An urbаn plаnner аnd their client are reviewing the оutput оf a visibility analysis that is fоr a proposed state park observation deck. The client asks the planner about the resultant raster that shows varying grid values across the study area. What do these values likely represent?
Reаding Midterm Exаm Reаding One: ZERO by Paul Lоgan Preview Bright and capable, the authоr оf this essay followed the popular crowd—right into a career as a shopping-cart attendant at a giant warehouse store. There he ran into a glimpse of his past and had an unsettling vision of his future. 1 Three F’s and two I’s. 2 My first semester grades hit me like a kick in the stomach. The F’s were for classes where my work was poor. The I’s were “incompletes”—for courses in which I never finished my assignments. They eventually became F’s too. 3 I crumpled the report card and shoved it deep in a trashcan. I can’t say I was surprised. A zero grade point average was what I deserved, no question about it. But seeing my name in print on the worst possible report card still hurt. It also lit a spark in me, one that changed my life. 4 I was nineteen when I bombed out my first year of college. I hadn’t always been a poor student. During elementary and middle school, I was consistently at the top of my class. But when I transferred into a huge regional high school, everything changed. I started “underachieving.” Guidance counselors, teachers, and members of my family noticed. “You have potential,” they’d say when they heard of my mediocre performance. “You just don’t apply yourself.” 5 They didn’t understand. The truth was I did apply myself—just not to academics. As a shy acne-prone teenager thrown into an enormous and unfamiliar high school, grades were not my priority; survival was. During my freshman year, I was constantly hassled and teased by a group of older guys at my school. They shoved and threatened me on the bus, teased me in the halls, and mocked me during lunchtime. Nerd. Geek. Loser. These insults were fired at me like bullets. Sometimes they came with fists. I got scared. 6 This fear transformed me. Constantly stressed and distracted, I stopped worrying about classes. Too embarrassed to admit to teachers or my family what was happening, I quietly dropped from an A student in 8th grade to a C student just a year later. My definition of success changed just as dramatically. To me, a good day at school was no longer about doing well in class. It was simply about getting home without being hassled. To achieve this goal, I learned to blend in to the crowd—to look, talk, and act like the popular kids. First, I changed my clothes and hairstyle. Then I started behaving differently, hanging out with new “friends” and teasing the few kids who fit in worse than me. By the end of my freshman year, I escaped being at the bottom of the social ladder, but I also gave up on being a good student. 7 Instead, my focus was on following the crowd and being a social success. In 10th grade, I got a job at a nearby mall, so I could buy what seemed important: name-brand clothes, expensive sneakers, the latest CD’s, and movie tickets—things I thought I needed to be popular. So what if my grades tumbled because I neglected my studies? At least no one was laughing at me anymore. By 11thgrade, a new girlfriend and my used car were what I cared most about. Classes were a meaningless activity I endured weekdays. Senior year was more of the same, though I took the SAT and applied to a few colleges—because classmates were doing it. Despite my mediocre grades, I managed to get accepted. The following September, thanks to my family’s savings, I followed the crowd and floated straight to college. 8 That’s when I started to sink. Years of putting social time and my job ahead of school left me without study habits to deal with college work. Years of coasting in class left me unready for assignments that required effort and time management skills. Years of following others left me unequipped to make smart choices about my education. In addition to lacking skills, I also lacked motivation. College felt as meaningless to me as high school. Though I’d gotten accepted at a four-year university, nothing pushed me to succeed there. I arrived on campus in September without skills, goals, and a plan. I figured I could continue doing what I had done for years: coasting. It was a recipe for disaster. 9 My first week on campus, I coasted through freshman orientation, skipping activities because I didn’t take them seriously. My second week, I attended a few parties, got home late, and overslept, missing a bunch of classes. No big deal, I thought. I’d just float by and hand in my homework late. But I quickly discovered, unlike high school, catching up was difficult in college. Readings in my English and History classes were longer and more complicated than I was used to—too difficult for me to skim. Writing assignments were more numerous and required more time than I’d expected. Unaccustomed to the workload, I started cutting “easy” classes to complete overdue assignments from other courses. This strategy made me fall further behind, which, in turn, made it difficult to motivate myself to attend class. 10 Why bother if you’re already behind? I thought. 11 Deadlines passed and work kept piling up, and I began to realize I was over my head. Halfway through the semester, I stopped going to classes regularly, hoping instead that I could score well on final exams to offset my missing assignments. But without attending class and taking notes, there was no way I could adequately prepare for tests. While coasting worked in high school, it didn’t work in college. By the end of ten weeks, I knew I was done. No longer able to float, I’d sunk. My family was stunned and disappointed at my failure. I was too, though the lesson hadn’t yet fully sunk in. 12 That happened a few months later when I was working at a large warehouse store called Sam’s Club—the one place near home that would hire an unskilled college dropout in the middle of winter. My job was to retrieve shopping carts from the store’s massive parking lot and stack them in rows for customers. Days and nights, I trudged across the dismal asphalt collecting carts and cleaning up piles of garbage and soiled diapers shoppers left behind. On this March afternoon, it was raw and stormy, and I was wearing a used yellow Sam’s Club raincoat that made me stink of sweat and vinyl. My hair was dripping, and my shoes squished like soaked sponges with each step. 13 The store was crowded with shoppers, and I’d just shoved a heavy train of carts next to the front door when a cluster of young people walked out. I recognized them immediately: four popular classmates who’d gone to my high school. They were giggling about something—a sound that brought me back to the time, years earlier, when I feared being laughed at by my peers. My face began to burn. 14 “Oh my God, it’s Paul,” said one of them. They all looked at me. I felt trapped. 15 “What are you doing here?” said Ken, a guy who’d been in my English class in 10th grade. He glanced at my rain-soaked jacket. 16 “Working,” I said. There was an awkward silence. I had spent years trying to fit in with people like them, and now I only wanted to get away. “What about you?” I asked, hoping to change the subject. 17 “We’re home for spring break,” Ken replied. 18 The burning on my face suddenly grew hotter. They were already finishing their first year of college, and I was pushing carts in the rain—pushing carts for them. 19 “Paul we need more carts in here! Hurry up!!!”My supervisor yelled from inside the store. 20 My former classmates looked uncomfortable and embarrassed. I could see the questions in their eyes. What happened to you? Weren’t you in college too? I felt as if my first semester grade point average was written across my face and they were reading it. 21 Zero point zero. 22 I nodded a quick goodbye and turned away. My eyes stung as the truth of my mistakes poured down on me like the rain. I had allowed myself to become what my grade point average said: a failure—a dropout without a plan, a goal, or a real future. A zero. Coasting wasn’t going to carry me any further. Neither would the CD’s, the parties, or the brand name sneakers I’d so valued in high school. By pursuing them and nothing else, I’d closed doors in my life. If I kept following the same path, I could spend years struggling in that dreary parking lot or some other menial job while my peers moved forward. I wanted to do more with my life than push shopping carts. 23 The spark which ignited at the sight of my report card erupted into a burning flame in my chest. Watching my friends drive off that afternoon, one thing was suddenly clear to me: it was time to get serious and take control of my life. College could help me do that, I realized. It could be a lifeline; I just had to grab it—no more coasting. 24 The following fall, with money saved from working nine months in the parking lot, I paid for classes at a local community college. This time, I attended every orientation activity—and I took notes. Learning from past mistakes, I also bought a calendar and jotted down each assignment, so I could see deadlines well in advance and plan accordingly. Instead of skipping classes for social time, I arranged social events after class with peers who seemed serious about their work. No longer a follower, I became a study group leader! This actually helped me become a popular student—the thing I had chased for so long in high school. 25 I am not going to say it was easy. After long days on the job, I spent longer nights at home doing my coursework. It took months of practice for me to learn the skills I’d missed in high school: how to take good notes, how to take tests, how to write an effective essay, and how to get help when I needed it. But gradually I learned. 26 Throughout my “second” attempt at college, I sat beside many students who reminded me of myself during my first semester. I recognized them right away—students who seemed distracted or disinterested in class or who were frequently absent. They usually disappeared after a few weeks. Some were dealing with full lives that made it difficult to focus on their courses. Others, especially the ones straight out of high school, were coasting, unsure of why they were there or what they were doing. For these students, college is especially tough. 27 To thrive in college, you have to want to be there, and you have to be ready to focus on work. Some people aren’t ready. They’re likely to fail, just as I did. But even failure, as painful as it is, doesn’t have to be an ending. It can be a learning experience—one that builds strength and gives direction. It can also serve as a wake up call that turns a floating student into a serious one. It can even light a spark that sets the stage for future success. Take it from me, a former zero, who graduated from community college with a perfect grade point average! For each question, choose the letter of the correct answer. “I recognized them right away—students who seemed distracted or apathetic in class or who were frequently absent. They usually disappeared after a few weeks. (Paragraph 26) 1. In the excerpt, the word apathetic means a. physically ill. b. uninterested. c. disruptive. d. energetic. 2. A central point in “Zero” is that a. the only way to avoid bullying in school is to learn to act like the popular kids. b. these days very few high school students are well-prepared for college. c. once a person puts his mind to it, succeeding in college is easy. d. with hard work, it is possible to succeed in college even if you failed on your first attempt. 3. The main idea of the excerpt is that Logan (Paragraph 6) a. changed from someone who didn’t fit in to someone who did. b. became a bully. c. concentrated so much on fitting in that his grades fell. d. was too embarrassed to admit to his teachers or family that he was being bullied. 4. The main idea of the excerpt is that Logan (Paragraph 24) a. became a study group leader while attending community college. b. planned and worked hard at succeeding at a local community college. c. realized that jotting down assignments was the key to academic success. d. began to socialize with students who seemed serious about their work while he attended community college. 5. One tool that helped Logan succeed in college was a. a new laptop computer. b. a calendar. c. an up-to-date cell phone. d. a pocket calculator. 6. The excerpt suggests that (Paragraphs 15-21) a. Logan’s former classmates were intending to tease him for working at Sam’s Club. b. Logan is grateful that he has a job, however menial. c. Logan’s former classmates suspect that he has flunked out of college. d. Logan’s former classmates respect him for being a hard worker. 7. We can infer from the selection that Logan a. likes to brag about his success in community college. b. wants to encourage high school students to work at part-time jobs. c. wants to encourage high school students to place academic success ahead of social success. d. knows that sometimes high school students have to conform to avoid being bullied. 8. We can infer that Logan put quotation marks around the word friends in paragraph 6 because (Paragraph 6) a. he had learned that those students would be his lifelong friends. b. he no longer thinks of the friends he made in high school as real friends. c. the friends he made in high school were the first real friends he had ever made. d. he felt lucky to have several friends rather than just one. 9. The passage suggests that in order to succeed in college, a student must a. know what he is going to major in before he enrolls. b. not work at a part-time job. c. give up his social life. d. have good time management skills. 10. The selection suggests that when Logan ran into his former classmates in the parking lot of Sam’s Club, he (Paragraphs 12-21) a. felt like blaming them for his failure to succeed in college. b. felt like their servant. c. suspected that they have flunked out of college too. d. realized that they had always thought he was a loser. Reading Two: RESPONSIBILITY by M. Scott Peck Preview In this excerpt from the longtime popular book The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck, a psychiatrist, explains a key first step in dealing with personal problems. He does so by offering examples of two people who fail to think clearly about their own problems. 1 We cannot solve life’s problems except by solving them. This statement may seem idiotically self-evident, yet it is seemingly beyond the comprehension of much of the human race. This is because we must accept responsibility for a problem before we can solve it. We cannot solve a problem by saying, “It’s not my problem.” We cannot solve a problem by hoping that someone else will solve it for us. I can solve a problem only when I say, “This is my problem and it’s up to me to solve it.” But many, so many, seek to avoid the pain of their problems by saying to themselves: “This problem was caused by other people, or by social circumstances beyond my control, and therefore it is up to other people or society to solve this problem for me. It is not really my personal problem.” 2 The extent to which people will go psychologically to avoid assuming responsibility for personal problems, while always sad, is sometimes almost ludicrous. A career sergeant in the army, stationed in Okinawa and in serious trouble because of his excessive drinking, was referred for psychiatric evaluation and, if possible, assistance. He denied that he was an alcoholic, or even that his use of alcohol was a personal problem, saying, “There’s nothing else to do in the evenings in Okinawa except drink.” 3 “Do you like to read?” I asked. 4 “Oh yes, I like to read, sure.” 5 “Then why don’t you read in the evening instead of drinking?” 6 “It’s too noisy to read in the barracks.” 7 “Well, then, why don’t you go to the library?” 8 “The library is too far away.” 9 “Is the library farther away than the bar you go to?” 10 “Well, I’m not much of a reader. That’s not where my interests lie.” 11 “Do you like to fish?” I then inquired. 12 “Sure, I love to fish.” 13 “Why not go fishing instead of drinking?” 14 “Because I have to work all day long.” 15 “Can’t you go fishing at night?” 16 “No, there isn’t any night fishing in Okinawa.” 17 “But there is,” I said. “I know several organizations that fish at night here. Would you like me to put you in touch with them?” 18 “Well, I really don’t like to fish.” 19 “What I hear you saying,” I clarified, “is that there are other things to do in Okinawa except drink, but the thing you like to do most in Okinawa is drink.” 20 “Yeah, I guess so.” 21 “But your drinking is getting you in trouble, so you’re faced with a real problem, aren’t you?” 22 “This damn island would drive anyone to drink.” 23 I kept trying for a while, but the sergeant was not the least bit interested in seeing his drinking as a personal problem which he could solve either with or without help, and I regretfully told his commander that he was not amenable to assistance. His drinking continued, and he was separated from the service in mid-career. 24 A young wife, also in Okinawa, cut her wrist lightly with a razor blade and was brought to the emergency room, where I saw her. I asked her why she had done this to herself. 25 “To kill myself, of course.” 26 “Why do you want to kill yourself?” 27 “Because I can’t stand it on this dumb island. You have to send me back to the States. I’m going to kill myself if I have to stay here any longer.” 28 “What is it about living on Okinawa that’s so painful for you?” I asked. 29 She began to cry in a whining sort of way. “I don’t have any friends here, and I’m alone all the time.” 30 “That’s too bad. How come you haven’t been able to make any friends?” 31 “Because I have to live in a stupid Okinawan housing area, and none of my neighbors speak English.” 32 “Why don’t you drive over to the American housing area or to the wives’ club during the day so you can make some friends?” 33 “Because my husband has to drive the car to work.” 34 “Can’t you drive him to work, since you’re alone and bored all day?” I asked. 35 “No. It’s a stick-shift car, and I don’t know how to drive a stick-shift car, only an automatic.” 36 “Why don’t you learn how to drive a stick-shift car?” 37 She glared at me. “On these roads? You must be crazy.” For each question, choose the letter of the correct answer. “We cannot solve life’s problems except by solving them. This statement may seem idiotically self-evident, yet it is seemingly beyond the comprehension of much of the human race.” (Paragraph 1) 1. In the excerpt, the word comprehension probably means a. meaning. b. understanding. c. confusion. d. absence. 2. Which sentence best expresses the central point of the entire selection? a. In Okinawa, Peck met two people who refused to take responsibility for their own problems. b. Some people find ways to come up with creative excuses for their irresponsibility. c. Many people, like the sergeant and the young wife, won’t solve their problems because they refuse to take responsibility for them. d. The sergeant and the young wife would rather see their careers and lives ruined than take responsibility for their problems. 3. What seems to be the main idea of paragraph 23? (Paragraph 23) a. Peck tried for some time to help the sergeant. b. Drinking has destroyed the lives of many people. c. Peck told the commander that he could not help the sergeant. d. The sergeant, whom Peck was unable to help, had to leave the service. 4. Peck states that the sergeant was not willing to be helped. What evidence does he give for that statement? (Paragraphs 3-23) a. The sergeant did not like to fish. b. The sergeant did not like to read. c. The sergeant refused every one of Peck’s suggestions. d. All of the above 5. The young wife first saw Peck because she a. was drinking too much. b. had cut her wrist. c. had tried to return to the States. d. wanted to learn to drive. 6. The young wife said she could not drive to the wives’ club because a. she could not drive a stick-shift car. b. she had to be away at work all day. c. none of the other wives spoke English. d. she and her husband did not own a car. 7. Which statement would Peck be most likely to make to the young wife? a. “No one in your situation could be expected to be happy.” b. “Since you’re not willing to learn to drive a stick-shift car, you don’t really want to help yourself.” c.“Your neighbors really should learn English so that they can talk to you.” d. “The military should make better arrangements for spouses who are living far away from home.” 8. The sergeant and the young wife probably a. knew each other. b. wanted someone else to solve their problems. c. could have solved their problems if they were back in the United States. d. became happier and stronger after their meetings with Peck. 9. We can infer that M. Scott Peck a. was almost never able to help the people who were sent to him for psychiatric evaluation. b. did not know much about the island of Okinawa. c. became angry at the career sergeant and young wife for refusing to follow his suggestions. d. is skilled at suggesting reasonable steps people can take to go about solving their problems. 10. We can conclude from the selection that a. being stationed in a place far from home brings out the worst in people. b. Okinawa is an especially unpleasant place in which to be stationed. c. some people cannot be helped by psychiatrists. d. Peck is not a very good psychiatrist. Writing Midterm Exam Requirements: Include the top left information. Your paragraph should be indented and 12 to 15 lines long. Include: a title, a topic sentence, supporting details (major and minor details), and a concluding sentence Use transition words to connect your ideas. Use formal font: Times New Roman 12 OR Arial 11. Do not contract: 'I am', not 'I'm', 'There is', not 'There's'. Do not use 'And', 'Or', 'But', or 'So' at the beginning of the sentence. Write a double-spaced paragraph about ONE of the following: 1. What are You Thankful for? Thanksgiving is a time when many people think about what they are thankful for. Write about one or two things in your life that you are truly thankful for and explain why. Guiding questions: What are you thankful for this year? How have these people, things, or experiences helped you? How do you show your appreciation? 2. Would You Want to Be a Social Media Influencer? Social media influencers are people who share videos, photos, and opinions online and often make money doing it. Would you want to be one? Why or why not? Guiding questions: What kind of content would you post if you were an influencer? Do you think it would be fun, stressful, or both? What are the pros and cons of being famous online? 3. Is Artificial Intelligence (AI) Helping or Hurting Us? AI tools like ChatGPT, smart assistants, and apps that write or create images are becoming more popular. Some people say they make life easier, while others worry they may replace human jobs or creativity. What do you think? Guiding questions: Have you used AI tools before? What was your experience like? Do you think AI is mostly helpful or mostly harmful? How do you think AI will affect your future?
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