This website is a journey. A journey of growth. If you were to take a look at some of my earlier works, such as the summer reading content, or even that of my later formal writing pages, there's quite a lack of confidence in my statements, claims, and ideas. But as you continue to read along and explore what I've done, there's certainly growth in retention and understanding of complex ideas, as well as general confidence in my explanations as well.
     The blog posts are one of the first things I worked on. They started off as updates during the summer reading assignments that we had, my first true experience with AP Lit. As my first few posts suggest, I was pretty confused when first being thrown into these texts, but in the later ones, I start to truly iron out my thinking, especially through the class structure we have. The open nature of our discussions where you can sit back and listen if you need more information, or can jump in at almost any moment if you've got something to contribute was ultimately critical to my growth in this class, which shows in my posts and CPB photos.
     A similar story can be told when looking at the Formal Writings I did. These consist of syntheses for some of the texts we started with and cover letters consisting of our thoughts about the process to accompany them. Again, as you progress from the summer reading essays onto the ones that resulted from class discussions, it's clear how integral that space was to improve my learning.
     The Paradise Lost portion of the site is a bit more demonstrative of my later works from this class. I think it shows a pretty keen sense of my understanding of some of the deeper themes and significance we found from that text. Something I'm proud of with that text is the subtle use of previous concepts we had broken down in class, such as Greenblatt's self-fashioning. It was those triangles we talked about and that influence it had on me that really showed in my essay. Some of these concepts stick with me beyond just being something we learn; they're some things I consistently notice in my everyday life, beyond the obscure examples I might normally thing. It's a growth that I'm really proud of in this class.
     The Capstone/Senior Symposium may be my biggest accomplishment in my eyes. The beginnings were rough. I was still figuring out what I wanted to do with my topic. I knew I wanted to incorporate film into it. Having recently grown a huge passion for that art form made it easy in my mind as to the basis of my topic. But when figuring out how I could dive deeper into that media which I love, it did not come as easy as I thought. When I first thought of an idea, I struggling with grasping exactly what it meant and how I could research something like that. The ideas it was throwing at me were becoming really complex, and ultimately making me feel less passionate about this really cool project. For maybe a month, I was stuck in this hole of feeling like the project was a burden, and that I wasn't quite sure what I was doing. It wasn't until we were quarantined and had a lot more free time on our hands that I really sat down and thought about what I wanted this project to be about. And when it really came down to that, I realized that I wanted this to be about me. As selfish as that may sound, the most resonant and interesting topics are the ones that mean something to me. And it was at that point (with some help from my family) that I knew I wanted to connect film to identity, or who I was. Some research turned that into exploring the relationship between film and humanity, and thus my new project was born. It lit the fire that sparked my passion for this project to ignite and burn once more. From that point on, it was so much easier and enjoyable to work on the pieces of this project, and I think in my later works, you can feel a greater sense of passion, excitement, and confidence coming off the page. And when the ideas that had been circulating in my head since the beginning were finally coming onto the page in a way that was satisfying to me, those were some of the most rewarding moments of the process. And deciding to do a video essay may have been the best decision of them all. Sure, an essay might have been less time consuming, but would I really have had as much fun with it? It's clear that this was the right path for me to take, and I'm really proud of how things turned out as the project comes to a close.
     Not every step of the way has been easy in AP Lit. I've had my fair share of moments where I haven't had a clue as to what was going on in a text, or where we were heading in class discussions. But we would eventually understand it. We would eventually realize why we were heading where we were. And as my final project of this class, and ultimately, of my high school education and even k-12 education, I think it shows how far I've come as an individual. How I've becoming realized in my confidence, in how I present something I'm passionate about, and how I've grown as a student into someone who is capable and ready to take on the world.​