Acknowledgments

Through my literary journey of discovering how “literature is life”, there has been numerous threads of support that helped weave my growth and shape me as a writer. As I reflect on this journey, I can only feel gratitude to the people and pieces of literature that have played pivotal roles in honing my literature skills.

I would like to express my deepest appreciation to Ms. Valentino, she is a great teacher who focused on our progression as writers rather than having us do tedious assignments (what every other Ap lang teacher does). Her emphasis on fostering our writing skills rather than drowning us in paperwork has truly made a difference in my literary journey.  All my friends have told me about their experiences in AP Lang, where they had assignments like annotating 30 pages of literature and then having a quiz on the material. Through this teaching approach, I was able to learn how to successfully lock down text and find nuanced details. I learned so many different writing styles and techniques in our analytical discussions, these helped me gain a much better understanding on how to pick apart literature. I’m deeply indebted to her for her unique approach to teaching literature.

I would like to acknowledge the help of everybody at my table for their role in pushing me to succeed in my essays and assignments. The friendly competition we had forced me to work hard for every assignment we had. Knowing that I couldn't allow myself to get mogged by them, it motivated me to put in my best effort with each essay we wrote. This along with all of our sample essay discussions helped me improve my skills for each type of essay. Our desire of excellence extended beyond this friendly competition; it extended into our in-class discussions. Even though we had many off topic discussions, we had just as many productive ones Aswell. These discussions helped reveal things about the pieces that I didn't notice before, which gave me entirely new viewpoints on various topics. It was so fun bickering with all of you, you all have made me grow as a writer and I appreciate all of you. When this class ends, I will miss our group, but there's just a couple things I would change. Firstly, I wish Luan could stay in his seat though and be less of a distraction. Secondly, I wish Arjun and Govind (Mr. Star player) wouldn't be rowdy and fight all the time. Thirdly for Aditya, I hope we would win our brawl star matches instead of losing. Lastly for Pelon, just keep being my goat, never change. Jokes aside, thank you all for pushing me to work hard throughout the year, all your inputs we shared have helped me in astronomical ways.

I would like to extend my sincere thanks to the book Maus. At first, I approached it with skepticism, thinking this book was going to be a sorry attempt at making a history book a little interesting by making it a comic. However, after I started reading, it quickly became one of the most compelling books I have ever read. Spiegelman's ability to humanize the characters, despite depicting them as animals, shocked me. Before this book, I held beliefs that comic books are specifically made for kids, and it was quite childish to be reading this book in high school. However, my opinion quickly changed after I began to get deeper into the book. The profound craft of both literature and illustrations working together simultaneously completely shattered my old beliefs that comic books are made for kids. You were the first book assigned by a teacher that I actually enjoyed reading. The connections of its illustrations, weaving through hundreds of pages and different volumes, showed me the strength of storytelling through illustrations. Not only did you destroy the stigma that comic books are for kids, you also taught me about the effects of generational trauma and the atrocities the Nazis committed. Through this story of a mouse, I gained a deeper understanding of the atrocities the Nazis committed lasting impacts they have today. I am so thankful for this book because it taught me the power of illustrations in literature. For me at least, it removed the stigma that comic books are meant for kids.

I would also like to extend my sincere thanks all the things that I have not already thanked. This includes the blogs, forced participation, big participation grade at the end, the long pieces of literature that we had to analyze and the Schoology discussion posts that we had to do. Although I hated doing all of these things, I cannot deny the integral part they all had in the development of my writing skills. I still hate the blogs that I would have to write every Friday evening, it was so hard to come up with ideas on what to write about. I would spend so much time pondering what to write about because I didn’t want to have a lame blog, even though this process was annoying it helped me build creativity and get past writer’s block. There have been countless times that I couldn’t think of what to write about on an essay, but the skills honed through those stupid blogs helped me through those moments of uncertainty, allowing me lock in and somehow notice a nuanced detail to write about. I have never really enjoyed sharing but the requirement for participation forced me too. This helped me think deeper about my analysis as I wouldn’t want to seem like a fool In front of the class. I will never forget the day when I talked about cancel culture, and I somehow get the lesson plan for the next day changed. Similarly, grappling with the long pieces of literature that we had to annotate was extremely tedious. However, these annotations were instrumental in honing my analytical skills which I applied to my in-class essays. Lastly the Schoology posts helped me reflect on my shortcomings in my essay and correct them so I wouldn’t make the same mistake later on. All of these annoying assignments have helped fuel me as a writer, and even though I hated doing them, I don’t regret doing them.

I’m deeply indebted to every single in class essay that we have done, hey have been instrumental in shaping me into the successful writer I am today. Even though writing an essay every Monday at 8:20 wasn’t the best experience, the results and knowledge I've acquired are certainly not disappointing. To highlight the importance of them I will be showing the progression I made from the first essay, to the second, and then the fifth. In the first semester we had to write our first every ICE in AP lang, it was the synthesis about memorials. This essay was the worst essay I have ever written, and lowest score I ever got on an essay in this class. This essay scored an 82% because I had a very vague claim which caused me to have no unity because I couldn’t connect my evidence back to a poor claim. In this essay my claim was “factors like management, cost, and accuracy play a huge role on how people view muses”, which as you can see is very vague. Not only that my evidence was embedded horribly I ended up summarizing the sources rather than building my own evidence. As you can see in the screenshot, I took my quote, said "in essence" and just summarized.

After our discussions in class and our many assignments I learned how pick apart a piece to find nuance details, how to properly analyze the text, and how to have unity throughout the piece. On my second essay I got a 90% because I started to incorporate all of these ideas along with the things we learned about in our discussions. In this piece I had a much more nuanced claim which was “Kelly successfully utilizes iron along with heavy amounts of pathos to convey the cruelty of child labor”. Not only did I have a well developed claim I also had nuanced argument with well developed analysis. My evidence started with “better in respect than another state”, while my analysis was purely analysis.

Finally, my fifth essay earned a 92% because I incorporated everything I learned previously while addressing who the audience was. Through this exponential progression I was able to hone my writing skills and build myself up as a good write. I’m so grateful for these essays (especially the child labor and flamingo one) because these have paved the road for me to discover how “literature is life”.