This week was a hard week for me personally. I was not able to be at school on Monday or Friday for AP Lit and we didn't get as much time in the class on Thursday because of a senior meeting. I have grown increasingly frustrated as I am in a group of three and am on my own for this "group essay". I've also had to miss two days of class time and had no time whatsoever Thursday or Friday after school to work on it. I am struggling on coming up with enough thoughts to cover three pages on the ending of my story. I feel much more confident in my other classes. Business Management is pretty easy as long as a stay busy and don't need to do book work. AP Gov is a breeze and I feel very confident in my knowledge on federalism even though I've missed a test on Friday. Social Movements is one of the easiest classes but is still interesting and I like it a lot. Orchestra has a concert coming up but I do feel as if I'll be ready by then. We had CMU Choral Day on Friday and that was a lot of fun but still stressful as I really had no ideas what I was doing. I think this week I just felt really helpless in two very big situation with Choral day and AP Lit. I now have to write this essay over this weekend and have absolutely no idea how I'm going to do it.
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This week I didn't learn much IN AP Lit. Not because the lessons weren't good. I didn't learn much because I missed two days. I missed two days because this week was Homecoming and I'm a part of Student Senate. Monday was Mock Rock and wasn't to demanding. Tuesday was float building. This was pretty stressful but not the worst. Wednesday I missed AP Lit because if I hadn't worked on the parts for the float, we wouldn't have finished. I checked the weekly schedule and made sure we weren't doing much. That night we finished floats and it was the most stressed I've felt all year. Thursday was fine and all we did in AP Lit was work on creative writing and read our short stories. Friday was the most stressful day ever. I was a part of the Royal Ball set up team. There were only three of us and we barely finished. It still hasn't hit me how much I'll miss doing all of that stuff. It doesn't feel like the end. What I was able to do in AP Lit was pretty good though. I've felt as if I've started to be better at looking deeper into pretty much everything in this class. Although I didn't learn much this week about literature and composition, I've learned about myself and who in my life I love and should keep close. The experiences I've had with Homecoming are forever a part of who I am and who my friends are. I have become a different person since last year when I joined senate. A better person. This week was a pretty good one. In Business Management I was actually able to begin testing bath bombs for production. The first day I tried making one I failed entirely. We didn't get the right oil and we ended up adding too much water. I ended up with a slimy mess the just kept expanding. The next time was much more successful and the next day the bath bombs worked amazingly. I can't wait to do more with them. In AP Gov. the mayor, Mrs. Ling came in and we were able to learn a lot about how local government works. In Social Movements we worked on our video projects for the 1920's. My partner and I had the topic of prohibition and we decided to use sock puppets in our movie. It was a blast and it turned out really well, I think we're going to get an A. Orchestra was okay. I haven't been feeling as confident in my abilities since I became the section leader. I've felt as if Mr. Simpson doesn't believe in me and my ability to lead a sectional by myself. I know it's not true but I've been having trouble clearing that feeling from my head. My reading rate in AP Lit. has been abysmal. Not the length of it but my ability to reach it. This time of year is just crazy busy with Fall play, where I'm required at all rehearsals, and Homecoming. I also have to put aside time for my long distance girlfriend and I'm having trouble finding the perfect balance. I'm determined though to get it next week. My PoW essay was much better this time around. I was actually able to get more than one paragraph and I'm happy with my progression. With regards to the art and literature TED talk, I learned a lot on how to view art. I had never thought about making up your own story for what something means or is about and I feel like a slightly changed person because of that. I will most definitely have a much more fulfilling experience looking at, listening to, and reading different forms of art. This week was all about metaphors in AP Lit. We spent the whole week on making metaphors using our summer reading choices and a chapter from How to Read Lit. My groups was "Geography Matters" and our books were The Book Thief and Obasan. We realized how important geography is to the story of both of those two books, all books, and just life in general. Obasan set in a different place couldn't be the same story. The way the cultures of the different generations of children clash is important for the characters. Part of the story is based on the Japanese relocation in Canada and wouldn't be the same somewhere else. The same applies to The Book Thief and real life. You or I would not be the same as we are today if we'd been raised somewhere separate. All of your experiences would either be slightly different or completely different. One might not even exist because their parents wouldn't have met. Geography is super important for everything that shapes us. We also wanted to tie the interlude "One Story" into our metaphor because both books are very closely related and we thought that the idea of everyone sharing the same story was very powerful. At the tail end of the week we switched lanes and got into groups for our first unit. The only thing we've done so far is read a passage about the difference between story and literature. I really liked it and felt like I understood it well. It talked about how a great book can possibly make such a mediocre movie. How a narrative voice completely changed how a book portrays a character. It changed the way I view book to movie adaptations and made me appreciate the differences and the benefits of both forms of media.
On this weeks episode of AP Lit and the Senior Year, the biggest focus was on poems (specifically The Eagle") and analyzing poems through TP-CASTT, but more on that later. Starting off, I'd like to talk about the rest of my week outside of the AP Lit classroom. In Business Management I got a lot of good work done. Dylan (my partner on production) and I were able to form a list of possible products, which includes lanyards, bath bombs, hats, bracelets, socks, and mugs) and find good cheap ways to produce them in order to make a good profit. It's really important that things work out because we are dealing with real money and people are relying on me so I don't want to let them down. In AP Gov we went over the Constitution and took a test over it on Friday. I thought I did really well on it but when I checked Power School I only got 1/10 on the short essay questions. I'm hoping he just meant to put in 10/10 and just messed up. I'm Section Leader in Orchestra and I'm very proud of myself. I've kind of been working towards this goal since 7th grade so I feel very relieved and accomplished. This week in AP Lit though was a good week. We focused on "The Eagle" a lot and I really like the poem. For me, the poem conveys a beautiful sense of peace and serenity that can only come from nature and powerful imagery. The writer then in the last sentence is able to completely shift from peace to power. Using TP-CASTT made analyzing the poem a lot easier than just off the top of my head and it was kinda fun doing so. I had the most difficult with the timed writing on the poem. I just couldn't seem to get myself to write a lot on it, I think because it's such a short poem but also because I just have a hard time articulating my thoughts into writing. I hope I get better and want to work harder to do so. One thing I learned was how to create a weebly link of all things, so I will hopefully do better on Reflective Learning Blogs from now on. I also found myself procrastinating a lot this week which reminded me of a TED talk I watched in Social Movements. I connect really strongly to the talk and find myself doing a lot of the things he talks about. I put off my SSR because i didn't think of the deadline and I didn't even come close to my reading rate. I want to dedicate the next week to reading my book and finishing it to make up for lost time.
This week is probably going to be the weirdest week in school. I don't think it's because anything really majorly weird happened, but more because it's the most difficult and major transition week of the whole year. Everything is new and everything you think would be familiar is different. For me Orchestra is different. It's still great but it's not the same. AP Lit is a lot like 10th grade English class but it's still different. New school rules and new people make this an odd week. In the case of learning, this week for me is one of the easier weeks. The first day is mostly ice breakers, which in terms of learning is actually a lot because you're learning a lot about your classmates especially in this class, where we learned about each others past and our future goals. The rest of the short week gives more to the school side of education. So far I've learned a little bit about the U.S. Government, what's to expect in Business Management, what to expect from AP Lit, and a little bit more as bout Women's Suffrage. I was elected to the role of Event Co-coordinator which was pretty cool in Orchestra. In AP Lit, I learned a little bit just through writing the about myself section of my weebly. I learned through analyzing my own thoughts how I felt about writing and what makes good writing good. I realized that all writing is good and all writing is bad and that there are technically good pieces and perceptively good pieces of writing. Writing can be easily determined as good or bad if you only think of it on a technical side, but on the other view of thinking it's a lot harder because one story you might find to be amazing another person could find revolting and the other way around. Everyone is allowed to like what they want and dislike and determine for themselves what is good and bad, and that is the beauty of written, and even spoken, word. |
AuthorI'm Bryan Kemmerling, I love music, movies and video games. ArchivesCategories |