Paul Thomson

Finding Utopia in Animal Farm and Lord of the Flies (Like Acing your AP Calculus Exam without Knowin

Since the beginning of time human beings have imagined living in a utopia. It seems simple enough. In a perfect world everyone would live together in harmony, help each other out, there would be no war, no hunger, and no hate. It sounds pretty simple on t... Read >

Endurance as a virtue in The Scarlett Letter, Antigone and To Kill a Mockingbird quotes

Endurance is a virtue that we, as a Westernized society, place a great deal of worth in. To withstand intense pain, strife or just plain unpleasantness—or even muster up the strength to resist an endlessly tempting pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chubby Hubby—is to... Read >

The Cautionary Tale of Shakespeare’s Macbeth

William Shakespeare’s Macbeth contains a lotof life lessons. Number one: Don’t listen to stranger bearded women when wandering through a fog. Number two: Never let anyone bully you into doing something you don’t want to, even if it’s your wife. And Number... Read >

Movin' On Up: Reading Education as Social Mobility in Great Gatsby Quotes and Jane Eyre

Pink Floyd was wrong. Very wrong. So wrong in fact that its famous lyric, “We don’t need no education,” is an assault on the ears of anyone who considers themselves to be grammar aficionados.As ironically implied by its error-laden sentence, Pink Floyd wa... Read >

Movin' On Up: Reading Education as Social Mobility in Great Gatsby Quotes and Jane Eyre

Every myth has its trickster character. In the Greek tradition, you’ve got Hermes. In Roman mythology, there is Mercurius. In many native American folklore, you have the coyote. And in the American literary tradition? Well, we’ve got Tom Sawyer.Technicall... Read >

Party Time: Party Settings in Romeo and Juliet and Great Gatsby quotes

Ah, parties. Who doesn’t love a good party? You’ve got awesome food, drinks, cool people, loud music and unrestrained hijinks abound. Beyond being an opportunity to go buck wild or to be a social animal, parties also serve a purpose of potential serendipi... Read >

Hogwarts, Hamlet and Huckleberry Finn: Inspirations for Education

It cannot be doubted that public education in this country is at a crossroads. Whether it's at the primary, secondary or post-secondary level, students, teachers and institutions are under fire. Schools doesn't have enough money, teachers are either gross... Read >

What You Score on the PSAT or SAT if You Took it Today?

Nothing may deter middle-aged people from going back to school so much as their dislike of the idea of taking more standardized tests. Returning and non-traditional students who are looking to get their undergraduate degree are likely planning to transfer... Read >

AP Calculus All Year Long: A Look at Year-Round School

There's a long-standing joke that the three best reasons to be a teachers are June, July and August, meaning the three (or so) months of the year that most teachers don't work (thought it should be mentioned that many teachers teach summer school, attend ... Read >

The Allegory of Social Mobility in The Great Gatsby and The 1920s

If F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby had been written as a raise-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps-story, starting off with a young boy hell-bent on moving on up in the world, we would have a story that read more like Charles Dickson’s Great Expectations. O... Read >

Fresh Prince of SAT prep, The Great Gatsby quotes, and a Macbeth summary – yeah…that’s cool

Now this is the story all about how my life got flipped, turned upside down. And I’d like to take a minute, just sit right there! I’d like to tell you how I became a prince of a town called… Wait. What? West Egg? Isn’t that where Big Bird was raised... Read >

Hurry up! Teach the Great Gatsby, finish that PSAT prep course, and get home to Huckleberry Finn

What’s better than mystery, love, deceit, and death? Not much, you say? Then do we have the course for you!Should you decide to take our PSAT prep course not only will you leave with the knowledge you need to be successful on the PSAT, but you will be a... Read >

CAHSEE, AP Exams and the SAT: Oh, My!

Standardized tests seem to be universally disliked. Students hate studying for them, hate taking the myriad practice tests that instructors (or their parents) will frequently require, hate the tests themselves, hate waiting weeks for the results, and, dep... Read >

The Forgotten Wars: French and Indian War and the Korean War Revisited

A variety of key events in American history frequently get overlooked in high school history courses. Whether that’s because they’re commonly overlooked by Americans (or the history professors who educated high school history teachers), or that they don’t... Read >

Unlikable Titular Characters in Shakespeare: Hamlet, Macbeth and Othello

William Shakespeare seemed to have had a propensity for unlikable titular characters. Many of his plays, particularly the tragedies, were named for selfish, indecisive, vengeful, or otherwise just unpleasant men. It’s difficult to enjoy a work of literatu... Read >