Update on Study Saturday

/ Carol Galloway

So.  Those of you who were at the practice multiple choice exam yesterday know that I lost my voice midway through yesterday– and not just a little bit.  (It was pretty hilarious, actually, if a bit painful and inconvenient.)  Today, if anything, it’s worse.

I went to the doctor yesterday after school, and I have a nice case of laryngitis, which means that my vocal chords are inflamed and irritated and therefore not working normally.  Unfortunately, there’s not much to do get my voice back quickly– I’ve been drinking so much green tea with ginger that I might prompt a third Opium War in China in order to address the trade imbalance I’m creating, and I’ve had enough honey-lemon concoctions to last me a lifetime.  The only thing for it is to simply not talk, and give my vocal chords time to fix themselves.

If you’re clever, you’ve spotted the problem: running a study session through the medium of mime is perhaps not the most effective thing ever.  Usually at these sessions I talk for about four or five hours, answering questions and reviewing content, and I honestly don’t know if I’ll be able to do that by Saturday.  I’m HOPING my vocal chords will suddenly decide to play ball overnight, but that may not happen.  So.

  1. If my voice isn’t cooperating tomorrow morning, I’m going to go ahead and call off the study session at Swift-Cantrell.  I know many of you are coming from all over the county, and I want you to have time to make alternate plans if you need to.
  2. I will post an update as to the status of the study session on this blog, and over Remind, and on Twitter, and hang a sign on my door.  PLEASE make sure you pass the information along to everyone in APWH (especially if they took the class in the fall).
  3. EVEN IF there is no official study session, you still CAN AND SHOULD hold your own!  Meet up with friends at a coffee shop, or hang out at someone’s house– or go ahead to the park!  Work together to complete those timelines on the back of each Unit Guide, make a mind-map for each period of study, draw up compare and contrast charts for major empires or faiths or trade systems.  You can do this.
  4. I’m going to try to set up a Google hangout for you guys if I can’t manage to run the study session, so that you’ll have a venue to ask me questions, and so that I can answer— it’ll have to be a text chat, however, rather than video.  I’ll put information about a hangout up on this blog if that’s the case.

I really, really hope we don’t have to cancel, guys– I’ve never NOT run a study session on the Saturday before the exam, and I don’t want to break tradition now.  But we’ll see.  Keep your fingers crossed, okay?

On a brighter note, however– I just got word that we’ll be doing one more Twitter review chat on May 11th from 8:00 to 9:00 PM– the night before the exam.  Use the hashtag #APWorldCobb and you can ask last-minute questions and get help from several AP World teachers (including me) from around Cobb.  AND– this is the exciting part– Raoul Meyer will also be online to help us answer questions.  Who is Raoul Meyer, you ask?  Why, he’s one of the writers for Crash Course– John Green’s high school history teacher!