College Credit for High Schoolers

 By Keniya B.

Loading...

What to Do During Social Distancing

By: Angelina N.

What is social distancing, and why is it important right now? 

Social distancing refers to going out minimally, avoiding physical contact with others, and refraining from large gatherings of people. It is used to prevent the spread of infectious diseases, such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The contagiousness of a disease is measured based on the R0

"R Naught Ebola and Flu Diagram" by Kiera Campbell is licensed
under CC BY-SA 4.0

(pronounced “R naught”) value, or the average number of individuals that an infected person transmits the disease to. For diseases exceeding an R0 value of 1, such as COVID-19 (which has an R0 value of about 2.2), the number of infections can multiply rapidly because each infected person will infect more than one other person. In addition, COVID-19 has an incubation period of between two and 14 days, with the average being five days. This means that after contracting the disease, an individual will not exhibit symptoms for an average of five days but will still be contagious during this time frame. Since many infected people do not realize they are infected, they can unintentionally transmit the disease to people that they come into contact with. Actively social distancing is therefore necessary to prevent people from unknowingly infecting those with compromised immune systems or older individuals, who are much more likely to experience severe and possibly fatal symptoms. By taking precautionary measures, the number of infections can be reduced significantly. This also alleviates the burden on hospitals, which may experience a shortage of supplies, equipment, or staff otherwise. 

Although practicing social distancing is beneficial to the community at large, spending most of your time at home may seem like an incredibly difficult and dull adjustment. However, instead of viewing it as a major impediment to social contact and various forms of entertainment, you should view it as an opportunity to accomplish tasks you normally wouldn’t have the time for. Below is a list of ideas of how to spend your period of social distancing in both fun and/or productive ways. 

Find a fun mental stimulus 

Doing a mentally stimulating activity is a great way to combat boredom. 

• Play a board game: Options include Monopoly, chess, Scrabble, etc. — the choices are endless! 
• Go old-fashioned: Try your hand at Sudoku, crossword puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, brainteasers, or crafts (online DIY videos are a great source of inspiration). 
• Write a short story or poem: Brainstorm ideas that you could turn into a piece of writing. 
  

Take time for self-care 

Since most events have been cancelled, your schedule is most likely cleared right now. Instead of sinking into boredom, you should see it as a calm refuge from the chaos and incessant hassle of normal life. Now is a great time for you to reflect on your mental and physical health. 

• Practice meditation: Meditation is focusing on being more present and aware in all aspects of daily life through techniques such as mindfulness. It has been scientifically proven to be conducive to both mental and physical health, with some of its benefits being lower blood pressure and stress levels, improved sleep and memory, and a stronger immune system. There are numerous meditation apps that can be downloaded with the press of a button (Waking Up, Headspace, Calm, and many more), so meditation is a practice that can be conveniently incorporated into your daily routine. 
• Self-reflect: Oftentimes, we get so caught up in seemingly endless tasks, whether that be

  

  Pixabay license- no attribution required

  schoolwork deadlines or upcoming exams, that life seems like a ceaseless “this, that, this, that” and so on so forth. During social distancing, it may seem like everything has suddenly come to a standstill, which is a chance for you to look back on the past few months and plan for the future. Take some time to reflect on your personal growth and accomplishments, as well as what you are still working towards. Set goals for yourself and determine how you will reach them. Jot these ideas down in a notebook, or type them on your computer for future reference. 
• Do what you enjoy: This last one is simple — spend time doing activities that you love! This may be different for every person; it could be spending more time with family, having a movie night with popcorn, or reading a book that’s been on your to-read list for some time. 
  

Start good habits 

It can be hard to incorporate new habits during most of the year because we are often too occupied to feel motivated to do so. Now is the time to pick up good habits that can have a positive impact throughout the rest of your life. 

• Stay active: Staying at home all day makes it easy to fall into a sedentary routine. However,

  

  Pixabay license- no attribution required

  social distancing does not necessarily mean refraining from leaving the house entirely; in fact, it’s a great idea to go outside for a walk or a run in a park or other uncrowded areas during the day. There are also many great at-home workout videos online that provide fun and engaging ways to be active. Learning creative ways to exercise and experiencing the rewards of being physically active may motivate you to include it as a regular part of your routine in the future. 
  
• Eat healthy: A great way to use your spare time is to learn about nutrition and creative healthy recipes. Experiment with various dishes, and determine what works best for you. This may help elevate your consciousness about healthy eating habits in the long-term, which will beneficially impact your life in countless ways. 
  

Do some extra studying 

Since after-school events, most extracurriculars, and transportation time have probably been taken out of your schedule, there is now plenty of extra time to study, even if your face-to-face school is requiring you to attend virtual sessions. 

• Study for AP classes: AP exam season is coming up, which means that it’s a good time to start

  

  Pixabay license- no attribution required

  reviewing information from last semester. It is also a good idea to keep up with College Board’s updates on modifications to the AP exams this year. College Board has already posted the changes to every AP course curriculum, along with the general structure of the altered exams. Make sure to check their website to avoid studying material you are no longer responsible for and to be prepared for this year’s test format. 
• Do some SAT and/or ACT practice: Use this time to read some SAT/ACT prep books, as they contain helpful techniques for succeeding on these standardized tests. Once you’ve reviewed these techniques, take a few practice exams; these are lengthy and typically difficult to fit in with other obligations, so now is the perfect time to try them. 

Learn something new 

If you’re still having a hard time deciding what to do, it may be a good idea to try something completely new and possibly discover new interests in the process. Ideas include learning some magic tricks, trying out calligraphy, or learning a new language through Duolingo. If you’re still having a hard time choosing, there are great sources of inspiration all over the Internet. 

Donate for a good cause 

Taking social distancing seriously is already a great way to protect the well-being of those around you, but you can take it a step further by donating during this time of need. 

Pixabay license- no
attribution required

• Donate blood: Due to the ongoing pandemic, blood drives have been cancelled, meaning that there is currently a severe blood shortage. If you are interested in donating blood, check out the requirements for a student blood donor using this link: https://www.redcrossblood.org/donate-blood/how-to-donate/info-for-student-donors.html 
• Donate to a food bank: Families who face food insecurity are especially vulnerable during this time, with grocery store supplies being depleted rapidly. If possible, consider donating even small instant food packages, candy bars, or personal hygiene products; although it may be difficult to donate in bulk quantity right now, even the smallest contributions can make a difference. 

Social distancing may seem extremely monotonous, but it is actually a great chance to try fun at-home activities, take time for self-reflection, and get ahead in schoolwork and studying. So take advantage of this time to plan out a list of to-dos and start checking it off! 

Works Cited 

Caddy, Becca. “Best Meditation Apps: Practice Mindfulness with Headspace, Calm and More.” 

TechRadar, TechRadar, 21 Mar. 2020, www.techradar.com/news/best-meditation-apps.

Cascella M, Rajnik M, Cuomo A, et al. Features, Evaluation and Treatment Coronavirus 

(COVID-19) [Updated 2020 Mar 8]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): 

StatPearls Publishing; 2020 Jan-. Available from: 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK554776/ 

Hersh, Erica. “Coronavirus Incubation Period: How Long Before Symptoms Appear?” Healthline, 

Healthline Media, 19 Mar. 2020, 

www.healthline.com/health/coronavirus-incubation-period. 

“185_factsheet_social_distancing.Pdf.” Santa Clara County Public Health Department. 

“What Is R0?: Gauging Contagious Infections.” Healthline, 

www.healthline.com/health/r-nought-reproduction-number.

Vongkiatkajorn, Kanyakrit, and Laura Daily. “How You Can Help during the Coronavirus 

Outbreak.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 21 Mar. 2020, www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/03/21/how-you-can-help-during-coronavirus/?arc404=true.  

Scientifically Proven Study Tips

By: Sonia G.

Studying can feel like a chore. Some students study for hours and cannot seem to improve their grades, while other students do not study at all and easily maintain “perfect” averages. There are many myths around the topic of studying, but have no fear, scientifically proven study tips are here.

1. Study before you sleep

Pixabay License
No Attribution Required

What do you do before you go to bed? Many people wind down by reading or listening to music, but it might be worthwhile to try studying. In a 2012 study by the University of Notre Dame, psychologists studied 207 students who habitually slept for at least six hours per night. Participants were randomly assigned to study different types of word pairs at 9 a.m. or 9 p.m. and returned for testing 30 minutes, 12 hours or 24 hours later. At the 12-hour retest, memory overall was much better following a night of sleep compared to a day of wakefulness.¹ So next time you learn a difficult concept in class, consider studying before you go to bed.

2. Study out loud

Pixabay License
No Attribution Required

Talking to yourself can feel weird. People tend to look at you and you draw a lot of attention to yourself. But when it comes to studying by yourself, you may study better when you study out loud. One study shows that people who explain ideas to themselves learn almost three times more than those who don’t. The Harvard Business Review stated that “talking to ourselves is crucial to self-explaining and generally helpful for learning. For one thing, it slows us down — and when we’re more deliberate, we typically gain more from an experience.” ² When University of Illinois psychologist Brian Ross enrolled in a computer course, he found it hard to keep up with his younger counterparts. After reading assigned texts, he asked himself, “What did I just read? How does that fit together? Have I come across this idea before?” This helped him guide his self-studying, and these same questions can be used as you self-study. Next time you study, consider studying out loud (just not in the library).

Pixabay License
No Attribution Required

3. Exercise before you study

Do you like going for a jog in the evening? Do you like to do yoga before bed? No matter your answer, you may want to incorporate some exercise into your studying schedule. Exercise stimulates a brain structure called the hippocampus, which research has shown is important for reasoning and memory. Besides short-term boosts in cognition, regular exercise can help slow down the shrinkage of the hippocampus that comes with age. Additionally, exercise helps reduce levels of the stress hormone cortisol. By doing just 20 minutes of physical activity before studying, you not only get in a good workout, but you also harness the stress-reducing, positive cognitive effects that can assist you as you study.³

As you read this, it is my hope that you will consider incorporating these tips into your study routine. You may find that after using these tips you will see an improvement in your grades, or your study time will become more efficient. Even if you feel comfortable not studying, it is still a skill that can help you in the future by helping you become more confident in your answers. By making the most of your study time, you may grow to appreciate it and might actually learn something new. Studying is a good skill to hone in high school and can be helpful throughout your future career and other endeavors, if you do it correctly.

---

¹ University of Notre Dame. “Sleeping after Processing New Info Most Effective, New Study Shows.” Notre Dame News, 23 Mar. 2012, https://news.nd.edu/news/learning-best-when-you-rest-sleeping-after-processing-new-info-most-effective-new-study-shows/.
² Boser, Ulrich, et al. “Talking to Yourself (Out Loud) Can Help You Learn.” Harvard Business Review, 25 Sept. 2017, https://hbr.org/2017/05/talking-to-yourself-out-loud-can-help-you-learn.
³ Pittman, Olivia, et al. “5 Study Hacks Proven By Science.” College Raptor Blog, https://www.collegeraptor.com/find-colleges/articles/tips-tools-advice/5-study-hacks-proven-by-science-and-why-they-work/.

Technology in Education

By: Austin S. 

Online Learning by LeanForward If 
on flickr.com under CC By-SA 2.0

Today, technology is changing the way we live. Rather than going to the library to read books for research, we need only to search the Internet for the information. Technology is changing every aspect of our daily lives, including education. NCVPS is a great example of the role of technology in today’s education. Technology is giving students the opportunity to learn beyond standard curriculums, practice and study in new ways, gain clarification on different topics, and even to accelerate their education through different courses. 

With technology, students can take courses they otherwise might not have had the opportunity to take. For example, if someone wants to learn Mandarin, he/she can take the NCVPS courses for Mandarin, while the language is not typically offered in public high schools. If a student wants to take an AP class that is unavailable at his/her face-to-face school, he/she can take the course through NCVPS. Online courses also allow students to accelerate their education. For example, an eighth grader can now take Math 1 and Math 2 in the same year through online courses, while most middle schools only have Math 1, and some don’t even have that option! 

In addition to providing the opportunity to accelerate education and providing new opportunities to take different courses you otherwise wouldn’t have the chance to take, technology is helping students find effective ways to practice their newly learned skills and to apply newly learned information. Some great tools include Khan Academy and Quizlet. These tools also help students study the material taught in their courses. Creative students can even use technology to develop their own study tools! For example, a student can create a quiz game through Scratch by MIT, an extremely straightforward programming language that consists of blocks with English phrases on them. Students can also utilize tools that have already been developed for such games, including Kahoot and Quizizz. In the past, students had to use worksheets, handwritten notes, and problems that were created by either them or their friends or family in order to study for their upcoming tests. Now, technology has made studying exciting for some by providing competitive games designed to practice their skills. 

Scratch 2.0 Screen Hello World.png by DevinCook on
Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 2.0

Finally, technology allows for helpful programs such as the NCVPS Peer Tutoring Center to exist. The PTC gives both students and tutors new opportunities to learn and apply the material learned in their classes. It allows tutors to help students in their education, to learn more about technology through videos designed to give troubleshooting tips, and even to write articles such as the one you are currently reading through TutorTalk! The PTC also gives students the opportunity to ask their peers about topics in their courses and to gain clarification on confusing questions that they missed on an assignment. The PTC is an amazing program that should be utilized before it becomes unavailable for you to use. If you have any questions in your course, I would encourage you to go to https://ncvps.upswing.io, login, and find a tutor to help you understand the material you are learning. Technology provides incredible convenience for seeking clarification on topics addressed in your courses, both online and offline. 

Technology is shaping our lives, including in our education. Technology is providing opportunities at an unprecedented rate! Students can accelerate their educations through online courses, take classes that are not provided at their face-to-face schools, practice new skills and application of information through online tools, and ask peer tutors questions to gain understanding on specific topics through the NCVPS Peer Tutoring Center! Technology is powering our modern world in more ways than can be counted; it impacts every aspect of our lives! All of this starts with education.

Brain on Paint

By: Pauline A.

It’s Friday afternoon. You hop off your bus and make your merry way home. As you enter the halls of your house, you make it straight to the TV room, drop your backpack onto the floor, and plop on the couch. You tilt your head back, fatigued from the long day of 7 hours in school, and your thoughts meander to what you’re going to do for the weekend. You take out your phone and scroll through YouTube. As you wander through the plethora of video thumbnails, you spot an old low-fidelity 1980’s looking video cover of a man in a cool pale blue sleeved shirt, with a nice soft brown afro, smiling at the camera; before him stands his easel, with a mountain before it on a backdrop of a canvas. Your brows furrow, as your finger instinctively clicks upon it with the questions: “Why’s this in my video feed?”, but more importantly, “Is that Bob Ross?”. Which now leads to the final question: “How’d he do that?!”. What Bob Ross was doing back in the 80s was painting landscapes all by himself, with no guidance whatsoever, in front of a recording camera. The soothing sounds of paint scraping upon the canvas in the low-quality video have invoked the response of “I wish I could do that!” from many people. As it turns out, you can! When your brain is on paint, a plethora of glorious emotions and thoughts can render you speechless!

It may not be obvious at first, but there are many health benefits to painting. Some health benefits include the improvement of dexterity, memory, and encouragement of concentration. When one holds a paintbrush and strokes onto the canvas, the flexibility of their wrist, fingers, and their hands is heightened. Long periods of this repetitive movement can gradually steady your hand, and thus prevent it from shaking often. However, many overlook that painting or performing any other artistic craft is often done for a long period sitting down, so stretching your hands and resting your body is essential for pleasant painting experience! 

The improvement of memory and concentration go hand in hand. A person who is painting must focus on the meticulous details of what they’re painting and think on their subject matter, whether it’s from their own imagination or if they are using real-life references. Studies have shown that this repetition of focus can help lower the risk of memory loss illnesses at an older age. 

Photo by geralt on Pixabay is licensed under Pixabay License

From an artist’s perspective, I encourage anyone of any age to start painting (though this can be applicable to any hobby)! One of the main reasons why is because it encourages perseverance.  Making paintings enforces trial and error (believe it or not) and researching techniques. Additionally, being surrounded by those who are better than you is a beneficial experience. While many people are intimidated by this, it is ultimately one of the key points that lead to improvement. An essential point to learn is that failure isn’t such a terrible thing to experience. In fact, it can often help pivot an artist in the most successful path towards growth. 

Second, painting allows the expression of emotion. You have free will of what you can paint. From landscapes, to people, to characters, or just splashing stuff that’s on your mind at the moment onto the canvas is a safe outlet for expressing your ideas and pushing your imagination!

Photo by Ryan Hickox on Flickr is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Third, your perception of reality will evolve gradually over time. Studying and painting/drawing (whatever craft in the fine arts you choose), allows a person to see the world in different perspectives. If an artist has studied and built upon their craft, they are more likely to be able to deconstruct basic visual appeals in our daily life: from how the sunlight casts over trees/organisms, how everything one can see can be deconstructed into shapes, and how one can understand the textures of mundane objects. It’s details like these that build up from crafting pictures on the canvas. 

However, many choose not to start painting because it can be too overwhelming at once. Painting has a plethora of approaches and may not seem too linear for a beginner to understand or start on at first. Second, it doesn’t seem “technical” or applicable in many jobs. Paintings are often seen as just pictures on the wall, but they help branch out in different types of artistic careers, from an illustrator at a comic book company to a graphic designer for a marketing firm. Or, they can be used as simple decorations for houses. Last, painting supplies range in price. Like anything else, the better quality products are more expensive than the low-quality ones. A lot of beginners are overwhelmed on deciding which paint brands to choose, paint brushes to buy, and which canvases should be used. 

Photo on Pxhere is licensed under CC0

Although painting can seem overwhelming at first, you should try it out! It can help alleviate boredom, and it allows you to step out of your comfort zone! From personal experience, I got into drawing and painting by looking up “how to draw” and “how to paint” videos on YouTube. This helped a lot by showing me the different ways painting and drawing can be approached; plus, it offered a good introduction into the hobby. These videos are mostly aimed at people who’ve not drawn for long  or picked up a paintbrush, so there’s no need to worry about making something good right away. With materials, it’s a good idea to just buy cheaper materials (like in Walmart or your local dollar store), or “student-quality” materials (products aimed at the most affordable price), to explore your options and to get a feel of what you would like to paint. However, this doesn’t mean you should stick with cheaper qualities forever. Lastly, this is a controversial but common phenomenon, but believe it or not, many artists start out copying their favorite artist(s).  There’s no shame in copying or redrawing/repainting a piece so long as the artist is credited/recognized AND it is not being made for profit! 

Overall, whether or not you want to try out painting or a new hobby is all up to you! But just remember, with the vast Internet, many resources are at your fingertips. It’s up to you whether you use them to your advantage to develop your artistry. 

Art by zatsukii (Pauline A.) on Instagram. You can find her here: https://www.instagram.com/zatsukii/?hl=en

Artwork used (in clockwise order): https://www.instagram.com/p/Bgcfr6xlM5u/, https://www.instagram.com/p/BrZQlnwBUBQ/, https://www.instagram.com/p/Bsgx21LhGtv/ 

The Importance of Water by Hannah D.

The Thrill of the Challenge

By Louisa C. 

Created by Natalie M. on Toondoo

Throughout my educational career, the math classroom had always been my safe haven, a place where I found myself the most confident in my mental abilities and comfortable with learning new material. That was until I was introduced to geometry.

For me, algebra had been a cakewalk. As monomials evolved into binomials, and then advanced to polynomials, I never once had to think twice about the numbers I was working with. I could practically graph, solve, multiply, and divide these entities in my sleep. I found myself the unofficial tutor of my algebra class, the “phone-a-friend” option for all of my peers who struggled with these concepts. Solving multiple equations by graphing was a particular favorite topic of mine. I would march up to the front of the class to present my graphing masterpiece on the board as my peers watched in awe, holding the perception that I had somehow been blessed with unbelievable mental abilities allowing me to so quickly comprehend novel topics we had just learned minutes before. I felt on top of the world; the algebra classroom was my track and I was Usain Bolt, sprinting to the finish line with ease, making my accomplishments look effortless.

On the first day of my geometry class, I waltzed in with the expectation that the course would be breeze. My classmates had already strategically positioned themselves to sit as close to me as possible, allowing easy to access to ask for help. For about the first month or so, I was able to hold on to the new material, but the deeper we went into the course, the less confident I began to feel in my abilities. The first topic that truly stumped me was the Pythagorean theorem. I found myself extremely frustrated, I had always been able to work problems with triangles easily in the past, so why was this new concept so challenging? Who was this Pythagoras anyway, and what made his ancient Greek discoveries so important? My reputation as the “go-to-the-head-of-the-class” student quickly began to slip, as my peers began to notice that I was just as perplexed, or possibly more so, than they were.

Embarrassed, I attended every after school tutoring sessions that was offered, hoping to regain the abilities that allowed math to come so easily to me. I was able to maintain an A in the geometry course, but I had to put in much more work than I had in the past in order to understand the math. As the class came to a close, I realized that even though the topics in geometry challenged me more than those of my past math classes and revoked my nickname of the “math genius”, my love for the subject never once faltered. I began to realize the true appreciation I had for math itself. Instead of enjoying the subject because it was historically so simple for me, I found myself having fun crafting equations and breaking down word problems, appreciating the times I ran into a dead end and celebrating the times I overcame those obstacles.

Even when I entered the second level of algebra, and math once again became easier to understand, I did not find that I loved the subject any more or less. I was just having fun being introduced to new theories, equations, and concepts, allowing new opportunities to see how math could be applied to my everyday life and new ways to approach problems I faced. That being said, in all my future math courses, I do not hope to find easily comprehensible and simply understood materials, but rather a mentally challenging experience that unlocks new ways to think about the nature of systems and structures within our world. I have discovered that not only in math classes, but in my all areas of my life as a whole, it is the challenges I face that present exciting situations which allow me to explore new information about both the surrounding environment and myself.

3 Stages to Improve Your Writing

By Joshua B.

Everyone writes at a different level, and no two pieces of writing are exactly alike. Things like word choice, use of punctuation, and paragraph structure can play off each other to create a unique writing style, and hopefully get people engaged in what you’ve chosen to write. Let’s take a look at how to build a respectable style, and write not just effectively, but with confidence and even (hopefully) a degree of elegance. This article identifies three stages of writing, each one building from the one before it.

So without any further introduction, here is the first step—

1) Learn the rules.

No, seriously. I mean it- with as much emphasis as I can pack into this font: Learn the rules!

How can you properly employ any tool without understanding how it works? Writing without understanding the language is like stumbling over a chainsaw, gassing it up and wandering off to go cut a tree. How are you supposed to know what to do? You’re just as likely to hurt yourself as you are to trim something down properly . . . and in this case, what’s at stake aren’t limbs, arboreal or otherwise, but the grade on your English paper.

That said, not many people these days can be blamed for not having great grammar. Public schools, as well as plenty of private schools, are dropping basic grammar training in favor of jumping directly into writing THE FIVE-PARAGRAPH ESSAY: in other words, how to build an argument, create an outline for the argument, support the argument points, and conclude the essay.

First of all, this probably stifles creativity, but I can hardly blame the system for not wanting people to think for themselves, so it gets a pass. But there’s another huge flaw here, and it’s this. Would we teach kids advanced Calculus before they could add or subtract? Should engineers be building bridges without knowing whether or not they’re going to collapse?

If those examples seem extreme, they are, but at the same time, they aren’t. This is exactly what we’re doing to the English language. We’re ignoring the basics; teaching each other how to build bridges without first understanding how bridges work.

Dangerous? Of course! But there is an upside, and it’s that very few people who write poorly are actually at fault for it. All most people need to do is be taught, and then practice what they’ve learned.

For that, there’s one book that I can recommend (and by “I”, I mean English professors across the world, not to mention Stephen King (On Writing, p.11)): The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White. It’s a slim book, but it contains just about everything you’ll ever need to know about punctuation, sentence structure, frequently confused words, and much more.

Understanding the rules of the language is the first step- the cornerstone of good writing. To build from there, we move up to step two.

2) Focus on the purpose of your writing.

“Practice makes perfect” is true with most things—but in writing, it’s more like, “Practice makes as good as how you write about a certain situation.” That’s because writing is so subjective. If I enjoy this book more than, say, this one, this one, or even this one, then who is anyone else to say that the first book isn’t just as great as the other three?

Well . . . maybe everybody else on the planet.

See, writing isn’t like other areas of study. Take math, for instance. For the most part, math is a self-contained science; numbers speak exclusively of other numbers, and one calculation leads to another—it’s all very logical and closed-off.

Writing, on the other hand, almost always has an outside purpose. A news article isn’t written just to be written; it’s written to inform. An editorial is written to persuade, and a novel or short story either to entertain or to make some general point about the state of the human condition (or some such idealistic nonsense). So if no one else liked that first book, then the majority opinion is that it’s pretty much an awful book.

The point is that writing is directed at people. So if I can’t write a persuasive essay without actually persuading anybody, then it’s not a persuasive essay—It’s worthless, it’s sad, and it’s really no better than a pile of toilet paper. And if my short story can’t entertain people (or convince them to send money to starving children in some third-world country, or whatever), then it’s not really a short story. It’s just a bunch of words on a page that doesn't mean anything on their own.

So if you want your writing to do what writing exists to do—affect people—then there are three things you should focus on.

1. Sound intelligent, in general. This goes back to the first step. Take this style of writing for example:

“If i use a semicolon; when i could use a comma, or just nothing at all—if u dont use punctuation or spel words write—no one wil lissen to us.”

Ack! Not only will this kind of writing make people doubt your credibility, but also it is physically painful to read. Spellcheck is a great invention, and there’s no reason not to take advantage of it. If you aren’t sure about a word, use a dictionary to find out if it means what you think it means, or just use a different word. The beauty of the English language is that every word has about a thousand synonyms, so there’s always something else you could use that means about the same thing. And finally, proofread. Nothing looks worse than a typo in the first sentence of an essay.

2. Sound intelligent, specifically. You should always know what you’re talking about. For a history paper, this means doing research. It means that, if you’re writing a short story, you should know your characters better than they know themselves, and convince the reader that you have some brilliant plan for where the story is going (even if you don’t). And always, always, always write with confidence. If you sound like you know what you’re talking about, you’ll be a lot more convincing—even if you don’t know anything at all. Confidence is no substitute for hard knowledge, but it’s a lot better at making people listen to you.

3. Read. Read whenever you can. Pick whichever news site fits your political biases, and read that in the morning. Find a novel that can hold your attention. It doesn’t have to be high-browed “literature”; YA fantasy novels can be just as well written and entertaining as anything else, and even Twilight can help you strengthen your grasp of language and grammar. (Wow. Okay—if my typing fingers had mouths, I would be washing them out with soap.) But reading, seeing the words on the page, and paying attention to what rules come into play and when is the best way to improve writing. Even Twilight.

3) Craft a style, and stay consistent.

An essay can be good, or it can be great. It’s mostly up to the reader, but there are ways the writer can help the reader along. The chief among these is style.

Have a voice! Don’t just be a dry, boring collection of words on a page. It doesn’t matter if you have the cure to cancer, or if you know the answer to the meaning of life—No one will bother reading it, or being moved by it, if it’s written in a boring way.

Compare these two passages. Each one starts the same short story. Think about which one sounds better, which one is more interesting, and which one would make you want to keep reading.

I went into the doctor’s office to get an MRI. I hate MRIs because I have claustrophobia because when I was a little kid something bad happened which I will talk about later. They thought I might have cancer, so I was really scared. And I knew I had to do the MRI but I still didn’t want to.

Or:

In the end, it turned out I didn’t have cancer. It was a genetic condition, easily controlled through medication, and not even that dangerous—not by cancer standards, anyway. Back then, however, we didn’t know that, so I was on thin ice mentally even before the MRI. All week was a kind of nervous high-wire walk; I was eager to get the test done and over with, yet dreading what it might spell out for my future.

I shouldn’t have worried so much. They fixed me right up.

Writing may be subjective, but I think (and hopefully you do too) that that second passage was MUCH more interesting than the first. It’s not perfect, not by a long shot, but it’s also not terrible.

Why is it so much better? It has a voice. It uses some metaphors, provides conflict, and is more linguistically tense than the first passage. It doesn’t use more words than it needs to, and it sounds a lot better when you read it aloud.

Ultimately, style is about how good the words sound when you read them aloud.

That’s all.

Superficial? Yes.

Necessary? Absolutely.

For the most part, style is a one-two punch, made up of sentence-and-paragraph structure and punctuation. The most basic rule of making things sound good is this: shake it up. Vary the length of sentences. Have a long sentence, with two or three commas and an em-dash—at the right place, of course, otherwise it will look strange—and then follow it up with a shorter sentence. This gives the reader a break. Then maybe experiment with punctuation; a semicolon can unite two sentences that are about the same length, and adds some flair and a dash of sophistication.

Those are the very basic points of style. There’s a lot more, most of it covered in books like The Elements of Style, but you can only go so far by reading about something. Do it for yourself—write stuff! If that’s all you walk away with from this article, then that’s fine with me—write stuff. Your grade will thank you, and you’ll sound a heck of a lot smarter on your college admittance essays. Let yourself build an understanding of the language, pay attention when you read, and pretty soon you’ll be cranking out great, compelling essays as easily as you fall asleep at night.

With coffee.

Maybe.