Originally, I would have thought this week would be an easy one. From the surface level, it appeared we would simply be watching movies, which is always something to look forward to right before winter break. Then we actually started to watch the plays and I quickly realized it would not be a relaxing few days. The play my group watched, King Lear, was really odd, honestly. So many different things were happening and so many characters were appearing. On top of all of this, the characters were speaking very quickly, and in Elizabethan. By day two of watching, my group realized we needed help. We ended up using Sparknotes to read along with what was happening. At first, it felt a little bit like we were cheating but after I thought about it, I really didn't feel bad for doing so. Sparknotes is there to help students do well in their English classes. We weren't abusing it at all, we were simply trying to understand what was going on.
I guess the whole point of this post is to prove that getting help isn't a bad thing, even if it's coming from a website that students use to write essays on books they've never read. I think because we were able to find assistance online, we'll be better prepared for writing a paper on King Lear.
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This week we picked our critical theories for our project coming up. My group picked deconstruction theory, and we originally did so because on the surface level it sounded like it would match up with King Lear really well. Then we looked into it and realized it was actually a pretty complicated idea and it was going to take a lot of work to do an entire project around it. Then something weird happened. We literally started to DECONSTRUCT the idea of deconstruction and it actually started to sound like an interesting concept. We were able to understand it and see why it was so important to know how to do. It's basically what we do when we close read essays, except this time we have do it with a much closer, and in depth eye. I think this theory will really help me in the long run, not only with understanding King Lear but with understanding other pieces of literature as well. By doing this critical theory I'll hopefully learn how to really dig deeper into pieces and understand why things are happening and the reasons behind what the author is portraying. This will help me with the rest of this class and many of my future English classes. I really think it could help me in more than just literature too, though. I think I'll be a better critical thinker in general after really understanding the deconstruction theory. This video is a really helpful way of understanding what, exactly, the deconstruction theory is. I still haven't decided if I want to take the AP test for this class or not yet. It seems long and difficult and honestly, really stressful. This week though, I learned that I really don't have much to lose by not doing well on it, only the time I spent in the test room. There isn't much preparing I can do outside of class and I have to participate in the practice we do during school. Not to mention that trying and succeeding on this test means I don't have to pay for another college class.
When we took the practice test this week, my first reaction was that the test was ging to be extremely hard to get a good score on. Then, I learned that the multiple choice section (AKA the challenging part) didn't count toward my final grade as much and there would be multiple questions that would end up being thrown out. Yes, I will have to prepare if I plan to take the test, but a lot of the practicing is just what we do in class on a weekly basis. All I can truly do to prepare is work hard in class and make sure I'm really focusing on the poem of the week essays. I also need to continue to improve my free responce essays at the end of each marling period. Another great thing about taking the practice multiple choice test, was that I could see my problem areas. I know now where I need to work harder to help understand what I'm going to be asked on the AP test. I can ask questions and focus on certain parts of class based off of questions I didn't understand or got wrong on the test. Below I linked a website that gives students study tips to help prepare them for their AP tests so that they can work on their problem questions and hopefully do well on the test. This week I really liked the idea of success being a separate thing for everyone. It's not something that can be set on a single scale with only two measurements: successful or unsuccessful. Success comes from your own personal goals for yourself. It might mean to you that you make millions of dollars but to someone else it might mean they have just enough money to buy groceries for the month. An obvious example right now of different ideals of success is how so many Americans feel extremely successful because Trump is our new president, but there are also so many people that feel like they lost a huge battle and disaster is about to erupt because they failed to elect Clinton.
This idea really stuck in my mind throughout the week. It was almost like a new light I was seeing for the first time. It feels weird to say this, but I realized that I actually did associate someone being "successful" with them being super wealthy or famous. I don't want to sound overly naive or close minded but I just subconsciously used "successful" and "wealthy" interchangeably, and I don't think I am the only one to do so. We live in a society where power and wealth means so much to the public eye. It makes sense, it's easy to see. A person can't fake the amount of money in their bank account or pretend to be well-known. They can, however, pretend to be happy and joyful, which is what true success is all about: loving who you are and the life you are living. I think something to keep in mind while going through life is what you want to pursue. What is going to make you feel like you made a difference on this planet? What imprint do you want to leave that will make you a happier person? This week we discussed the different sides of tragedy. We looked at it's origins and what makes a tragedy so compelling to readers. While working on these things we did a really cool activity called "Save the Last Word For Me" or something like that. Basically, though, you get in a group of three and the first person reads a section of the writing we looked at. Then we would go around the group, starting with the second person, and share what we liked about that section. The last person to share would be the person who picked the segment. I thought this was really cool because it gave us each a chance to look at something that someone else found really interesting, but maybe we missed it the first time around. The activity makes you look closer at things that you didn't really notice. I also thought it was cool because you're forced to figure out why YOU find it interesting. You have to look at a paragraph that you may not have found very compelling originally and decide what stands out to you, without knowing why the person who picked it found it so cool. I liked this because you couldn't rely on other peoples ideas and you had to find your favorite part pretty quickly. I think this helped me see the writing we looked over in a much better way. I didn't just see the parts that I liked when I read it the first time. I got to see more sides of it because I had the chance to hear two other view points on the writing.
One of the things my group looked at during the activity was how tragedy was a popular subject in ancient times, just like it is today. This link discusses why that is and how it has remained such a popular topic. So this blog post is going to be a continuation of my week five blog, and a little bit of my week six post as well. I was actually pretty nervous throughout this week because I knew what I wanted to make my reflective learning blog about: whether or not my idea to go completely solo on my project worked out in my favor or not. As the presentation day got closer and closer, I became more and more nervous. It felt like nothing was going right. First off, my original presentation was totally wrong because I didn't read the prompt, meaning I had to start all over. Second, when the class signed up for presentation slots nobody signed up in between me and the first group (aka I was being forced to go second). Slowly but surely though, all of these problems faded away. I found a new way to format my presentation that I felt really good about and another group decided they wanted to present second and asked to switch spots with me (I had to act cool and just say "sure" but inside I was screaming "OMG YES THANK YOU SO MUCH"). To top it all off, I actually did good on the project. Throughout all of my struggles and complications, nothing ended on a bad note. As cheesy as it sounds, I really want to say that hard work pays off. I put so much work and effort into making this presentation perfect and while doing so, I was able to learn so much about point of view and characterization. On top of all of this though, I think the more important thing I learned is that things work out. If you work for what you want and really put an effort in, things will go in the right direction. They may not be the exact direction you planned and the path might not be super straight, but the destination will still be pretty great.
Basically, this whole RLB is just a long, cheesy way to say that worrying is overrated and as long as you work for things, you'll be just fine. So here is a very over the top, fell-good video that I think pairs very well with my cliche lesson from this week. I feel like presentations have never been super important in classes. We would do them quite a bit but they were never graded very harshly. It was the sort of thing where we would just read off our powerpoint in front of the class, or even sit behind the computer on the teacher's desk while we presented. Now, as I'm sitting in class getting ready to present for AP Lit, I feel a little bit ridiculous for ever being nervous for those presentations. They were literally nothing. Now I have to do one that's informative and intriguing; basically, this one has to actually be good. At the same time though, I feel more ready to present this project than ever. Throughout this week I've learned a lot about presenting in a way that actually makes an impact on your audience. For one thing, you want to speak, not read off your bullet points. You want to have a conversation with your audience and get them to really think, not just list off information. Presentations are something you'll want to know how to do past high school, and even college. Even right now, while I'm still in high school, I have a job that requires me to give presentations to other students. This just goes to show how common they are. They might not always be the formal presentations where you stand up in front of a room, but almost every job will require you to have meetings where you'll have to talk to everyone. You'll have to do interviews that'll require you to speak confidently about your ideas while you stay very informative. Ted Talks are typically a really great example of good presentations. The one I chose to link is really good at showing how to engage the audience. I think the speaker does an awesome job of making it feel like a conversation more than anything. She makes her presentation stand out by engaging herself with the audience and showing her story. This week in class we did a lot of independent work. I focused a lot on getting my short stories for our literature project read. Before I could do that though, I had to finish up my other work, this includes reading my literary elements packets and editing my creative writing. One of the elements I chose was Point of View and I actually found it pretty interesting. I could see how important it is to pick the correct narrator for a piece. The point of view(POV) a story takes dictates how much information the reader can know, which in turn can determine how the story unfolds.
Since I read about POV before I finished my creative writing, I thought it would be fun to try and write the same story with each of the different point of view's. Let me tell you, this was difficult, confusing, and totally awesome. I feel like such a geek because who else would ever find different narrator choices so cool? But that is so beside the point because now I have a new insight to what goes on in an author's mind when they start writing with a specific POV. Now when I begin a novel, I can tell if the author wants to portray a mysterious, suspenseful story or maybe give the reader a powerful insight to help them grow with each character, individually. I was also able to find a new appreciation for authors who use trickier POVs. Some of them, such as objective point of view, are extremely restrictive. The author can only take the reader so many places when they are limited to what occurs literally in the world, never going inside a character's mind. This is most of the reason behind me not posting any of my writing to my creative writing piece, it was seriously so bad. The amount of changes I had to create for the stories to each make sense took a lot of time and thought. While learning about all of the different point of views that can be used when writing, I thought about this silly poem about different points of view. It's not necessarily super deep or powerful, but I do think it's a fun way to see different sides of stories. It has been an extremely long week and yet, I don't remember what I even accomplished. It's that weird mix where you feel so exhausted and drained but you can't think of exactly what you did to make you so tired. I think a lot of it is just me stressing out about the detailed notes and presentation we have to do. Other than the stressful moment where I thought it was all due Monday, I'm trying to challenge myself with the project. Oddly enough, the challenge is turning out to be very difficult. I want to do this project on my own. I chose to not have a partner and I chose to not ask a million questions because not doing those things in completely out of my element. I'm the type of person who likes to make sure I'm doing everything right the first time around. I like to understand precisely what the teacher expects. This time though, I'm figuring it out on my own. I guess this is a weird reflective learning blog because I haven't necessarily "learned" much yet, I've just realized that it's hard do things without help sometimes (not really a new phenomenon). But something I have learned is how important it is to work alone once in awhile. Even though the idea of not asking the teacher if something is right or not terrifies me, I know that everything will be fine. I've done well in this class so far so how horrible can I really do? I need to have confidence in what I'm doing and how I can understand the instructions I've been given. Even if I don't get an amazing grade on this project, it's not the end of the world. At least I can say I accomplished something all on my own, and that is a pretty darn good lesson to learn.
I found this study on the pros and cons of working together or working alone. Even though I've worked on papers and projects by myself before, I thought it was kind of interesting. I'm interested to see if I agree with the article after I do this project, not only without partners but without my teacher as well. It is currently 10:24 on Sunday night and I just deleted my entire post. I probably could have posted it but I just got home from ArtPrize in Grand Rapids and I'm so inspired that I needed to write something different. The gist of my old blog was that I learned how to see the story behind art and how literature is really just a long painting that you get to dissect. Today, I got to put everything I learned into action. In a different way than I expected though. I'm sure you'll get to read all about the beautiful, inspiring art that filled the streets and buildings of Grand Rapids this weekend because my friends (who are also in AP Lit) came with me. I, however, saw art in all of the people in the streets: people playing music, painting, and even the thousands of people just walking around. Everyone had a different story, a different dream. Everyone was able to come together in one specific piece though. It was a model of a classroom and anyone who wanted to could write down their dream in life and pin it on one of the walls. This is the piece that spoke to me. This is the piece that made me stop walking and see everyone's stories. I learned things about people I would never meet and I was able to see into peoples' minds that I didn't even know what they looked like. Similar to literature, I was able to see the thoughts and ideas of the person rather than focus on the things going on around them.
ArtPrize was such an amazing experience and I can't believe how perfectly it tied into what we discussed in class this week. I wish we had a field trip there so that the whole class could see it. It was filled with so many learning opportunities and I was able to experience so many different things. Below I linked a page about the piece I talked about and the artist. |
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