Acknowledgements

At the start of the year, AP Lang was my most dreaded class, I was uncomfortable and constantly felt scared to speak as the year went on, I was able to become comfortable with sharing my ideas and enjoying the class and its content. I have learned so much throughout this school year and I am grateful that I was able to break through my shell and enjoy taking this class. 

I’m extremely grateful to Mili for sticking with me throughout the year, helping me become more comfortable throughout the class, growing with me, and always keeping me company whenever I needed it, and for the conversations we would have after class about the wildest pieces and the late-night messages about homework. 

 My success in the class would not be possible without the support of Natalie, our late-night Thursday FaceTime calls practicing for the weekly vocab quizzes going in early (Natalie going in early) and asking Mrs. Valentino all our questions. I was so grateful for the help, and it helped me get better at my vocab. Thank you for our FaceTime calls and our off topic conversations.

 

To Rhea, thank you for always having made me laugh and being one of the smartest and nicest people I know To Elyse thank you for always having great ideas and thank you to Lindsey who slowly became a great table partner and is always fun to converse with. 

To MAUS:

Reading MAUS opened my eyes to the Holocaust and the horrors that happened, Having the opportunity to analyze the graphic images and the symbols behind it is very educating and I learned a lot throughout this unit. I had the opportunity to educate myself about the horrors of history as well as learn how to analyze a completely new type of literature. At the end of this unit, I knew what to look for in graphic novels and how to analyze the symbolism and meaning behind them.

To In-Class -Essays: 

Throughout the school year, I have gotten more confident in my essay writing. Starting the year with consistent 4’s, and continuously being disappointed after seeing my grade, I can now say I leveled up and received a 5 in a Rhetorical essay. Looking back at one of my essays about Cesar Chavez, I continuously repeated my argument not adding anything new to my point and in turn losing evidence points, not just being repetitive in my points but also in my words, I used the same words over and over again, not making room for new vocabulary and lastly, I noticed that my grammar was very poor and I had many run-on sentences, looking at my most recent Rhetorical essay, I can say that my writing has improved a lot. I don’t have any run-on sentences, and I am using my vocabulary more extensively, though it is not enough for a sophistication point I see in myself that I have stopped myself from being repetitive. I have also seen that my points have gotten more developed, and they relate to my claim many times, showing unity throughout my writing. Though I still have a lot to improve on, I am very happy that I was able to go up a level in my writing. 

To the Gender Unit: 

Our topic on Gender made me think in new ways and through new perspectives. I was able to learn more about society and its prejudice as well as the impacts that society has on its people. “I want a Wife” was a big factor in how I viewed gender roles. At first, when I read it I didn’t completely understand its message but after discussing it in our seminar I was awe-struck by the deep message it held about society and its ingrained gender roles. I am grateful I was able to learn about this while learning more about analyzing text. The message throughout all these pieces is much deeper when understanding the literary and rhetorical devices used to get the point across

To Nacirema: 

This piece puzzled me when I first read it at our class seminar, my mind drifted off a little because I didn’t fully comprehend what it was saying, it seemed like a bunch of foreign practices that I wasn’t familiar with, when David pointed it out that Nacirema was us, I was shocked and it made me look at my life from an unbiased perspective. While listening to the second group do their seminar, I caught myself looking throughout the rest of the piece trying to piece together what else I had missed and fit into my daily life practices. This piece was genuinely so cool and showed me how powerful satirical writing could be. I contemplated the Nacirema piece the rest of the day thinking about the obscurity of my daily tasks and how bizarre it could be seen as. 

Last but not least thank you to Mrs. Valentino that would put up with my late-night emails and helped me appreciate literature in many different aspects. I am now interested in many different aspects of literature. Thank you to Mrs. Valentino for making me more comfortable in the class with your funny comments and for your “get here on time” saying. Although I don’t appreciate the late rule, I will forever be grateful for the experience of learning in this class. Thank You. 

Overall I feel like I have grown so much throughout this class, instead of only talking about literature, we talked about literature and how it related to our lives, which interested me the most, and instead of seeing AP language homework as a chore I instead learned to enjoy the pieces we were able to analyze and let myself learn from the daily discussions we had dissecting each line of the piece. I have never experienced an English class such as this one where we have such diverse topics, and I am grateful that I was able to participate in this class and become educated on world topics and issues.