It's been awhile since I've written one of these. I feel like all we did this week was SSR, blogs, more blogs, and talk about all the upcoming papers we are going to have to write. And of course listen to some poetry and that one TED Talk. Shake the Dust by Anis Mojgani, a spoken word poem we listened to in the beginning of class one day, was really cool. I really like his voice, and I wish I could talk as smooth as he can. I like how the poem starts out with “This is for the…” and goes on to list different kinds of people. I was surprised the first time I listened to it, I thought that was just going to be an introduction of sorts, but no that was the actual poem. It was pretty cool. The tragedy blogs suck. The reflective ones I don’t mind as much. I had to switch back to my old SSR author from Murakami back to Ian McEwan in order to finish two books by the same author. As much as I enjoy reading Murakami’s books there is no way I would have finished two in time for the author study. So I started to read this book called A Child in Time. Kind of boring, but I found a lot of similarities between this one and Enduring Love, the other book of McEwan’s I’ve read. Both deal with tears in relationships, and both focus a lot about the character’s job. Also both books start with a big traumatic event leading to all of the problems in the book. Both books very much not my cup of tea.
0 Comments
This week we had to write two very awful essays. The only thing I learned, besides how symbolism and characterization are kind of not that bad to learn about, is how I cannot read when there are people talking right next to me. Like wow, I think my biggest pet peeve in life is when people talk when you are trying to read in designated quiet time for reading. I picked the worst seat in the class I think because, I’m not going to name names, but a sit next to the chattiest people around. Anyway, one of the essays I wrote about with my partner, Harry, was about symbolism. With my background in hating poetry and everything, I kind of assumed I would hate doing these essays, but surprisingly, I found it fairly easy to pick up on the symbolism used in the stories. I was also surprised how much I kind of enjoyed the stories. Characterization, the second essay topic was a bit harder, but in the end still way better than poetry. I think it was harder because of the story we chose, Sonny’s Blues. The story was very long, and not that interesting. My SSR book, which I really enjoy, is going pretty well. Other than me not getting many pages read, though I think I’m still on track with my reading rate, I’m having a pretty good time reading it. It’s very different to anything I’ve read before, and it’s very funny. I’d say the main event of this week was having the author come in and speak about revising and publishing pieces. I really liked him because he had a cool Australian accent. He also said something about time that really stuck with me. I don’t remember the direct quote, but it was something along the lines of time keeps going, no matter what. For example, if you’re thinking about writing a book but think it’s going to take too long, that time is going to pass anyway, so why not spend the time doing something you find enjoyable. This week we also have been working on our creative writing assignment. In my reflection page I talked about how the creative writing has helped me to become better getting my thoughts together, and then putting my words down on paper, and I think I also have these weekly blogs to thank for that. Not going to lie, I try to do these blogs as fast as possible, but I do kind of like them. I think they are a really great way to communicate with the teacher, especially because sometimes I find it hard to find the right words in a conversation face to face with a person. Also this week we had to write a poem of the week essay and, I must say, I think I might be getting better. Don’t get me wrong, mine still sucks, and there are barely any words on the page, but I think there is some improvement. I think the best thing to happen in AP Lit this week was probably listening to all of the poems by Ross Gay. I’ve discovered that I actually kind of like poetry when I’m not forced to analyze it. Like, this Ross Gay guy had some pretty rad stuff. A major aspect of it that I enjoyed was just like, how easy going the guy was, but still so enthusiastic. So, I’m not sure that I would have enjoyed the poems as much if I just read them out of a book. Also this week I powered through and finished my first book for the author study, Enduring Love. It wasn’t terrible, but I would NOT recommend it. It was like reading a really bad fanfiction. I didn’t even really have to finish it either because I cannot put myself through another one of that author’s books. So it doesn’t even count for the authors study. Experience I guess. I started a new book, The Wind - Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami, that I think I will apreciate a lot more. Student Teacher Ben recommended it and said it was very funny, and boy he is right. The book is very odd, but very funny. I’m excited to, one, see where this book goes, and two, read more of the author’s work. When I said that listening to Ross Gay’s poems was the highlight of my AP Lit week, I forgot about not having a poem of the week. THAT was the best. Like actually, I reminded myself of that just as a way to reassure myself that my least favorite part of the day wasn’t coming for a whole week. It was great. So this week we focused on a poem called “Elegy in X Parts” by Matt Rasmussen. This poem, comparatively, was fairly easy to analyze, but because poetry just isn’t my thing in general, it kinda sucked. When people point out things in poems it really easy for me to see them, and I suppose I can pick out the occasional rhyme and easy stuff like that, but knowing why the author used those ‘poetic elements’, (which is kinda the important part), is just a whole 'nother ball game. Like even after writing the paragraph of crap that I wrote for the essay on Friday, I still don’t really know why Rasmussen wrote the whole poem in two lines except for the end, other than that he was trying to convey the non-existent ending of a relationship. But, like, how that helps convey meaning? Beats me. Earlier in the week when we watch a TED Talk by a woman that talked about the stories behind paintings, that was when I was like oh, hey, this class is pretty cool because I probably wouldn’t have watched that just on my own, and that was super cool. When the women, I can’t remember her name, spoke about the relationship between the girl and the painter in the painting The Girl With the Pearl Earring, I found it interesting because it brought a new perspective to art for me. I’m a fan of art I guess, like I can dig a pretty painting, but I’ve never really thought about it any deeper than that, a pretty painting. But now after watching the TED Talk and doing the Art as a Window into Literature activity, I might try to dig deeper. This past week was mostly spent working to complete the visual metaphor project. In this project, we had to work with one or two others to connect a chapter of How to Read Literature Like a Professor to our various summer reading books. We then had to draw something that represents that connection in a metaphorical way. Mine happened to be how sunny weather and a healthy tree represents good times, and then snow and rain and a dead tree (hence the title of the blog) represent bad times and death. Because we did this project in groups, my group members really opened my mind to a lot of different connections between books that I hadn’t seen before. I also learned that visual metaphors can be really useful in aiding in the process of getting a thorough understanding of something. This week, we also read an article differentiating between story and literature. While talking about this in class, I got the vibe that I didn’t really get what everybody else got out of it. My understanding is that the story is the plot line and the literature is the grammar and like, how it is written and stuff, but to be honest I could be totally wrong. The worst part of the week by far was looking at the AP scores of the individual example essays. My essay that I wrote at the end of last week was a solid zero, which wasn’t surprising at all. I actually just wrote a parody of the poem, no essay involved. So, seeing the essay that scored a nine was pretty depressing. I have a lot of work to do. I feel this week flew by. Probably because it wasn’t just filled with boring syllabus explanations and silly icebreaker activities in my classes. Everyone knows that the second week of school is when the actual work starts.
In the beginning of this week we watched a film about writing in college, and how freshman grow as writers throughout their time there. One of the topics that was talked about was writing what you as a writer want to write about, not what you think the reader wants to hear. Last year, I think I became a pro at writing what my teacher wanted to hear. In this class and in the years to come I expect that won’t work for me anymore. The majority of this week was time spent reading, analyzing, and for the most part hating the poem “The Eagle” by Lord Alfred Tennyson. Well, maybe hating is a bit harsh but I definitely did not enjoy it. This week has showed me that one of the things I am going to struggle with most is learning to love poetry. We ended this week by attempting to write an essay analyzing this poem. I had a really hard time with this particular assignment. The smaller assignments leading up to it weren’t bad, such as just discussing the poem in groups or writing the TP-CASTT, but this one just seemed to stump me. I’m not sure if it was just a bad day for me, and I was just really not feeling writing an essay, or if it was just the fact that I have trouble writing essays in a classroom and instead of at home. Either way, I need to work it out, because this class entails a lot of writing, and I really need to be ready for that. It wasn’t really until the second or third day of class that I realized how serious AP Lit is going to be. Of course, there will probably be fun days and I will try to enjoy the time I spend in the classroom, but there are also high expectations and a sense of maturity Mr. Schoenborn sets in the classroom. The expectations Mr. Schoenborn sets are extremely reasonable though, because we came up with our own goals on Friday with a quick ten minute read and then some multiplication to see how many pages we would need to meet our goal each week.
I was also asked to write about myself as a writer and a reader this past week. It really made me think about how I prefer to do my work at home. Yes, I am a normal teen who doesn’t like homework, but I just find it easier to buckle down and focus on an essay when I don’t feel like I have someone looking over my shoulder at my computer screen. Writing the Me as a Reader piece has made me realize how big of a picky reader I am. I generally stick to either romance novels or satire, or even books by the same like, two authors. One of the things I enjoy about Schoenborn’s class is that I have to be actively listening and participating to learn in the class. It has been a whole four days and we have yet to take any notes, which I think is pretty cool. I don’t learn as much from notes as I do from listening and communicating with classmates and using a laptop like we often do in class. I am looking forward to expanding my book horizon, and growing more as a reader, writer, and laptop user. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
November 2017
Categories |