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Week 1: Learning
The first week of school is always an exciting time for me because i get the chance that many people around the world don't get and that is to learn new things. This year I have an easier class load than I have in the past three years of high school but I think I will learn more. One thing I have learned over the last three years of high school is that I need to learn at my own pace; and I need classes that interest me to learn. This school year I tried to fill up with as many classes where I can learn and interest me. This week I have learned a lot from the classes I have taken so far and it’s only week one. A few things I have learned in my AP Lit class are we all read at our own pace. We established our reading rates and our reading goals and I thought that was super cool! It broke down reading into simple math and made me want to focus on reading more because it just seemed simple broken down at that level. Another thing I learned is myself as a writer. In class we had to do a writing report on our Weebly page and one of the questions asked us about our writing and why people write the way they do; and I had never really thought about why or how I write so when I examined my writing i felt like I understood myself a little more. I also learned that we are more likely to read when we are surrounded by books so this week I have tried to immerse myself in the reading experience more by putting on some subtle music(Julien Baker gets me focused) and just having me and my book. It really helped! I was more focused on reading and got more done I was so happy and proud and i felt like I fell in love with reading again.
Week 2: Diving Deeper
This week in class we learned how to gain a deeper understanding about stories and poems we read. We looked at the poem The Eagle and attempted to find deeper meaning within it. I say attempted because I know what we were doing and understood how to do it but personally didn’t find anything within it. Many people had great ideas in the class but personally myself didn’t find anything. We used TP - CASTT to dissect the poem and although I see that being helpful in the future it wasn’t helpful for this poem. I think a poem of this length isn’t something you can dive too deep into on paper; in my head I can think about this poem for a long time and even in discussion but using that system wasn’t helpful for me anyway. We also tried to do a short essay and holy moly did I struggle with that, but a good thing that came out of that was I now know what I need to focus on to get better so that’s always cool to keep in mind. This week we also started creative writing and that was really cool because that’s all I ever wanted to do in an English class. I have come to enjoy reading again but in an English class I typically look forward to the creative writing aspect so I am very glad to see that in a class. One of the topics in my creative writing was drug abuse and alcoholism and I think that is because I’ve been listening to a lot of 90s grunge rock lately and Foo Fighters new album just came out. What I learned in class for writing is always keep typing, don’t re read things you wrote, and don’t focus on punctuation or spelling. I think those are great tips to keep the creative juices flowing while writing and I’ll be using them often.
Week 3: Lit with a Capital L
This week in class we learned how to differentiate a story and Literature. Now I am a firm believer in you can get deeper meaning in any story whether it is literature or not. You can get something out of a one page poem or a 400 page book in my opinion. This is the first year I guess I’ve read real literature the past few years I’ve just been reading stories. Although I haven’t been reading Literature with a capital L i believe I have gotten some meaning from the stories. In class we talked about how Literature will have more character development and focus on the characters and stories will focus on the story. I personally believe the same can be said about movies. The way I see it is that big blockbusters are meant to attract you with big special effects and these amazing sets but smaller independent films dive into the characters. I think that the book and movie industry have been more focused on selling the most and not focused on deep meanings. I think those things are good to keep in mind when I write; I want to focus on the characters not the story. One of my favorite movies Inside Llewyn Davis is a movie about nothing really and just a guy going through life. I think that is really cool because I have gotten so much meaning from that but it was about nothing just a guy. I’m really glad in class we can talk about things like this because it can be translated into real life and stuff I care about. Not that I don’t care about literature but I definitely care about the movie industry more and that has had a huge impact on my life.
Week 4: Art to Literature
This week in class we talked about art and literature. We really dove into looking into art and creating a story to the picture. I really enjoyed this week because I love putting stories to different things. I love making stories in my head and making endings it is one of my favorite things. So this week putting stories together and using different literary elements and artistic elements. One of my favorite artists is Boneface; he does pictures to one of my favorite bands Queens of The Stone Age. When I look at his pictures I can just stare at them endlessly and I just feel so immersed in the pictures. Two of his works of art are my screensaver for my laptop and I did that because I want something to look at that makes me think and feel motivated. This is one of my favorite pictures of his work(warning bloody and graphic). The reason I love this picture so much is because to me I see a person who is close to death and ready to die but is still alive. It is someone who wants to die but still remains alive and I think that is just really cool to me. I think something people need to understand is art and literature and so connected and so closely related. They say a picture can say a thousand words and that is so true; a picture can tell a story. The same thing goes for literature books can create pictures and art in our head in its own way.
Week 5: Self Critique
This week in class we learned how to self critique but be positive and helpful at the same time. We edited our papers by writing stuff we liked about it in comment sections and then writing something we would change or do better. This is great because you get to see what you did well and the things you “did bad” are there for you to revise. This was super helpful for me because I never really wanna go back to my writings and look at them because I’m always terrified of hating what I wrote. I’m currently struggling with revising my “I remember” prompt because it’s a really sensitive subject for me and I Think it’s a good piece but I sometimes just go “this is stupid why are you writing this?”. But the way we are critiquing it makes me wanna go back and edit it. I still have to put it away and forget about it for a little bit but overall I can go back and edit. I think this approach is just a very positive way to edit your own writings and still feel positive about your writings. I’m going to be using this method going forward in my life as I continue to write and grow as a writer.
Week 6: YOUR Writing, also Poems
Before I start this reflections I just want to say I can’t believe that we are halfway through the first trimester already. This week in class we had a guest speaker, James Jackson come in and talk to us about writings. His ideas and how he view writing was really cool and very similar to mine and it made me feel better about writing. One thing that really stuck with me is not everyone is going to like your writing. That is something I think I’ve always struggles with, because I want everyone to like my writing. Being able to understand that people have different tastes and just because they don’t like your writing doesn’t necessarily reflect your writing is a good thing to know. Another thing we learned this week is poetry can have so many different meanings. The poem we look at this week was My Papa’s Waltz and everyone got something different from it. Me and another friend at my table personally thought it was written from the alcohols perspective because of the wording. At first glance the poem also seems to have a negative tone to it but as you reread it, it starts to have more of a positive feel to it. I really liked this weeks poem actually simply because of all the different views everyone had. I really hope we get more poems like this in the future because this poem was one I thoroughly enjoyed.
Week 7: This Sucked
Okay before I even start this blog I just want to address this. I was the weak link in the project; I missed 3 out of our 5 work days and that really sucked. I feel really bad for missing and I was super behind for our project. I wrote the first page and a half of the fantasy essay so Ben if you think it sucked that's my bad not anyone else's dock me the points not Mike or Justin. Now into the blog, which also won’t be a normal blog. So like I said I missed 3 out of 5 days so I didn’t learn a lot in school but I did learn a lot outside of school; also this will probably be sad. My Great uncle Doug died and this isn’t a shock he has been ill for a while now we knew this would be coming. I personally didn’t know him that well but my Grandma and him were very close because they grew up together and were only two years apart. I wasn’t upset until the funeral when I realized a lot of my close relatives are going to start dying. My Grandma and Grandpa on both sides of my family are getting old and I really need to appreciate them while they are still here. I also realized how hard it will be to speak at funerals when my parents eventually pass and if my brother passes before me. So yeah that's what I learned it was a pretty stressful and sad week. Sorry this blog sucks it’s 11 pm after a late shift at work so sorry. But a bright side of this week I did get to seen QOTSA in concert and they played Mexicola so that was cool.