Assignment 26: Theodore

At times, this class felt like a college class. Unlike some teachers, you didn’t hold our hands throughout the school year; we had to learn to fend for ourselves. After all, AP classes are supposed to prepare us for college. I also believe that you are willing to adjust the curriculum to reduce our stress, as long as our learning is unimpaired. You managed the concerns of Academy students well; we are not known for a sense of perspective about our grades.

I was going to discuss individual parts of the class, but I realized that I can easily summarize: (1) I liked almost everything. (2) I felt that each part of the class was effective, albeit in different ways. Of course, I cannot guarantee that everyone thought the class was effective. But it was for me: If I had written this blog a year ago, I would have included boring, unnecessary details about every aspect of the class.

Come to think of it, I do have constructive criticism for one part of the class — summer reading. While Writing with Style is an amazing book that significantly improved how I think about writing, I cannot say the same about The Teenage Brain by Dr. Jensen. But I don’t want to merely complain about it; I want to offer an alternative — The Moral Animal by Robert Wright. Every chapter of The Teenage Brain had the same idea: “Chemical imbalances in a teenager’s epithalamus or rhinencephalon or cerebralion predispose them to do drugs or crash their car or become depressed.” The message was horrifying yet boring. Jensen focused on the names of brain regions, but that information is worthless for improving our lives. I invented the word “cerebralion,” but you couldn’t tell because the name doesn’t matter.

On the other hand, Wright has roughly the same message — we are not as in control of ourselves as we think we are — but he explains why. Thus, I have found his concepts much more relevant than Jensen’s terminology. The Moral Animal touches on mature topics from time to time, but it is less disturbing than Jensen’s brutally clinical descriptions of ill-fated adolescents.

Note: If you have read The Moral Animal — which often discusses ulterior motives — you might guess that I have a hidden motive in recommending the book. I do. Since it’s a relatively benign one, I think you can guess it by 2021.