User talk:Kittycat rox

Welcome! (We can't say that loudly enough!)
Here are a few links you might find helpful:


 * Be Bold!
 * Don't let grumpy users scare you off
 * Meet other new users
 * Learn from others
 * Play nicely with others
 * Contribute, Contribute, Contribute!
 * Tell us about you

You can sign your name on talk pages and votes by typing &#126;&#126;&#126;&#126;; our software automatically converts it to your username and the date.

If you have any questions or problems, no matter what they are, leave me a message on my talk page. Or, please come to the new contributors' help page, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, you can just type   on your user page, and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions.

We're so glad you're here! --Simonkoldyk 01:21, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

APUS
I posted this stuff under your question. It might be of some help, so I'm just posting it here so you have a chance to look at it in case you don't go back to the question.

To pass the essay portion of the test, study women and minorities. The hyper-PC AP people can't resist making the essay on women or minorities every time. Just took the test last year and the whole room groaned when they saw the essay question because we'd all made jokes about what it was going to be and... it was exactly what we'd thought - women in the African American enfranchisement movement i think. At any rate, don't freak out, because the AP has really wide grade margins. I think a 5 is anything above roughly a 75 percent and a 4 reaches down fairly low. If you study consistently, you should hopefully be able to hit a four, which is accepted by most universities as sufficient to bar you from having to take the class in college. I think notecards might be a bad idea because it causes you to focus on discreet pieces of information. THe important thing here is to think of the history as a storyline. This can be made difficult by the way history texts are put together - with separate sections for "Technology in the 1800s" or "Women in the 1800s" or "Religion in the 17th Century." Just learn the storyline well - what the basic gist of the period is in the various categories given, and all you have to "memorize" is the particular names, which you can then flashcard or outline. Don't be ashamed to read this stuff to yourself outloud. Sometimes just staring at notes is completely useless, but if you, for instance, say "Eli Whitney's cotton gin, although it reduced the number of workers necessary to harvest cotton, made the industry more profitable and therefore in the long run led to increased slavery," the information will actually have to pass through your head instead of bouncing off. This goes for writing outlines as well. If you're writing an outline, make sure to use your own words, so your brain has to grapple with the subject, instead of simply memorizing a line of a textbook for a minute so you can write it down. And maybe try reading the info ahead of time, so that when your teacher talks about it, what he/she says will actually imprint somewhat on your brain instead of just sounding foreign. Good Luck. Remember. It's supposed to be a hard class, but if you stay afloat, you should do just fine on the test. Sashafklein 04:17, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh. ALso. I think most history textbooks are really boring and therefore difficult to understand. You might, if you have the time, consider reading some small more narrative works on periods of US history instead. You're probably past this part by now, but Birth of a Nation, for instance, does a good job of breaking the leadup to the Revolutionary War into a nice, cohesive narrative. And it's pretty short. You can probably ask you teacher (or the wiki reference desk) for works like this for various periods. YOu can only do this really, though, if you've got the time. Sashafklein 04:22, 14 December 2006 (UTC)