End of the Year Reflection
Going into AP English Literature, I had completed AP English Language and felt prepared for anything that could possibly come my way; surely the rhetorical analysis, picture analysis and argumentative essay in Literature were similar to those I had mastered in Language! However, I soon discovered that AP Literature was in fact not a continuation of AP Language.
At the beginning of the year, I took for granted the idea that though I had been exposed to a tremendous amount of writing and reading skills in AP Language, that maybe AP Literature had just as many- if not more -useful skills to instill in me. For this reason, I went into the first couple of weeks of classes in the same mindset I had junior year.
My early writing for the class reflects the voice I had acquired last year in my writing... In my "Fig Essay" (a parody of the Madeline Cookie story) the sentences used are short, simple and easy to understand- writing that was useful in AP Language in analyzing arguments. "And only when I do does the light appear. For that fleeting moment, with closed eyes, barely distinguishable in the haze of confusion, what is it that I see? A tree?" In this sample from the Essay, it is also apparent that my use of punctuation was more frequent.
There appears to be a drastic change in my writing from that style, to what it is now, where sentences I create and words I chose are longer and more complex. Though this stylistic change can be seen in even the writing of this reflection paper itself, no where is it more evident than in my final research paper on Jerry Eulsmann. When compared to my original writing of "Fig Essay," not only is the word choice drastically different (more so than should be expected from natural variation, since one is a creative piece and the other a research piece) the overall tone of both is different.
The tone in my writings has become more serious and less sarcastic. In AP Language I was used to encountering pieces of work from all across the spectrum, some that were masterpieces and others that were not written well at all, and for each analysis I wrote, one criteria was always to evaluate the effectiveness of the piece. As I have learned, that is usually a big no-no in AP Literature. The works we encountered in this class were all of the highest literary merit and some of them have been praised for hundreds of years... an evaluation of the author's writing or effectiveness was unnecessary.
The most obvious difference I saw in the works we read as AP Lang's and AP Lit's was the reason we read a piece of work. Last year, work was read/written to persuade and influence, while this year, the work is centered around enjoyment, self reflection and enlightenment. When we started reading poetry, I realized AP Literature was certainly not a continuation of what I had done the year before. This came as a bit of a surprise to me, and it was the biggest hurdle I had to face in adjusting my way of thinking about writing and reading as a whole.
With that comparison being made, I can now move on to my weaknesses and strengths, and how they were both influenced by the transition from Language to Literature. My greatest weakness, I believe, simply put is being able to read. Reading a piece of work with deep symbolic meaning and understanding it does not come naturally to me, and often it takes me several readings of a piece before I can understand the mechanisms and meanings behind it. Actually, even when I have read a piece several times, I can- and certainly have -still manage to misinterpret a meaning of a word or phrase and thus throw the meaning of an entire poem/passage off. (This became increasingly tedious due to the fact that I am a rather slow reader, and increasingly difficult when reading works by writers like William Shakespeare who tend not to use the vernacular we are used to using today.)
I realized this was my greatest weakness from the early weeks of class... I encountered poetry and prose writing that confused me and left me thinking "Why would a chrysanthemum be symbolic of ____" and would not understand what the symbol was used for or what it meant until someone in class explained it to me. I still have this problem, but I think I have improved significantly in understanding symbolism or other literary techniques. However, even in the last week or two, when we were reading Hamlet, I found myself, on more than one occasion, increasingly confused. I still get that tingly feeling every time I find and understand a symbol in a piece of work.
On the other side of the spectrum, I believe my greatest strength simply put is my writing. I think I first realized this when it came to taking the actual AP Exam. To be fully honest, in all the practice tests and practice essays we had written, I had not put my entire efforts into writing an essay as well as I possibly could. Though we were instructed to write as if it were the real test, I never fully committed my entire efforts into doing my best on the practice tests. However, when it came to the real-deal, I felt more than prepared to tackle each essay and felt confident when walking out of the test room. All the work done on each of the boot camp essays, in class essays, and other writing assignments had accumulated and prepared me to write those three crucial essays on the Exam.
The works I chose to upload to the blog as my portfolio choices were all chosen to reflect the amount of effort I put into them.
The Pride and Prejudice notebook entry, though it had great potential, was rushed on my part. I did not carefully read the passage enough times to fully understand it, and thus my analysis wasn't great.
My "Disillusionment of Ten O'clock" explication is one I am particularly proud of. It is among the first poems I read and felt an emotional attachment to. Though I was sufficiently confused by the writing, through enough readings I came to understand much of it and was able to write an explication that portrayed my understanding.
My "Damn" Etymology and Analysis paper is among my favorites because of the amount of effort I put into researching the word and coming to understand how it evolved. It is also among my favorites because I took something I genuinely had an interest in understanding (the most commonly used word I could think of) and did research to understand it.
Finally, my "Fig Essay" was chosen to reflect a work I put great effort into and feel proud of. Though, as mentioned earlier, the writing has a different voice than I have today, it is till among my favorites because I was given the opportunity to creatively write about pretty much anything of my choice.
Overall, AP English this year was, by far, my most difficult yet most rewarding class. I would not place 'the ability to read and write well' at the top of a list of phrases to use when describing what I succeed at. Writing and reading is hard for me, it always has been; but I'm proud to say that I stood up to the challenge of AP Literature and thoroughly enjoyed it. The class environment was the simply amazing; where else could you uniquely portray Dante's "The Inferno", have your high school principal see, and get away with it? Only in AP English, that's for sure!
At the beginning of the year, I took for granted the idea that though I had been exposed to a tremendous amount of writing and reading skills in AP Language, that maybe AP Literature had just as many- if not more -useful skills to instill in me. For this reason, I went into the first couple of weeks of classes in the same mindset I had junior year.
My early writing for the class reflects the voice I had acquired last year in my writing... In my "Fig Essay" (a parody of the Madeline Cookie story) the sentences used are short, simple and easy to understand- writing that was useful in AP Language in analyzing arguments. "And only when I do does the light appear. For that fleeting moment, with closed eyes, barely distinguishable in the haze of confusion, what is it that I see? A tree?" In this sample from the Essay, it is also apparent that my use of punctuation was more frequent.
There appears to be a drastic change in my writing from that style, to what it is now, where sentences I create and words I chose are longer and more complex. Though this stylistic change can be seen in even the writing of this reflection paper itself, no where is it more evident than in my final research paper on Jerry Eulsmann. When compared to my original writing of "Fig Essay," not only is the word choice drastically different (more so than should be expected from natural variation, since one is a creative piece and the other a research piece) the overall tone of both is different.
The tone in my writings has become more serious and less sarcastic. In AP Language I was used to encountering pieces of work from all across the spectrum, some that were masterpieces and others that were not written well at all, and for each analysis I wrote, one criteria was always to evaluate the effectiveness of the piece. As I have learned, that is usually a big no-no in AP Literature. The works we encountered in this class were all of the highest literary merit and some of them have been praised for hundreds of years... an evaluation of the author's writing or effectiveness was unnecessary.
The most obvious difference I saw in the works we read as AP Lang's and AP Lit's was the reason we read a piece of work. Last year, work was read/written to persuade and influence, while this year, the work is centered around enjoyment, self reflection and enlightenment. When we started reading poetry, I realized AP Literature was certainly not a continuation of what I had done the year before. This came as a bit of a surprise to me, and it was the biggest hurdle I had to face in adjusting my way of thinking about writing and reading as a whole.
With that comparison being made, I can now move on to my weaknesses and strengths, and how they were both influenced by the transition from Language to Literature. My greatest weakness, I believe, simply put is being able to read. Reading a piece of work with deep symbolic meaning and understanding it does not come naturally to me, and often it takes me several readings of a piece before I can understand the mechanisms and meanings behind it. Actually, even when I have read a piece several times, I can- and certainly have -still manage to misinterpret a meaning of a word or phrase and thus throw the meaning of an entire poem/passage off. (This became increasingly tedious due to the fact that I am a rather slow reader, and increasingly difficult when reading works by writers like William Shakespeare who tend not to use the vernacular we are used to using today.)
I realized this was my greatest weakness from the early weeks of class... I encountered poetry and prose writing that confused me and left me thinking "Why would a chrysanthemum be symbolic of ____" and would not understand what the symbol was used for or what it meant until someone in class explained it to me. I still have this problem, but I think I have improved significantly in understanding symbolism or other literary techniques. However, even in the last week or two, when we were reading Hamlet, I found myself, on more than one occasion, increasingly confused. I still get that tingly feeling every time I find and understand a symbol in a piece of work.
On the other side of the spectrum, I believe my greatest strength simply put is my writing. I think I first realized this when it came to taking the actual AP Exam. To be fully honest, in all the practice tests and practice essays we had written, I had not put my entire efforts into writing an essay as well as I possibly could. Though we were instructed to write as if it were the real test, I never fully committed my entire efforts into doing my best on the practice tests. However, when it came to the real-deal, I felt more than prepared to tackle each essay and felt confident when walking out of the test room. All the work done on each of the boot camp essays, in class essays, and other writing assignments had accumulated and prepared me to write those three crucial essays on the Exam.
The works I chose to upload to the blog as my portfolio choices were all chosen to reflect the amount of effort I put into them.
The Pride and Prejudice notebook entry, though it had great potential, was rushed on my part. I did not carefully read the passage enough times to fully understand it, and thus my analysis wasn't great.
My "Disillusionment of Ten O'clock" explication is one I am particularly proud of. It is among the first poems I read and felt an emotional attachment to. Though I was sufficiently confused by the writing, through enough readings I came to understand much of it and was able to write an explication that portrayed my understanding.
My "Damn" Etymology and Analysis paper is among my favorites because of the amount of effort I put into researching the word and coming to understand how it evolved. It is also among my favorites because I took something I genuinely had an interest in understanding (the most commonly used word I could think of) and did research to understand it.
Finally, my "Fig Essay" was chosen to reflect a work I put great effort into and feel proud of. Though, as mentioned earlier, the writing has a different voice than I have today, it is till among my favorites because I was given the opportunity to creatively write about pretty much anything of my choice.
Overall, AP English this year was, by far, my most difficult yet most rewarding class. I would not place 'the ability to read and write well' at the top of a list of phrases to use when describing what I succeed at. Writing and reading is hard for me, it always has been; but I'm proud to say that I stood up to the challenge of AP Literature and thoroughly enjoyed it. The class environment was the simply amazing; where else could you uniquely portray Dante's "The Inferno", have your high school principal see, and get away with it? Only in AP English, that's for sure!
Nicely done - I hope you did get something out of it! Works cited for your research piece would have been useful.
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