Almost the end of the semester, so time to reflect!

Before writing my timed-writing reflection, I thought I would take a moment to blog about my goals, my intentions, and my work thus far as an AP Literature student. So here I begin.

Coming into AP Literature, as an AP Language Composition student, my primary goal was to switch focus from rhetoric based writing to in-depth analysis. AP Literature consists of 3 main types of essays, including: prose, poetry, and open ended, that all revolve around the same question- what is the meaning? To switch my writing styles from listing devices and its usages, I had to learn the importance of close reading, background inference, and most importantly finding denotation and connotations of vocabulary throughout the paragraph and apply all these aspects into meaning, a theme. Such teachings have translated into many strengths; therefore, I somewhat met my first semester goal.  For example: understanding the prompt and extracting a question to answer, identifying examples, quotes, and textual support that aid my ability to defend the question I am answering, and create a thesis based on my ideas I put forth. Although, my weaknesses arise when developing a thesis. I know exactly what I want to discuss in my paper, but I lack the ability to create a clear and concise argument with a "so-what." My other weaknesses seen through my papers are:  adding good points that do not tie back to my thesis, using vague wordings, circulating around a point in hopes that it proves my point, and not connecting back to the thesis.

It's funny to realize that as a former AP Language student, I was very superficial about the way in which i wrote- concentrating more on defining and finding the literary devices rather than actually relating how that adds meaning to the text. I think that's what i focused a lot on this year- connecting the literary devices and making sense out of them, extracting a true meaning. I remember at the beginning of the year, the first words my AP Literature teacher told me- " defining and summarizing is death"...not going to lie, this was very true. Although in AP Language it worked, in AP Literature it wasn't about the actually content of the text, rather what the content told us. In a way, AP Literature was like a mind game- extract the hidden meaning..it's like a puzzle! Nonetheless, through the timed writings and take home essays, I learned to conquer this puzzle by one main thing- close reading and in depth analysis. Pretty much, I ripped up the paragraph and found a meaning that I thought I could support. Oh,  but you know what was so special about this meaning? It was never correct nor wrong! As long as you proved it to be correct, it worked! It was all about convincing the reader that you were right by supporting your meaning or analysis with all the illusions, connotations, denotations, and supporting text you could find.

Therefore, through my journey in AP Literature, I learned that writing an essay was a debate- you not only had to state the facts (aka relate to the text) but show what the evidence/facts meant in the grand scheme of things. What was the over all take? It wasn't what the author was trying to protray, it was what you could extrapolate from the given.