When a high school student is essentially given the reigns to their education, I think it's safe to say that many of them don't know what in the Sam Hill they're supposed to do! Is this a trap? Am I going to be graded on my plan? Is there a wrong answer? Will the teacher think my plan is ridiculous? Believe me when I say, one of the most confusing and irritating questions I've ever come across in the course and in my life are, "Who (not what) do you want to be?" and "What are your goals? Your real goals, not the ones you think you should have because you've been told to have them." Imagine my surprise when these questions quickly became the center of my learning experience with Dr. Preston. So, with a bitter scowl on my face, I had to ask myself a question I had spent years trying to ignore and figure out how I could make this course help me answer those questions. Easier said then done. Yet after hours, and I mean HOURS, of thinking I finally came up with a semi-acceptable answer, at least for now. So, without further ado, I came up with two plans that I believe complement each other and can help me in the long run.
PLAN #1:
We spend the rest of this course practically worshiping the AP grading rubric. I want to eat, sleep, and drink AP literary terms. Most athletes want to eat lightening and crap thunder, well I want to eat Shakespearean sonnets and crap a five paragraph analysis that has a rockin' thesis statement (pardon the imagery)! In order for me to feel that I maximized the total utility of this course, I need to be able to walk into the AP exam and feel that what I've done in class was five times harder and much more time consuming. As strict and "unfun" as it may sound, I think this course should become an AP boot camp up until the exam. This means working on time management, breaking down texts, understanding complex concepts, understanding AP questions and most importantly WORKING ON TIME MANAGEMENT!!
By now, you must be wonder how in the world this answers either of the two questions above and if you weren't you are now. Well PLAN #1 helps the success of my goals because one of my many goals is to go to a four year university, so naturally it would only help to pass the AP exam. As for how this answers the "who do I want to be?" question, you'll have to read plan number two.
PLAN #2:
Now, during our AP boot camp I would also like for us to find out how each piece of literature we study relates to us and the world around us. As residents of the small, quiet town of Santa Maria, we have the luxury of being able to forget and block out the world around us because it rarely interferes with our daily routine. As a result, a lot of us are sheltered and have several misconceptions of the world around us, I am no exception. So I would like us to use the text we study to discover what's beyond the county lines and learn concepts/ideals that never occurred to us before. In no uncertain terms, I want us to use the texts we read and our research to discover who we want to be or at least put us on the path of discovering that.
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