September.. and so it begins.

September & October

        I can still remember my first week of AP Lang. I rushed up the stairs after lunch, knowing the bell had rang and I was going to be the last one to class. When I did arrive at H406 I was greeted my the one and only; Ms. McMahon. "Where were you" she asked, to  which I replied meekly, "at lunch". "So were we, get here on time" she said, dismissing me to my seat. 

      At the time this exchange was terrifying. I was so sure I could be a perfect Lang student; one who had read the news over the summer, was prepared with an empty 3 inch binder, and who would be on time at class. I felt doomed for the year and slumped in my seat, only beginning to understand what I had gotten myself into. 

      Right off the bat the class was unlike any I had experienced before. We couldn't raise our hands to use the bathroom, and we were expected to be extremely independent. Although I adjusted to getting and printing the papers I needed for class, years of requesting permission to use the bathroom still make it seem wrong to simply get up and leave. However, the biggest shock for me was getting my first grade: a 70%. 

     I had received a B- or maybe even a C before, but nothing had prepared me to see that grade at the top of my Boys in the Boat essay. Like me, others had received upsetting grades; here we were thinking we had written the best essays of our lives only to be told they were below average. At this point I was sure I was done for. I had always thought teachers took a week or two to assess students' preparedness and then provide material accordingly, yet in Lang I was placed at a high expectation from the get-go. Then I was surprised by my grade, but looking back at it now, i'm shocked at where I had begun. 

  I attached the link to the hot mess below. At the time, none of us had been able to write a full essay in just one class period. Now, I can turn out a six paragraph essay in just forty minutes, and be proud of it. The most striking detail of the essay is its organization. I remember struggling with the time constraint and being panicked that my computer would not allow me to type the essay. Ms. McMahon assured me that the physical organization would not affect my grade, (although looking back at the piece the layout is very distracting), and graded it like the others. In September, I had only known how to analyze a story and not a style of writing as the rhetorical analysis had required. My piece itself had been full of typos and messy words like "plentiful" that I had hoped would sound intelligent. In reality, the short time caused me to panic and I was unable to convey a meaningful point throughout my first piece.

Boys in the Boat essay

😓

    As September progressed so did my writing and comprehension skills. I raised my grades for the first term by participating whenever I could and focusing on more specific assignments like reading sheets. Although the workload exceeded any I had taken on before, I was sure I was improving. Eventually I was flooded with relief when I received my grade on the Santa Ana essay.  Ms. McMahon had warned us that last years students had struggled with the piece at first and suggested that we reach out to them and read their second drafts. After doing so, i felt prepared and worked on the essay as much as I could. When I got the notification that I had received a 96 I was overjoyed that I was finally understanding the material. Although we had had more time to work on the Santa Ana piece, I recognized that I was making huge strides in interpreting literary devices and the expression of authors. By October I still understood the difficulty of the AP Lang course, but I felt excitement instead of dread.

    Once I had recognized my level of ignorance from September, I understood that my classmates and I were more than unprepared when we entered the classroom in September. Once I had gotten the hang of things however, I began to love the class and its discussions. I knew Ms. McMahon had begun stern to get us motivated, and it had worked; I focused most of my time on learning what I could in class and keeping up with the news outside of Woburn.