Over the last few weeks I've learned a lot about tragedy and what is means. We've watched a few ted talks too, some of them I thought were interesting, others not so much. We also did another poem of the week and worked a lot on revising are previous papers. Those are going that great for me. I've revised mine and helped other people, but honestly I have no clue what I'm doing. It's rough. At least the tragedy stuff is going pretty good. I am so blogged out. Between these, the tragedy blogs, and the ap calc blogs, I've done so many. We also read oedipus. That wasn't to painful luckily.
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We learned more about writing essays. For most of this week we analyzed out short stories more. Me and Tyler's topics are humor and personalization. He's doing personalization and I'm doing humor. I've learned a lot about how humor and irony effect the story. My first story The Drunkard I have pretty much done. I'm having a lot more trouble with my second story Rape Fantasies. I've read it 3 times now. I understand the story pretty good now, but am still having trouble figuring out how it relates to humor and irony. Even though are topic is humor, humor is very similar to irony, and really the story more uses irony than humor. We also read our books some this week. I started a new book called Child of God. I haven't got very far yet. I'm going to read more this weekend. We also did a little creative writing. We didn't do a poem of the week this week.
I finished the short story The Drunkard, and I'm part way through the other one I'm reading called Rape Fantasies. We also did another poem of the week. I think I am getting better at those, but I'm not really sure. Hopefully we go over it and give it a grade and stuff so I can see where I'm at. I haven't had time to finish any of the poem essays yet, but I've gotten close and I think what I did get down was good. But we'll see when we go over it next week. Some author came in this week. I don't remember his name, but I really liked listening to him. Besides him being an interesting.character and person to listen to, I actually enjoyed hearing about how he writes his books. He talked a lot about how you need to get a system for your writing, to make sure you take the time to write. Although I liked listening to him, writing still isn't my thing. I don't mind writing these blogs actually, because I can write in my own voice somewhat. But writing a book does not sound interesting at all to me. One thing I learned about was humor and how it effects stories. Its odd how humor often isn't funny, but there is still a purpose for it. I think the category me and Tyler are doing should be called Irony, not humor, because that what it really is.
This week we started reading the short stories. Me and Tyler choose Characterization and Humor as our categories. Our short stories are The Destructors, The Drunkard, and Rape Fantasies. I missed two days this week, so I felt behind in a lot of things. I started reading The Drunkard, but I'm not that far yet so I don't have a feel for it yet. Also this is random, but I'm not a big fan of the poems this week. Many of them were videos all by the same guy (whose name I don't remember). The first was okay, but the rest I didn't really like. I don't know if its the poems, or just him reading them. I think it might be both. Just something about him it's hard to explain. But some people liked them I know, so everyone has there opinions.
This week we learned about art pictures. We watched a TED talk about making stories up and analyzing paintings. Me and Tyler were partners for that project. I honestly thought it was kind of dumb. Not all of it, but when we get to the point that were over thinking the painting, and over analyzing it and giving it meaning it doesn't even have and that the artist never intended for it to have. It is done with literature to sometimes. Professional overthinking I call it. Its a fine balance between understanding it thoroughly and making stuff up.. We also did some more creative writing. I wrote my college application essay for Michigan State. The topic was about a challenge that we had to overcome. It's actually really hard because it has to be less then 200 words. When your writing about yourself and a hard challenge you had to overcome, 200 words is not many. I'm also almost done with my book No Country For Old Men. I'm kind of disappointed. The main character died but it was so sudden I had to read it like three times. It just starts taking about his dead body one scene, and I had no idea what had happened.
This week I learned about story vs literature. Some books are mostly story and others are mostly literature. The book I'm reading No Country For Old Men, is more story than literature. It doesn't go super deep into everyone's feelings, and isn't overly descriptive of super small details. Part of the reason it isn't is because it follows many different characters from many points of view. For most of it, its changing between three different characters views, so it would be hard and wouldn't really make sense to go super detailed and personal for each one. Especially in an AP Lit class, I feel like it's suggested that mostly literature books. Nobody flat out said that, but I just get that feel, but maybe I'm wrong. But here's why I don't agree. Movies for the most part are usually more story. Movies are also a lot shorter then the book. It might take 2 and a half hours to watch a movie, but a lot longer to read the book. The book has way more details, but many of which can be unnecessary. It's kind of like the story Andy told about a paper he got published. It was 30 pages, then he had to cut it to 20, then 15, then 8. But at the end, he admitted it was better. Every thing that was written was much more important. Now I'm not saying movies are better then books; usually they aren't. But I am saying, most of my favorite experiences are from movies. Both books and movies can blow your mind and leave you for days and weeks thinking about them.
Well this is the end of the second week of AP Lit. Still isn't to intense yet. The main thing that I think will be hard in the future for this class is the writing. I'm a decent reader, but I struggle more with writing. We did some creative writing which, was okay. I'm also a lot farther in my book. It's actually getting pretty good, which is surprising because it started off pretty slow. I can't wait to finish and watch the movie though. I think I will like the movie a lot better. The reason I like the book is for the story. The writing style is just whatever. Not good not bad. It is just kind of there. We did the TP-CASTT to analyze the poem the Eagle. I also had a ton of trouble posting my weebly. I ended up having to delete the entire page and re do it. I copied all the stuff for this class and AP calc into a google doc and pasted it on my new one so I wouldn't have to re do it all. The only part I changed was this blog post. So yes sorry I'm writing it late, but hopefully I won't have any more weebly trouble.
Well, this has been my first week in AP Lit. I wasn't to sure at the beginning if i was going to stay in the class or drop it, but now I've decided I'm going to keep it. This week I've learn about reading rates, process, and how the class is going to go for the year. Today we read for 10 minutes and found our reading rate in our book. This also ties into process, because we are going to do this for every book we read this year. This will help us set goals and a plan to read our books. He told us this that is part of the process we will do. Process is worth 30% of our grade he said. We learned about how the class will be run this year. At first I was worried that we would have to read a ton of books and dreading it, but it sounds like it won't be bad. We have to read at least one every six weeks, which isn't bad at all. Especially since we get to pick them from a selection, that makes it way better. I picked No Country For Old Men . It's a movie to I want to see but haven't, so maybe I'll watch it after the I read the book. I haven't learned it yet (we haven't had to read much ye), but hopefully this class I'll learn to enjoy reading more. |
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