Throughout this entire trimester, my skills as a writer, a thinker, and an AP Literature and Composition student have drastically improved. The two pieces that show my improvement and the two pieces that I am most proud of are my Comparison/Contrast Essay of Angela's Ashes and my group's American Drama Video Project. My Comparison/Contrast Essay is by far the assignment that I am most proud of because of how much I learned about Angela's Ashes and about all of the different themes. When I first read and watched Angela's Ashes, I did a fairly shallow analysis of just the very apparent themes and ideas. But during this assignment, I could dive deeper into each individual theme and use the book and the movie to shine different lights on these themes and ideas. Because I was able to dissect multiple themes of the play, my overall analysis was in-depth and addressed the complexity of Frank McCourt's relationship with himself, his family, and God. The strength of my essay was my analysis of the similarities and differences between the prose and the movie scene. I did struggle with the mise en scene analysis more than the analysis of the book because I find it harder to analyze the directors ideas in how to portray these themes or different characters. Since I do find mise en scene difficult, my analysis of the movie was weaker than that of the book. The Comparison/Contrast Essay is definitely, by far, the piece that I am most proud of and that shows my improvement the most.
The American Drama Video Project is the other assignment I am especially proud of. Even though our group did not get the highest grade or have the best movie in the class, this project gave my group the opportunity to use many aspects of our creativity. We read the play Six Degrees of Separation and compared the play to The Walking Dead. It took a lot of creativity and analysis to relate these two very different, yet similar, productions. We were able to relate this two by making a Paul a zombie and comparing Paul's infection to his homosexuality and his race. The strength of this project lies in our ability to relate the two different productions and to use our creativity to apply the complexity of Six Degrees of Separation to The Walking Dead without losing any of the meaning behind the work. Although our idea was strong, our project definitely had some weaknesses. We struggled in creating the storyboards because we did not know exactly how we wanted to produce the film. Instead of returning to the storyboards after we were done filming, we just left them as they were. But overall, I am very proud of our Video Project.
Overall, I was very attentive and often participated in class. In most of my classes, I do not participate by answering questions, and I did not necessarily answer questions that you asked during class, but I would always pay attention to all of the group presentations, class discussions, and the answers to all of the questions you asked. In class, I actively took notes during class discussions and during student presentations. Towards the end of the trimester, I began to volunteer more frequently in class because I felt more comfortable around you and around my peers. I also learned that volunteering in class helps to keep me attentive and also helps in the learning process.
For individual papers, I will be completely honest and say I was not very productive during class. Whenever I work by myself on an individual assignment, I get distracted very easily and struggle getting everything done. While I can't work very well in class, I would work diligently on that assignment every night until it was do. Such as with the Comparison/Contrast Essay, I struggled to work in class, but I would work consistently at home. But with group projects, since I am not working alone and do not get severely distracted, I stay on task both at home and at school. I do consider myself a good group member because I always do my part, and if necessary, more. During group projects, I generally designate myself as the member that keeps the entire group on track. My normal role is important and very participatory because I need to be involved in all aspects of the project and make sure that the final project has all of the necessary parts.
At the beginning of the year, one of my original goals was to be aware of myself and my feelings toward a text and use this awareness to analyze the text. The true purpose of this goal was to learn how to answer multiple choice questions that pertain to tone and reader response. I am definitely still working on this goal, as I find it difficult to stay completely aware of myself and aware of the text and when to combine these two feelings and when to keep them separate. Whenever I analyze a prose or poetry passage, I will think how this this passage affects myself and how it would affect the average reader.
Another one of my goals was to break down the ambiguity of texts to find the deeper meaning. This goal was designed to help with questions on the multiple choice about author purpose and meaning. I have worked on this skill throughout the trimester by thinking of all of the possible meanings of a passage, and using these meanings to establish the complexity of the passage. I am still working on this goal, as it is difficult to pinpoint the complexity. I plan to continue working on this goal by truly digging deeper into every book, poem, or prose passage I read to find the core meaning. By working on this goal, it will help me on the multiple choice and the essay portions of the AP exam and help in my everyday reading.
And my final goal was to really dive into the text without any expectations or judgments. At the beginning of the trimester, especially while reading poetry, I would begin each passage begrudgingly, expecting horribly boring and difficult text. But if I get rid of this expectation and judgment, I can keep an open mind while reading a text, which will help in finding deeper meanings. Throughout this trimester, I have tried my best to go into every text with no prior notions or judgments, which truly allowed me to learn something new or reach that deeper meaning in most texts that we have read. I plan on working on all of these goals through this next trimester so that I can become a better reader, writer, and AP test taker.
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