I thought the story, Oedipus Rex (left top), was really interesting and highlighted the idea of tragedy. It made me see that there are many different qualities and aspects of the theme of tragedy. What we've already talked about was how tragedy can be seen as pathetic or comical, but I think with Oedipus we can also see the true sadness and misfortune that comes along with tragedy. I also think that not only is tragedy sad, but there can also be something good that comes from tragedy. For example, though Oedipus finds out the truth and gauges out his eyes, he can now see the truth and no longer will live in fear of Apollo's prophecy. So, in a way, even though it was tragic how everything turned out, at least Oedipus knows the truth now and can move forward. We also read a new poem this week called, "To the Virgins to Make Much of Time" by Robert Herrick (left middle). I found this poem very interesting because the message and meaning behind it is one that is frequently stressed. The idea of "carpe diem" and that life is too short are often talked about in life today. I thought his comparison between gathering rosebuds and taking advantage of our opportunities was a really clear and well-chosen metaphor. There is a prime time to gather flowers and it doesn't last very long just as the sun is only high in the sky for a temporary amount of time just like our opportunities in life. We may not have the chance to experience something we pass up for a second time; that is why it is always important to take advantage of our opportunities in life. We also learned how to take Cornell Notes (left bottom). It was somewhat hard for me to get used to at first because I think everyone kind of takes notes in a particular way that is specially helpful to them personally, but once I got the hang of it, it was pretty helpful taking these types of notes. I like how your notes gradually narrow down into a small and effective summary. Also, by the time you finish off your Cornell Notes, you have repeated the important points at least three times and it becomes a lot easier to commit these important points to memory. |
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This week was the first week that we began working in room 216 in preparation for Mr. Schoenborn's paternity leave! We really started to delve into the new tragedy unit. We began watching videos, writing our tragedy blogs, and reading some of the webpages necessary to learn about tragedy.
The number one thing I remember from this week was the TED Talk video we watched comparing tragedy to success and failure. It was one of the best TED Talk videos I think I have ever seen honestly, and it truly resonated with me. After we finished watching it I had so many ideas rattling around in my head that I had recorded in my tragedy blog, and I had this sudden urge to just write which I found rather odd. I guess the message in the video just really got to me and inspired me. It actually inspired me to incorporate some of the points the speaker made about success and failure into some of my college application essays later that day. I liked the point he made about how success and failure is not a set thing. Each individual has their own personal idea of success and failure, and no one individual can be solely successful or solely unsuccessful. There are trade-offs that come along with excelling at something. No one can accomplish everything perfectly, and there for we all experience failure. I also enjoyed when the speaker brought up our society and our unrealistic idea of a complete "meritocracy". When we believe in a world like this, that implies that we believe that the people who do certain great things will be on the successful end and those who do certain bad things or don't do anything at all will be on the unsuccessful end. But, this is not true at all. Too often in our society, do we associate the word "failure" to the word "loser". To fail at something does not equate to being a loser. Similar to how being prosperous does not equate to being successful. Like the speaker says, there are too many random factors that influence a person's ability to end up at the top or the bottom. There are too many uncontrollable factors such as, heritage, religion, disabilities both physical and mental, and family finances, for us to truly believe that each and every person has the same opportunities as another. There are many people in this world who have tried to do great things and long to do them, but just don't have the resources or the money to take hold of these opportunities. Take into consideration this scenario: Say a man is born into a family living in poverty, and he can't afford to get an education. Without an education he does not have nearly the same opportunities and chances that those with an education do. Let's say the only family he has die and he is left alone to fend for himself. Unable to pay for a home he becomes homeless and scraps for food. He searches desperately for a job, but always falls short. He never gets hired or is prepared to go into the work force. What resources does this man have to reach out for a job? How will he write a cover letter? How will he know the proper format without an education? How will he create a resume with nothing to put on it? How can he dress professionally for a job interview? Who is going to hire a man that came off the streets and has seemingly nothing to offer? How does he stand a chance in our cutthroat society? Now consider this scenario: A boy is born into an extremely wealthy family that owns a multi-million dollar business. After coasting through high school doing the bare minimum of work and achieving no honors or awards, he does not attend college because he becomes a higher-up in his family's company. He is making five times what people his age make with no college education and no degree. Is he considered successful? Did he work hard at all to earn his position? This just reinforces that failure and success cannot be determined by how "hard" one works. There are simply too many uncontrollable factors. All in all, I found the whole week to be extremely interesting and enlightening. This week in AP Lit. we discussed the poem, "Pathedy of Manners" by Ellen Kay. I find it interesting how creating words like "pathedy", a combination between pathetic and comedy or even tragedy, is encouraged in poetry and literature. The poem we looked at this week was quite different than the poems we've been looking at. It kind of led us into our new unit on tragedy. This poem really highlighted the ideas that the two main aspects of drama are comedy and tragedy, and they are both somewhat connected. The woman described in the poem essentially has given up her life and ideals in order to live a lifestyle of luxury. This lead me to believe that she is more concerned with what people thought of her than her own self-worth. Towards the end of the poem the tone shifts from talking about her lavish lifestyle to talking about her new lifestyle of sadness. This really emphasized the use of the created word "pathedy" in the title of the poem because readers and the speaker view this woman as pathetic yet find it comedic since, ultimately, the fault of her misfortune is purely her own. Tragedy came into play when I really considered her lifestyle. Though she is now lonely and pathetic, I came to the realization that her situation is quite sad. The fact that she has to pretend like she still lives in her world of luxury and forever be encircled by fake friends is actually extremely tragic. Realizing this kind of opened my eyes to the connections between tragedy and comedy. When bad things happen to people, we tend to compare ourselves to them and find comedic pleasure in the misfortune of others because we're glad it's not us. Sometimes, we even decide that a person deserves whatever horrible thing is happening to them. But, at the end of the day when you really sit back and look at someone's tragic circumstances, they really are not funny at all. They are actually very sad. Not only did this poem teach me about tragedy in literature, but it also made me realize the lack of empathy we have as a society. I also found the Poem of the Week Essay this week to be a lot easier to write than previous essays, probably due to practice. But, I think there were so many things I got from this poem that it was so easy to just flow while I was writing. Creating a thesis was easier for me than it usually is and the support for my main points was super clear in the poem that, with the use of direct and indirect quotes, I was easily able to write a very nice paper! This week I learned a lot about working in a group. I obviously have experienced working in a group before, but I had never necessarily experienced it quite the same as I did this week. We have been working on our projects for a few weeks now, but bringing both essays and the presentation together this week really tested my group's communication and cooperation.
In past group projects, they usually occurred in classes that did not contain all higher-level and more advanced students. Typically, we were assigned groups and the more motivated students did all the work. And, although it is extremely stressful to be the person doing all of the work and allowing others to take credit for it, I now realize that it is also much simpler than taking every single group member's ideas and opinions into consideration. My group struggled greatly with numerous and frequent creative differences. We all brought to the table a different way of looking at things and valuable ideas, we just struggled to combine them initially, and still manage to write a cohesive paper. We all have very different writing styles as well which I could tell really bothered some people. But, I personally think that the whole point of the project was so that we could see those different writing styles and personalities shine through throughout different parts of the paper. Some of us have a more conversational tone while others tend to write more formally. It doesn't mean either way is "wrong" or has to be changed, it just means each has to be incorporated into the writing in non-confusing way. I think that initially members of my group didn't necessarily handle the creative differences very well. Some tended to just not contribute because they found working in a group too frustrating, while others tended to just ignore the differences and pretend like they weren't important. I think this week once we started to realize that we actually are capable of producing good work as an outcome of using all of our perspectives, we began to work a lot better together. Basically, what I learned is that I personally much rather prefer working individually simply because I enjoy putting forth work that I am proud of because it really feels like "me" work, and I don't like having to be responsible for other people's grades as well. I would feel horrible if I were to interpret something differently and subsequently make our essay contradictory costing my group-mates a grade on it. However, I also learned that social and cooperative skills are insanely important to have! At some point or another, you will HAVE to work with people; it's inevitable and completely unavoidable. Also, we are supposed to be the most advanced writers and students, which means we can all learn something from fellow classmates. Not one student is smarter or better than the other, and we all have something positive to offer to our classmates to improve their literary abilities. I found the poem of the week for Week 5, "Bright Star" by John Keats, to be incredibly interesting. Out of all the poems we have read so far, this was the only poem that I really had to analyze and read multiple times to even come up with one idea as to what it was about. I feel as though it may be a little harder to analyze as the other poems because the language is slightly more eloquent. I find that the analysis of sonnets seems to be a little more perplexing than the analysis of other poems. I also found "Bright Star" intriguing because of its use of imagery and rhetoric.Throughout the poem, the author uses words with relatively good connotations that painted vivid images in my mind due to his descriptiveness. Then, as the poem proceeded, he started pairing words like "sweet" with "unrest" which are very contradicting seeing as "sweet" has a positive connotation while "unrest" tends to have a negative connotation. This sentence then guides the reader into the very last line, "And so live ever--or else swoon to death." which romanticizes the idea of death and ever-lasting life which are both usually viewed in a negative way. It also interested me how the author seems to refuse acceptance of anything changing. He uses words that represent things staying the same for a long period of time. He uses words like "eternal", "steadfast", "unchangeable", and phrases like "to feel for ever...", "awake forever...", "live ever..." to emphasize his desire for an unchanging and restless world in which he is able to admire and love eternally this woman. I also feel as if I am slowly understanding how to write my essays in a more concise yet eloquent way. I still feel somewhat rushed with only forty minutes to write the Poem of the Week essays, however, I feel like I am getting a lot better at them! I feel like I have a better grasp on what my audience will be looking for especially after we revised our "Cross" essays. Even though there is still not a set-in-stone structure to writing our essays like we used to follow, it has been getting incredibly easier to write under the stressful time limit. And, if we continue to do these times of essays throughout the year, I am sure that I will feel confident enough to "knock-out" the essay portion of the AP test especially since I feel like I am already getting a lot better at writing. This week in AP Lit. we looked at a new and very different poem of the week. We read and analyzed a poem written by Emily Dickinson, "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain". I found this a very intriguing poem and it was actually very interesting to try and analyze. I viewed this poem sort of as a puzzle, like every stanza was some sort of clue, and it was entertaining to piece together the underlying meaning of Dickinson's poem.
This weeks poem was very different than the poems we read and analyzed in the first couple of weeks. "The Eagle" seemed to be more metaphoric and "Cross" seemed to be more literal while "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain" seemed, to me, to be more symbolic. I interpreted the poem to be a correlation between the speaker's literal death due to suicide to escape insanity and the speaker's actual funeral procession. I found that Dickinson's use of sensory details, or lack there of, really emphasized and made more insightful the meaning behind the poem. The fact that Dickinson intentionally references to the presence of multiple senses such as, auditory senses and tactile senses, not only stresses the importance of the senses present, but also stresses the importance of the absent senses like sight. The fact that Dickinson leaves out any details regarding seeing makes a reader assume that the final result of the poem was death which explains the absence of sight in the poem. I also found the poem analysis essay discussion we had at the end of class really helpful. Although there is no straight guideline to emulate like Logan and Gary were saying in class, it does help to look at essays that have scored high in AP tests because it gives us an idea of what AP readers are looking for in the essays we write. Now that I have looked at the essay that scored a 9 on the AP test and read the comments and advice that Mr. Schoenborn provided on my original essay, I can apply the good aspects of the essay we looked at to the revisions in my original essay. This week in AP Lit., we continued to do some poem analysis. I really like that this has become a weekly, and on-going thing. I appreciate that analyzing these poems will enhance our abilities to identify deeper meaning in poetry, and to more easily analyze and display our analysis/observations in our writings by time the AP test comes around.
I really enjoyed reading "The Cross" by Langston Hughes. It was a totally different poem to analyze than "The Eagle" was. I believe that "The Cross" was written in a more literal fashion while I believe "The Eagle" was written in a more figurative manner. As an individual, my approach to analyzing these two poems was totally different. After a few days of analysis of "The Eagle", I believe I truly grasped the underlying meaning behind the poem, and the message that the author was trying to convey. I think that despite which figurative path, if you will, that each student went down in deciding what the poem was about, we all kind of arrived at the destination or at least a similar destination. We all kind of agreed on a similar figurative meaning behind the poem. However, this was not the case with "The Cross". "The Cross" was filled with rhetoric and aporia, which made each classmates interpretation completely different. Since the second poem was written to be more literal, it's not so much of deciding what the poem was about, but deciding why and how it was intended to make the reader feel. It was almost the opposite process as the process that was taken to find the meaning behind "The Eagle". "The Cross", to me, and I feel to most of my other classmates, was specifically about Langston Hughes and his upbringing. Langston Hughes was born a mixed child to a black mother and a white father, so it would seem logical to assume that this poem was meant to be taken literally (see article here). But, it's how the poem is written and the emotions it's intended to create in it's audience that are debatable. Some people may find his self-doubt, rhetoric, and confused tone comforting because it makes the author more human, and easy to identify with. However, others, like myself, may find the poem's intent to be to make it's readers uncomfortable. I think the author's specific way of speaking and writing his poem was meant to cause discomfort in his readers, so they could feel the confusion and sadness that he felt. This past week some of our main focuses were poem analysis and language. While reviewing The Eagle, we learned that it is very critical to consider the poem from multiple perspectives and not just in from our initial perception. In order to be more analytic and insightful as readers, we must be open minded when we not only analyze poetry, but essays and other forms of writing as well.
I found it very interesting to re-read The Eagle the course of a few days because it allowed us to think more deeply about it, and draw more conclusions to the poems purpose. Initially, I took a literal stand-point while reading the poem, and concluded that it was about an eagle before it stalked it's pray. Later on, after discussing the piece with the class I decided the poem was in fact about mankind, and the rise and fall that goes along with being powerful. Which brings me to my next point, discussing and considering my classmates' points of view is very helpful. Sometimes we get so blinded by our own opinions that we are too stubborn to consider the possibility and credibility of another classmate's opinion. I think the in-class discussion of The Eagle was so important to deciphering the meaning of the poem because it enabled each of us to approach it differently. No two minds think exactly alike and sharing our points of view with one another only increases our abilities to become more open-minded and considerate individuals. I found this article very interesting in how it expressed the benefits and simplicity of bringing poetry and analysis into the classroom. It was amazing to me how analyzing the poem on separate days changed my take on it. I gradually began to view it from a different stand-point each day until I finally reached the conclusion that the poem could be a possible allegory to the story of Daedalus and Icarus. What were the main ideas we learned this past week?
A main idea that accompanied this first week of school was the topic of hard work. Not the kind of "hard work" where you finish what you are supposed to finish on time, and you meet all requirements of a project, but actual hard work. I am talking about the kind of work that you really push yourself and push yourself to put forward. I really appreciated how you stressed the importance of putting all of yourself into your writing. I wholly agree with the idea that the only work one should put forward is work that they are so proud of and so connected to that it almost hurts to share it with other people. This first week only intensified my belief that you should love the work you release, and treat it as an extension of yourself. If you do not love your work like it's your own child, no one else is going to either. Another main idea we discussed this week was about creative writing. It makes me extremely comfortable to write in class in a creative manner knowing that it's not only acceptable to be raw and blunt, but encouraged. Sometimes I feel as though my work can be so much more compelling if I did not feel afraid to add enticing information. I totally agree that the more real a piece is, the more entertaining it is to the readers. Saying what you truly feel, and writing exactly what you want to say, makes your work honest and relative to your audience. My favorite aspect of this week was watching the Shaped by Writing: The Freshman Experience video. I believe there is always room for improvement in every facet of life. When the award-winning essay writer was told by his university that his writing needed a lot of work, it was probably the most shocking thing for him to hear. That is something everyone should always think about when they are writing an essay. It can ALWAYS be better. I've learned that you have to be concise and straightforward in your writing, but you also have to clearly convey your message. I am prepared to use this video as motivation to challenge myself further with writing. I feel it is so crucial that one is always looking for ways to improve their writing. The unsatisfied writer is the successful writer, in my opinion. I also believe that the discussion we began class with on the very first day was much needed and critical to our success in this class. Looking for the easy way out is not going to help anyone in this class. To cheat the independent reading, is only going to cheat ourselves. The purpose of the independent reading is not so we can write an essay or pass a test, the purpose is to make us more insightful as readers. It was intended to teach us to analyze literature more closely. If we want to grow in our reading skills, we have to put our full effort into reading the books laid out for us and really trying to analyze the literature. |
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February 2015
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