I have a bad feeling. I have a feeling that I missed the instructions for the Tragedy Essay. At the moment, I have a respiratory infection, and it could not have picked a worse time to strike. The week before exam week. The week that is crucial for studying, and getting all of your ducks in a row. Right now my ducks are severely not in a row! I am however getting a head start on the creative writing so I don't have that to do at the last moment. I just hope I did not miss too much on Thursday. I really wanted to come to school too, but the doctor would not let me. I was "too contagious" or something. I don't know. All I know is, it is now exam week, the end of the trimester, and I am stressed out! Senior year is supposed to be the easiest. Not for AP kids. I have everything to do, and not enough time to do it. We'll see how this goes. You should come to the Italian Oven tomorrow, I am supposed to promote this fundraiser. Here's a flyer!

I could have the week numbering wrong at this point, but I know we skipped a week. So I'll just guess and say week eight. We started our tragedy unit this week. I think to unit has the potential to be significantly more interesting than the last. I think using the weebly blog to help us compile our ideas for an essay is a good idea. Rather than just having us learn the entire thing then weeks later have us write an essay on what we learned way earlier, we will have a place to go to remember each individual idea we had. If it's an essay of length, or an essay that is difficult, the blog will make it easier. On Tuesday of this week, I had a Two Ted Talk Tuesday. That means I watched two Ted talks. We always watch Ted talks on Tuesday in AP Calc. I liked this Tuesday because I like Ted talks! I think we should watch more Ted talks, they are often very helpful and inspiring. I've noticed that the PoW essays are getting easier to write. I think that is just due to the fact that we have practiced, but at the beginning of the year, I could write about two paragraphs in the same time period that I can write an entire PoW essay now.

Imagine my surprise when I got back the grade and notes on the two group essays we wrote. I got a D- on both essays. The comments said basically "this was a good essay, but you failed to answer the prompt." My initial reaction, " what prompt?" I had absolutely no idea that the prompt was on the website. After a little bit of research, I learned that about half the class was on the same boat as me. They also either had no idea, or stumbled upon it by accident. I personally don't think it's fair to give people bad grades on an assignment that was not explained properly. I don't want this to sound rude, but that's just how me, and a lot of other people feel about the grades we received on our essays. I put a lot of time and effort into an essay that I believed was supposed to explain fantasy, only to discover that there was a far more specific prompt that I had never heard of. Sorry to be critical, but I think this needs to be said, and I'm not sure if anyone else will say it. The prompt was hidden amongst pictures and stories and quotes it was not even displayed prominently, see! Ok I'm done ranting, see you on Monday.

I feel like I just wrote my reflection for last week yesterday. But alas, it has been almost a week. The days are flying by quickly. Before we know it, the school year will be over and I'll be moving on with my life. But enough of that, its time to reflect on Lit class this week. It was a good idea on your part to give us an entire class period to work on our "What is Lit?" projects. That was really the first time my group got a significant amount of work done in class. Giving us ten minutes to work at the end of the hour just does not cut it. By the time we get situated, get our reading material printed off and settle down to read it, the class is over and we just have to read it at home. The full period to work on it allowed for us to discuss what was going on in depth as a group. The poem of the week this week reminded me of Christmas. It was titled "Bright Star." Though it was completely unrelated to Christmas, it got me pumped for the holidays. To expand on what I said earlier, They'll be here before we know it. I personally can't wait.

I've reached the point in the school year where the weeks begin to meld together. I think I have a pretty distinct memory of this last week, but that might just be because everyone was wearing silly outfits all week. We have been plugging along on our What is Literature project throughout it. I have been very busy recently, I'm not sure if I have as much as I should. So far my group has read both articles, and one of the short stories. In the next week, I plan on finishing the last story, and then compiling all of our notes on the reading assignments. At that point, I think we will be on track. Hopefully we'll have enough time to throw in some SSR this week as well! Although, somehow I find that doubtful, considering we had an unexpected day off on Thursday. I'm reading Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonegut at the moment. It is very good and I would like to actually have some time to read it.

As we move into the third week of this class, we are passed the breaking in stage. The learning curve has been fully surpassed. This is the week when we are starting to get to the bulk of the work that we are going to do. We are starting our what is literature project. I am just going to let you know on here, a lot of people in the class, not just me, don't really know what they're supposed to do for that project. I don't know if we just need to hear it explained a few more times, but just so you know, more than one person is lost. It is possible that when our class is held on the library floor, many people find it difficult to hear. There is to much ambient noise, and your voice often gets muffled by the room. This week, we also focused on explicating and analyzing poetry, with the goal of writing a full PoW, again, Poem of the Week, not Prisoner of War, on Friday. I'm going to be perfectly honest with you, I'm not a huge fan of poetry, and I did not realize it would be such a huge part of this class. We'll just have to wait and see how the essay goes. How much poetry will be on the AP Test? I'm very curious. The in-class discussions on the poems can be very helpful, however, I think that they can also lead us to collectively misinterpret the poetry. I think some form of time limit should be imposed to prevent against incoherent ramblings. I think we saw more than one of those last week. I am a little disappointed that we have so little SSR time as well. I have a job, I play a sport, I am on the executive board of two clubs, I am in three AP classes, and two relatively difficult other classes. I also have friends, and family that I need to spend time with. You say that time should be made outside of class for SSR, but my time outside of class has been extended just about as far as it will go. There is n

    As this is an AP Literature and Composition class, it is to be expected that there will be a heavy focus on literature. As a class, we spent a considerable portion of this week determining between the two. We read articles and we debated in class. We read short stories and analyzed individual sections for literary promise. We defined the opposite of literature as commercial fiction. I came to the conclusion that the definition literature is a hotly debated subject within the language arts world. I believe that the definition is subjective. Something that I would consider to be literature, might not be considered as such by everyone in the world. Conversely, something I would consider to be literature, might be held in that regard by another person. Neither of us would be wrong, its just a difference of opinion. The difference between a Democrat and a Republican or a Federalist and an Anti-Federalist.
    This week, we also did several group discussions pertaining to our summer reading assignments. It was very interesting to hear what my peers had to say about the books I had read. It opened me up to thinking about the books in a manner that I had not yet thought of. They introduced me to their ideas, and I hope I successfully introduced them to a few of mine.
    Also this week, was the introduction of the PoW, which as far as I know is an acronym for "Poem of the Week" not "Prisoner of War." We examined the poem "The Eagle" by Alfred Lord Tennyson. Though it did not go through my head at the time I read it, now the only thing I can think about when I think about the poem, is the scene in Scrubs, photo attached.

Seeing as this is the first week of school, we haven't really gotten the opportunity to delve into the core nature of this class, however, as a class we have established a great deal of procedural precedents. Our class has gotten a feel for the way things will be run. We have grown accustomed to poems every day. We have built our Weebly pages, we have put together our notebooks, and I believe going into the second week, we are in a fantastic position to begin exploring the true topics of the class. I am really looking forward to the frequent existential conversation we are sure to have in class, and also some of the reading we will be doing outside of class.I elected to take an AP Lit class as opposed to English 12 because I believe the advanced placement option will improve my reading and writing fluency a great deal more that the standard option. After the first week, I still believe this to be a decision that will help me immensely throughout my high school and college years. This is a class unlike any I have had before. The amount of work we do using technology is incompreble to any of my previous high school experiences. For example at the moment, I am doing my homework, from my iPhone. In the car. On the way home. I've never had the ability to do that until now. Having that convienience I believe will take a large portion of the stress that I'm sure will incur from increased amounts of homework. And with that, I'll end my blog for the first week, I've done enough pontificating for the day.