1st Semester Reflection

 I probably did more writing this first semester for college applications than I have at any other period in my life. Before this year, I considered myself a mediocre to poor writer. I struggled to score over 80% on any essays in AP Lang last year and ultimately wrote a lackluster essay that earned me a 4 on the AP exam. At that point, I had basically accepted the fact that I lacked the potential to be anything more than a functional writer. 

Imagine my surprise after sharing my college essays with my peers for review when they started throwing terms like "emotional" and "brilliant" around. Even people like my friend's father, who was an English teacher, and my own parents, whom I generally regarded as more objective than my friends, praised my essays. Looking back on my writing now, I can identify a greater confidence in the ideas that I express compared to last year. However, I cannot pinpoint whether this was a result of my grades increasing my confidence or my confidence leading to stronger overall essays that improved my grades. 

I'm a rational person, though, and I believe that every effect has a cause, or multiple. I think the debate early in the year definitely helped me overcome negative past experiences. My parents forced me to be a competitive debater, despite my lack of aptitude for it. They flew me to Boston for a tournament, but I lost every round. However, I was still able to use the theory and knowledge that I gained during my time in debate to guide my team to victory in the Oedipus debate. During the thesis unit, I realized that an essay is, at its core, simply an argument for a point of my own choosing. The college essay unit at the beginning of the year provided valuable insights for my own essay writing, and The Stranger and Death of a Salesman helped me gain familiarity with unorthodox main characters and temporally confused writing. I also began to see how literature could subtly advance or condemn real world philosophies and ideas. In AP Lang, I felt like I was hunting for literary devices and desperately drawing weak connections between disconnected pieces of a coherent whole. Conversely, I've learned to take less granular view and analyze the themes of the piece and how they relate to both society and certain philosophies.

I never thought that other people would regard me as a decent writer. I still feel imposter syndrome when I write my essays, but I cannot deny that I have improved. And looking back on it, perhaps AP Lit had a hand in that.