 6 or 7.

2. The AP writers try to make you write a certain way, even if it goes against what you believe in.
The writers provide specific documents in order to persuade you to write a certain way, even if that way does not match the opinion you formed on the topic before reading the sources. This frustrated me a lot because, for example, on the mock exam, I wanted to write against parents choosing the vegan lifestyle for their young children but the information within the sources that were given to me persuaded me to write for the parents, because the piece would be easier to write and would take about half as long. This is still something I despise about Synthesis, even after the AP exam.

3. You can't express any real emotion without being really, really careful. 
Synthesis is restricted to writing a point of view on a topic with the given information as evidence, and I strongly disliked not being able to add my own, real opinion. It is okay to add a bit of your own opinion here or there but using it as a source is dangerous and could really hurt your score. This is where I had to keep a close eye on my writing. I couldn't let myself go off on any tangents or get carried away with anything because I would have to get rid of it, losing time.

However, this close style of writing helped me in other areas of writing. At times, more often in the past than now, I would get carried away in my writing or go on a tangent that was just slightly related to the topic prior. For example, here is an excerpt of a piece I wrote Sophomore year.

"May 26, 2017: The crowd roared as the band stepped off the stage. The lights dimmed as the cool spring breeze flew across our shoulders. Tyler tossed me off his shoulders and I landed with a splash in a puddle of mud left over from the heavy downpour we faced for the last half hour. The four of us laughed and cried together, high off of life and just genuinely happy. The crowds dispersed and we were left, in the dark, in front of a huge green bannered stage covered in the mud we had been standing in for the last hour and a half. For a moment it was like it was just us, or just me. Like we were the only four at the whole festival. All of my surroundings disappeared.I recollected why I was here and how I got here. It seemed like it was just yesterday that I was laying in bed when I received that terrifying phone call at 3 am, or got called down to the principal’s office to be accused-- yet again-- of something I simply did not do. I did not use to have the will to live like this, but at this moment I did."

Here, I go from writing about a memory from a festival to an emotional time during middle school. While I was writing a personal narrative and both topics were important to the story, I went off on a tangent and the piece ended up being about something completely different.

Now, I am able to change from one topic to the next much more smooth, or just no go off on tangents, but why ignore saying something you really want to say?

"Disabled people deserve just as much equality as able-bodied people. Disabilities are not something that people chase after, people do not purposely put themselves in positions that will disable them in the future. People with disabilities still experience the same emotions are anybody else. If you cut a disabled person they will bleed if you cut an able-bodied person they will bleed. If you tease a disabled person, it will be the same as teasing an able-bodied person. Disabled people, like discussed in “‘Should I Have Been Killed at Birth?’” by Harriet McBryde Johnson, are just like everyone else on the inside, but because they do not fit into the societal norms at times, they are singled-out and considered to be “discombobulating.” (Source 3). “[People] think they know everything there is to know, just by looking at [disabled people]. That’s how stereotypes work. They don’t know that they’re confused, that they're really expressing the discombobulation that comes in [their] wake.” (Source 3). This is what our society does, they place people into categories depending on what they look like and how they act… leaving disabled people and able-bodied people in two different categories, one seemingly higher than the other. As a society, we need to move past looking at disabled people as lesser than because they have the ability to function at capacity just as great as everyone else. They should not be looked down upon when they could not control anything in their lives when they were born, just like anyone else."