Matthew Cropper Both excited and nervous I begin my senior year of high school.

The previous year I had taken AP Language and Composition as my English class and due to school policy I was destined to take AP Literature my senior year. Having received high marks on my past exams gave me a sense of confidence as I entered the school on the first day. I had never been one particularly fond of English as I always considered it just to be an easy credit taking me one step closer to college. In fact I would often question the necessity of a English class to myself. Asking why we need to take the same class every year that only forces us to read one work of Shakespeare and a variety of other novels. I can't say I was surprised at this aspect of the curriculum. Many classes before this have required the reading and analysis of a variety of novels. Novels such as The Catcher and the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Of Mice and Men have become staples to the typical English class. While analyzing these novels for class gives students good insight on these novels, and helps to teach them how to analyze text, I have never been fond of the forced readings. I feel as though forced readings makes me lose interest in the books because I know it will only be followed by an examination. The same can be said about the different Shakespearean works that students are required to study. While they are important in that they provide a variety that modern literature cannot provide. The forced aspect of it is a turn off to students. They read in order to absorb the content instead of the pleasure of reading. For these reasons and others, I have never thought much of English classes I viewed them as an easy grade and only one step in the many other English classes I would have to take. However, this all changed my senior year of high school. AP Literature would expand on my knowledge in writing obtained by AP Language and would foster my feelings towards writing as they are today. As I had thought the first semester was nothing special for me. The class was at 7:20 in the morning and enough to put me asleep. All the desks were occupied and my teacher for this class was Ms. Flather. She was a nice teacher but more often than not we would see her angry side because no one in the class was able to properly answer the questions that were asked. If we did not answer her questions she would assumed that we didn't read the assigned reading for homework. She wasn't entirely wrong to make this assumption. I feel like it was pretty obvious that there were people who read and people who didn't. So as a way to punish those who did not read she would threaten us with a quiz based off of the material we were meant to read the night before. Luckily, I didn't experience this very often, and if anything it did encourage some students to read. Although I did not experience this often, this would only make me resent the class more, and only make my mornings more strenuous. This also only supported the idea I had in my mind that reading books in English was nothing more than mandatory, and no matter how uninterested you may be in the book you need to know its material to be successful in the class. The only thing keeping me awake was my fear of being called on to answer a question and have no idea as to how to formulate an answer. When in reality most times I was unable to come up with an answer regardless of how hard I tried. I'm not sure if it's because I was tired but most occasions my mind would draw a complete blank whenever the teacher asked a question. Typically I've done well in English classes but that class was much harder than I expected it to be. During the first semester of this class Shakespeare's Hamlet was a big project. Analyzing it and making sense of the play made up a large portion of the curriculum for the semester. At first glance I

was disappointed to see that for yet another year we would be studying Shakespeare. However, this opinion would quickly change. Perhaps it was the story itself or the way that the play was taught to us, but I really enjoyed reading the play. I believe that this play marks the beginning of my changing attitude towards literature and towards literature classes in general. Aside from developing my appreciation for Shakespeare the class also refined my writing style and made it into what it is today. More often than not we would talk about the components to a successful paper all leading up to the hopes of being able to pass the AP Literature exam with flying colors. We certainly practiced these concepts more than I would have liked as we wrote more and more essays as the semester went on. As expected some of my first essays were not amazing but they were decent and certainly a good starting point for my development in writing. In addition to reading Hamlet we would read a variety of Shakespeare's poems and other smaller works in the interest of analyzing them. Through this analysis we developed skills to tactfully piece apart a poem or essay in order to obtain useful information in writing an essay. Before we would write essays we would practice developing different theory statements in order to clearly and efficiently express our ideas. Organization was a topic we touched heavily upon as it taught us how to effectively organize our ideas within the limited time frame we would have to write. Many of our preessay rituals included discussing the best ways to organize our essays. We also practiced constructing our thesis statements, and we went over many ways to successfully implement them in our papers. While the first semester was important in formulating the beginning steps of my change in literacy learning the second semester is where most of this change took place. During this new semester my attitude and skill with regards to literacy would change for the better. New semesters in my school meant a schedule change for the students. The classes were kept the same but the teachers or the periods that each class was assigned could change. As such, many students did not belong to the same class after the new semester had started. The new class was composed of 15 people and I was happy to say I knew them all fairly well. At this point in my senior year I liked all of my teachers, and Ms. Flather was one of my favorite teachers. I looked forward to her class which I can't necessarily say the same about the first semester. I think the way she conducted the class was great. Instead of just asking us questions about the books we were reading we managed to have in depth conversations about the books. People were engaged in the conversations, and I thought this was a nice touch to get people interested in the literature. Our pre-essay discussion greatly helped, and all the students contributed to the discussions in order to help one another. I believe that this group was much closer than the group in the first semester. I believe this is due to the relatively small size of the class. My desk this semester was located almost next to the teachers desk. Sitting next to me were my friends Barnabas and Jeffrey. Barnabas I've known since middle school so we were good friends. Jeffrey I had became friends with at the start of high school and since our friendship started we would compete in our studies. Typically Jeffrey did better than me by a few points which irritated me, but I still held a competitive outlook with him when it came to grades. If anything this competitiveness would be one factor that would push me forward in a variety of my classes especially English. Sitting in front of me was Samantha, she and I had become good friends in high school and we shared many of the same classes. Generally I was better at the class than she was so I would often find myself helping her to write her essays than focusing on my own assignments. Jeffrey, Barnabas, Samantha, and I would often work

together in class on numerous assignments. Whenever a group assignment was being announced we would look to each other as if to silently assure that we wanted to work together. Often times groups could only be 3 people so we would have to exclude one person. It became a joke among us to exclude Barnabas in our group. So nearly every time he was excluded as part of the joke, which afterwards he would work with other close friends in the class. Jeffrey and I always compared our grades to one another as part of a competition. It was a close race, our grades were always very similar, and to this day I don't know if there is a definitive winner among us. Samantha didn't grow up speaking English. She is a native Spanish Speaker, and impressively managed to learn English in about a year. As a result she felt as though she wasn't a great writer. Which wasn't true at all, but I understand that since she had only just learned English she wasn't as confident in her writing. Often times I found myself helping her prepare for her essays and helping her finish many of her other assignments. I was happy to help though. The final semester to the year and the final stretch to finishing high school. The only obstacles that would stand in my way are the AP exams at the end of the year. During this time I was constantly dealing with a barrage of assignments meant to prepare me for the exams. I've never written so much in an English class. Practically an essay every week with plenty of other assignments to occupy our time. We also read a variety of novels in order to use them when writing for the exam. Our essays focused on perfecting our writing within the brief time frame that would be allowed when taking the exam. Perfecting may be a misleading word. We're still students so our writing was by no means perfect. However, the many essays we wrote worked towards increasing our skill as writers. We would prepare our essays and consider what it is that would make the essay good. Often we practiced how to form meaning out of what authors were saying and then work on how to express that meaning through a variety of different techniques. Writing all those essays refined my writing skill as I would be presented with different questions, and have to write in an effective way in order to voice my opinion all within a 40 minute timeframe. Writing like this wasn't easy at first but it became easier the more we practiced. My average grade on these assignments also began improving to the point where I was getting A's on my papers. I was getting better and at the same time my writing was changing more and more by the day. The days quickly passed by and with each passing day more focus was placed on the impending exams. My days quickly became preoccupied while trying to deal with a mountain of assignments as well as studying for exams. I was also faced with the obligatory end of the year project. These I didn't mind though, I often found them enjoyable to work on. In my group for this project was Jeffrey, Barnabas, and Samantha. Our assignment was to make a video explaining a novel we read that year. The novel we choose was A Thousand Splendid Suns, and we were excited to get the project started. So being the musically inclined students that we are we decided to make a parody song for the video which was well received by our teacher. The only problem was trying to coordinate with our group in order to get the project done. With exams approaching each students schedule became unpredictable and trying to film a video in the middle of exams was no easy task , but we managed. We arranged on the very last day before the project was due to complete the entire project. Immediately after school ended we gathered the things we needed and made our way over to my house to complete the project. Luckily we had everything prepared beforehand. The lyrics were finished thanks to my good friend

Jeffery. We also had all the roles figured out. Barnabas would take pictures and help put everything together once it was finished. Jeffery wrote the lyrics so we just let him sit there and look pretty. Samantha and I would be the singers for the video. I'm not awful at singing but I'm definitely not as good as Samantha was. So her voice was the lead, and appropriately the voice you could hear the most as the listener. We also made sure to put harmonies in the song where they belonged, and we were proud of those harmonies. The project took much longer than the anticipated time to finish only because we kept getting distracted, which is natural. It's hard to focus on a project when you're with your friends. After hours of lazy work we finished, and the end result was worth it. The next day we presented the video in class and it was well received by the teacher and students. It was fun to watch all the ideas the other students had when it came to creating the videos. The final projects all came to an end and before I knew it, it was the day of the AP Literature exam. The exam was in a different building, next to school ground. While waiting to be let into the exam room our teacher was present giving us reassuring thoughts of success. I honestly had no idea what to expect of this exam. However, thanks to Ms. Flather I was as ready as I would ever be for it. After presenting a form of photo ID we were allowed into the exam room. A single room about the size of our schools cafeteria with rows of desks occupying the barren space. I took a quick note of where my friends were sitting. Jeffrey was right behind me, and Samantha and Barnabas were practically on the opposite side of the giant room. Needless to say I was nervous and less than excited to take this exam but I made my best attempt to make some of my friends feel better about it. Before I knew it I was in my seat taking the exam. Reading passages that didn't interest me and focusing on the essays that were at the end of the test. When I had finally gotten to the essay portion of the exam I took a deep breath to remember everything we had worked on in class. I remembered what to look for in text, I remembered various ways that would help me organize my essay, and I remembered effective ways that I can write my thesis statement. Everything we had done in class I utilized in writing those essays. In the end I was happy the test was over, it was long and tedious and I hated sitting in that boring test room. After the test I talked with my friends about the test and at the end of the day we just hoped we did well. I'm happy to say I did succeed with the exam and it's thanks to my teacher who taught me how to write in a professional style, and gave me a greater appreciation for writing. At first I was never interested in writing. I always considered it tedious and uninteresting. However, little did I know that my senior English class would teach me the value to writing. I had begun the year thinking my writing was as good as it would ever be; I thought that English class was an excuse to regurgitate information that had been presented to you for years. I learned more than I thought in that class, and managed to refine my writing style into what it is now. Throughout the year I saw my writing change in more ways than I thought. That class taught me that there is always something more to learn when it comes to writing and reading. Our writing is always changing and improving whether we realize it or not.