Menu
Reflective Learning Blog
This week I had my biggest battle with senioritis and sadly I feel as though I lost the battle. When presented the idea of this project in my head I thought this seems like a lot of work and I don't really see the point to it. But as this class has showed me many times before, even if it feels as though we're straying from the main goal of the AP test we are always able to draw it back in. Many times I don't see how I have grown and the importance of the project until I have completed it. Something that I have found more of in this class than any other is how proud I feel of the work I have completed and excitement I feel over projects. However I have been having a hard time finding the excitement and the motivation to get through this project as I see the year is quickly coming to a close, the main thing I can think about is the finish line, also how tired I am. This week I learned the importance of a strong, disciplined mind and how I need to fight the lazy part of myself that just wants to lay on the couch and watch It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia but I really need to be reading and doing my math homework. I also should go to bed at a reasonable time to be awake enough to actually learn at school. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kat-cohen/truth-about-senioritis_b_9040680.html
0 Comments
This week was overwhelming for me. I had a struggle of choosing to get my work done or to hang out with my friends when I had time. Although I hate to admit it but my friends won that battle. This made it so that as the week went on the work started piling up and now I have a lot of work to be done on the weekend. As I did my work in class I began to get excited about how at the beginning of the trimester something that started as just a broad idea that I was vaguely interested in because I had to find something, turned into a intricate and exciting project. As I continued to look for outside sources I was excited to see how I would have many small "eureka!" moments. I felt as I invested more time my project I started to feel more invested and passionate about my project. Take away from this week and even writing this week's blog is I need to discipline myself and my mind to not talk as much and get my work done before I can go have fun with my friends. I feel as though senioritis is really sinking in at the This week something that I found very helpful was seeing my classmates This I Believe final projects. As someone who was sick all of last week not only did I feel that I didn't have a full grasp of what was expected of me I also didn't feel like I knew how to use the software. This was stressful for me because I felt as though I needed to rush through to get a finished project out that probably wasn't going to be as good because I had such a short time to get it finished. I was relieved to hear that I could use more time to put all of my effort into finishing the project. When given this project to do I was at first confused on how this has to do with AP Literature and Composition but after seeing my classmates videos I was able to see how they were able to tell a cohesive story that was tied together by their belief. I think some of my classmates stepped out of their comfort zone by sharing personal stories not only with their friends in the class but with their other classmates and teacher who are mere acquaintances. https://www.ted.com/topics/storytelling I was home sick all week. Although I was very disappointed that I was sick this week of all weeks I was able to do some learning on my own. I had my friend from Germany Steffen visit me for the last two weeks. Although I was on the couch sick for most of the time that he was here he. I had my first exam in my college class Monday afternoon, in all of my high school classes I have taken I have always felt as though I haven't had to work hard or study for my classes. Although for my college class I had to memorize 185 terms for my exam. For two days straight I studied determined to get a good test score. The hard work paid off when it was test day and I felt as though I knew all of the answers. I will see the results of my exam either Monday or Wednesday and I'm eager to see what my score will be. Steffen was very patient with me and never complained during those boring days of sitting and studying. He showed me the importance of patience. https://www.goconqr.com/en/examtime/blog/10-study-tips-to-achieve-your-goals-in-2016/ Everyone has a story to tell, something that sets them apart from everyone else. During this week we watched ted talks that taught me that in order to keep an audience's attention you not only have to tell one good story but two stories help to keep the audience's attention. Another piece of advice that the videos taught me was that you cannot give the audience all of the information, you have to sprinkle clues so that they can come to the conclusion on their own. These ideas helped me because I personally don't feel as though I am a strong storyteller. Half way through the story I feel as though I get tired of telling the story and my audience gets bored. I am using these tips from the experts in the ted talks that we watched to improve on my storytelling because I think I have interesting stories to tell. Most of the week was set aside to write a story that brought us to a belief that we have, at first this idea made me uncomfortable because I like to keep my thought and beliefs to myself. I have seen many times people get angry with each other because they have conflicting beliefs and I, although did not share a controversial belief do not want to offend anyone. I also had a hard time matching a story to the beliefs that I do have. I was able to see how your personal experiences really do impact your beliefs. http://www.quietrev.com/how-to-tell-your-own-life-story/ Humans are very opinionated beings, when a topic is presented most of the time humans have already formed an opinion of whether they like it or not without researching more details about the topic. It is important that you look for more details before the opinion or claim is made. Another tendency that humans seem to have is that they like to hear things they agree with. This is how bias news was created like Fox News or CNN. This isn't necessarily alway harmful but it can weaken the credibility of a claim. If you form a claim before you've done research then you'll look for more research that supports your claim rather than consider everyone's point of view. This week we researched what online tracking is and whether the government should get involved in ending it. After reading the first article I had already formed a strong opinion that I did not like that I was being tracked without my consent or knowledge. But in class we had to look for not only the things that supported the writer's claim but also the things that contradicted it. This allowed me to see that there is some good that comes out of tracking. We then had a debate to argue the pros and cons of online tracking. This solidified the ideas that I had for why the government should step in as well as allowed me to see the points of why the government hasn't already stepped in. http://oureverydaylife.com/credibility-online-sources-important-education-7012.html Something that can be hard about working in a group is that everyone attacks a project differently. Personally I like to set aside one day to write the entire essay and do the presentation. I have a hard time keeping all of my ideas when I spread the essay writing time out for weeks at a time. I also like to write first an outline of each paragraph and what points I want to get across and then go back and edit and fix the sentences to make them pretty and sound nice. Although this way of thinking works for me it doesn't work for my group mates, for they both like to spread out the essay writing and get everything on paper right the first time. This was a big change for me because when writing I had to put more thought into the sentences and with each idea we would produce we would have three brains dissecting it until we had the perfect sentence; this process was repeated hundreds of times until we finally had a finished essay. I think my group mates way of writing an essay is interesting and can produce a very successful essay, for me that way would only work when I'm working in a group setting for I need to be able to converse on the sentences rather than argue with myself about the best way to form the sentence that will get my point across in the best way. A lot of the role I played in the essay writing phase of our project was just building the structure for the essay, with all of the points we wanted to say, and my group mates would go back make the essay stronger. https://www.themuse.com/advice/the-science-of-successful-group-projects The theme of this week was memory: how much can you remember of Macbeth, and your critical theory lense after you had a week and a half mental vacation from all things school. For me the problem wasn't just that I needed to remember what we had talked about with Macbeth, but I didn't have a strong idea when watching it what was actually going on in the play. I had a hard time understanding the importance of the characters that weren't Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, or the witches; not only was that confusing to me but the how the play ended, I was left utterly confused, What helped me to tie together the rough ideas I had formed of Macbeth was when we had a visit from a CMU professor who studies Shakespeare. She was able to show me the significance of Shakespeare and how he can relate to our everyday life. She also taught my group the history of Macbeth, and answered the question of 'why is the play so anti-feminist?'. Talking to the CMU made me more excited to begin writing my paper and creating a presentation, for she solidified my ideas as well as sent me on paths I never thought to explore. Although I had known that Shakespeare was written a very long time ago it hadn't crossed my mind to look at what was going on in his time to understand the text more, I was trying more to see how his texts relate to the time I live in now. http://www.biography.com/people/william-shakespeare-9480323 After reflecting back on this week of watching Macbeth I realized that the other people in that room watching with me were all getting a different message from the tragedy depending on what critical theory lense the group chose. In a rubix cube there are multiple ways to solve it, there are many different ways to read or watch a story unfold depending on your view point. It is truly facinating that there can be a many different messages hidden in just one story. My group chose the feminist theory, so we were looking for the ways that women influenced the plot, as well as how William Shakespear protrayed the women in his tragedy. Shakespear wrote to relate to his time so how he makes the women characters act is similar to how they were seen back in the day. Our group noticed how every woman character was sawn as evil and diabolical but maybe the other group didn't pick up on that because they were looking at the psycology and how Macbeth came to be so crazy. Although our groups were looking for different things there is no doubt that Macbeth went mad. https://www.prestwickhouse.com/samples/301548.pdf Throughout the school year I felt an utter sense of doom, teachers would tell me that high school and other schools before it were set in place to prepare us for college. This didn't feel like the case for me because classes came easy and I never felt truly challenged. At the same time we were being told by everyone parents, students, teachers that college is very hard. My ears perked up at the beginning of the beginning of the week when the topic of critical lenses and theory was introduced to us for it came to out attention that critical theory isn't introduced to college students until their junior year. After looking into the different critical theory lenses I could see that depending on which lense you use the stories you read can have a completely different meanings, as if wearing glasses in contrast to sunglasses or no glasses. After choosing the feminist view to watch Hamlet in I realized that the feminist theory has been around for longer than I thought. It can be dated back to the mideval times with Lady Bath from Cantabury Tales. http://www.mpsaz.org/rmhs/staff/rkcupryk/aa_jr/files/microsoft_word_-_literary_theories.pdf |
AuthorLindsay is thinking in AP Lit Archives
March 2017
Categories |