My AP Lang start - E

It's only fitting to start my blog off with a little story about my humble beginnings in AP Lang.

Before young Michaela even entered the class, she was nervous, yet excited.  She knew it was going to be difficult, but she was confident in her own abilities and talents.

Flash-forward to the first day of classes and she is sitting in the center of class, eager to put an end to her worries about the class and get to work.

This eagerness soon fades away in the next few days.  Michaela feels overwhelmed between sports, homework and sleep.  How is she supposed to put her all into her AP Lang work when she has so many other responsibilities to balance?  Other classes need her attention too! How will she survive? Something has to give.

Michaela makes a decision.  She decides to prioritize.  AP classes require more attention than other classes because these classes actually have a tangible pay-off, college credits.  She then begins every night by doing her AP homework first.  Even then, however the class is still difficult.  She feels the need to make everything she writes absolutely perfect technically; five body paragraphs with three supporting points was the mold that needed to be fit every time.  This made for very hard times for Michaela who just couldn't put her thoughts into this one "required" format.  She would sit there for minutes, hours, trying to decide how to write.

But after receiving back essays that didn't live up to what she hoped for, Michaela came to a stunning realization.  She shouldn't focus on fitting into any mold, but rather create her own depending on the essay at hand.  She needed to focus on the quality of her writing rather than the format.

Thinking for herself was the difficult part.  When times got tough, Michaela had to get tougher.  It was time to gear up and actually write.  I mean, that's the whole reason she wanted to take the class.  She and her friend Mike geared up for the challenge.

Hours and hours of writing and revising is absolutely exhausting.  Writing rhetorical analysis after rhetorical analysis was wearing on Michaela.  After staying up until midnight to finish homework since she spent too much time on her essays, she started thinking, "What's the point?"

The point, young and ignorant Michaela, was the skill to write like never before.  She started seeing these results when her rhetorical analysis grades started coming back.  Sevens, eights and nines, oh my!  Her confidence in writing came running back to her.  Her motivation sky-rocketed.  Her hard work paid off!  

The rest of road was not easy, but starting off by working hard and getting results is what propelled Michaela to continue to do her homework and do her best.

Now I turn to you, the reader of this blog, to give you some advice.  Hit the ground running from the first day of class.  This makes it much easier to adjust to the work load as well as do well in this course.  Make time for AP Lang.