The Rise and Fall of a Dynasty

On the day of our first multiple choice game this year, everyone quickly found their teams, scheming to assemble a squad replete with some of the titans of A.P. English.  I myself joined what would later be known as the Dream Team, the much-maligned group of Thomas Donley, Sam Schiferl, John Shoemaker, and myself.  Of course, we were merely an assemblage of driven, motivated students looking to do our best on the multiple choice test, preparing for the later A.P. test and doing our teacher proud.  As most English students know, though, the Dream Team was lambasted from the very beginning.  Unequivocally, mercilessly we were torn at by our opposition and neutral third parties.  We may have talked ourselves up a bit, merely for the purpose of building our self-confidence of course, but we could feel the class's undeserved hatred for us "rearing up, higher... beyond human capability" (McEwan 146).  By assembling a strong team and employing some competitive banter, the Dream Team had hoped to push our class to its intellectual limits and, in turn, help everyone become a more confident student.  Yet "we live, I regret to say, in an age of surfaces" (Wilde 47).  The other students seemed incapable of grasping our underlying intentions, so in return for our subtle benevolence we received only enmity.  Though deeply saddened, we still competed that day, doing our best to maintain a competitive yet controlled environment.  The game was played, and we lost.  I will not lie, even this loss felt like someone had "touched on each side of [my] head with wires" (Kesey 69).  Yet the real tragedy that day was not our loss, but rather the inability of our peers to realize that we only meant to enhance their academic experience through our style of play.  Why, then, was this my favorite day of A.P. English?  Well, our peers thought that they had defeated the Dream Team once and for all.  But out of the ashes of the fallen Dream Team awoke an entirely new beast, a phoenix rising intent on revenge for the abuse that it had endured.  The Dream Team crumbled.  From its foundations rose the Redeem Team.