Final Essay

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Hannah Hurd

Dr. Preston

AP English Literature and Composition

7 June 2015

Open Source Learning 2015

            I heard stories of how this course was going to be, but in the end it was an experience that I couldn’t have prepared for. I was scared there was going to be homework up to my neck and it was going to be hard to balance between all my other classes that I was taking, but I was wrong. AP English and Literature is like college in the sense that you get out of it what you put in it and it’s an experience that is personal to everyone and not the same for any individual. In this course I along with everyone around me including Dr Preston had a lot of trust and we all deserved that trust for the most part, but sometimes there was lapses in our judgment. Sometimes students get lazy and want to rebel or not do the work and teachers can get discouraged by that attitude and it’s a hard relationship to balance and sometimes the students I think took advantage of certain situations, like any would do.

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Throughout the course I didn’t learn how to better use my time and technological skills because before I had no idea how to make a blog post or write an essay in pictures and I think that creativity is important for the future. The Canterbury Tales was piece of fiction that resembled the idea of our education system. We mock education and don’t take it as seriously as we should and in America we pass judgment based on education and in school it is many different backgrounds coming together and many different stories that are intertwined for the sole purpose of graduating or the “end goal.” Hamlet was a fiction piece that resonated with me as well because I am very indecisive and it’s hard for me to feel like I am doing the right thing or what the right thing is to do. I know I need to grow up sometimes like Hamlet and in order to do so I need to learn how to think and do things fro myself. The last piece of fiction that we read in class that jump started my idea of the course was The Poisonwood Bible because it dealt with alienation and feeling alone at times even when there was a family around you. Sometimes life gets lonely and I know I have felt alone at times and that people don’t really understand or “know” me to the extent that I want them to and its hard to communicate what you are feeling to those around you and that is isolating. When reading these pieces of fiction and throughout the course I think I really found that I like being a kid and not taking things to seriously. This year was a lot of work and it’s important to find the fun in any situation and I think with that idea I am going to move forward in my education and try to continue the idea of balancing fun with school n integrating the

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two because as weird as it sounds I do like school and I want to make the stereotype of school something positive.

            The best times in AP English Lit and Comp were when we would have discussions as a class and the comments made about a video or a story we made and they were purposely made to be funny. The times when we watched the giraffes jumping in the pool was pretty funny and it made me giggle because it was so awkward yet cute and funny and I had never seen anything like it so I enjoyed it very much.

            During the masterpiece presentations I think a common them throughout many was the idea of connecting people whether that be the same age to the same age or old to young or just spreading a message to get people aware of the world round them. In Noah and Alec’s presentation they were all about connecting with the youth and giving themselves a voice to help others, that is directly connected to mine Judith’s and Sierra’s presentation because we wanted to be role models for the next generation. Imanie’s presentation as about educating high schoolers on what high school is all about and showing the older generations how school actually is and what’s its like to be loaded with as much work as we have which corresponds to the idea of connecting the youth with the youth as well as the older generations. Matt H’s and Ashlyn’s presentations were about connecting people with the world around them and showing the students how other people see life through their eyes

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and learning about different cultures and conditions so people are less sheltered to the things in life that we can’t see.

            In the end I don’t think I am a hero to others, but I am a hero to myself. I set a goal and I accomplished it. My goal this year was to get a 5.0 and finish high school with all A’s and make myself feel like I deserved it and I think I accomplished that. Looking back at my 4 years at Righetti I can honestly say that I worked hard every day to accomplish something whether I knew it or not. I stayed true to who I was and I think in the end I have a better understanding of what I want o do and how I want to do it. I wish I had found a mentor that was someone I didn’t know so I could pick their brains and really understand something that I didn’t know so I think that is something I am going to do in college to better myself and complete my hero’s journey to the full extent that it deserves. My life is a flower and I am merely a bee that spreads it further.

(I wrote this on word so the page break up is where my pages were broken up on the word document)