Final Portfolio Reflection #19

The first assignment that I am really proud of is the comparison and contrast between the novel and movie, Namesake. This is one of my favorite pieces that I wrote because I believe that I put in a lot of unique analytical thought and perspective into this paper. Aside from the obvious differences between both the movie and the novel, I delved into more subtle details of the movie, and how it had a larger meaning as a whole. I analyzed the funeral procession for Ashoke’s death, and one of my favorite focuses for the paper was how Ashima’s friend, Sally, actually provided a concession to the debate that Americans in general do not conform to foreign culture. However, in the movie, Sally, based on her dress and interaction with the other Bengali guests, assimilated with their culture perfectly. Therefore, in the movie, a concession was made to not generalize all Americans as non-conforming to other cultures that was not present in the book. However, there were still weaknesses present in the paper that I must continue to work on. The most prevalent problem is my thesis writing. My thesis was quite wordy and tried to encompass more detail than a good thesis statement should. Also, in some cases, I was repetitive, so I should work on making my writing more concise. Nevertheless, I felt that this paper was the most rewarding. I devoted a lot of my time to the deep analysis of both the movie and the novel, and I felt that my efforts have been rewarded through both the attainment of a good grade, as well as the self-satisfaction I have received knowing that I have learned a lot more than I used to know about Mis En Scene. Through the process of completing this paper, I truly felt that my analytical abilities and writing abilities have improved.

The second assignment that I am really proud of is the creative project for the independent reading novel. My novel was Life of Pi, and my main focus for the project was how Pi Patel’s literal physical journey from his “life in Pondicherry to his life while stranded on the sea shows his shift away from religious values to his animal-like primal instincts that help him adapt for the sake of survival. In essence, this reflects the fact that the desire to survive overpowers the will to upkeep all morals and beliefs.”(Blog Post 9). Although this was a very important theme, I had fun creating a game that reflects the essence of this novel. The creation of this game was no easy task because it requires much thought in order to make it meaningful and unique. The part of my game that I believe was the strongest was how each player goes through these decision cards in which they have to make moral decisions. Based on their decisions, they will either have to pick a facial piece of Pi Patel or Richard Parker. As they continued with the game, they would accumulate enough pieces to form a final portrait. Each Richard Parker piece represents the use of primal instincts to make decisions, while each Pi Patel piece represents the use of morality to make decisions. At the end, you have created a visual of what your situation might look like-whether you would have been more primal or moral. Some weaknesses of this game were the board layout and function. I wish that I had made the actual game board more dynamic in which they could move their pieces, however, I felt that have focused solely on the self-reflection part of the game. After completing this project, I have understood what critical thinking in English is like. It isn’t only about forming a good argument, but it’s about forming a strong interpretation in which you can creatively reveal the meaning of the work as a whole through another symbolic object.

I felt that a lot of my participation and collaboration in this class came from the power point presentations that we had to make. For each and every single powerpoint presentation, I actively worked on my designated portions while looking at other sections to ensure that I know the overall meaning of the work as a whole. I love to participate in the form of presentations because it allows for me to share what I think to the entire class. I was able to do this through the power point presentations, as well as the Creative Project presentation, which I really enjoyed. In addition, I felt that for our M. Butterfly video, our group was very self-motivated to participate because we wanted to truly make a good video. We sacrificed a lot of time to take into account all of the factors such as lighting and setting in order to create a meaningful video. This required a lot of participation because for each scene, there was always a task for a group member to do, whether it was off-screen or on-screen.

Although I would not have been able to predict this in the beginning of the trimester, a lot of my participation for this class would be outside the realm of school. Whenever we were given a piece or novel to analyze and we had to write an individual paper on it, I along with a group of my friends would put the paper aside and just focus on the text for the sake of understanding the text and the meaning of the work as a whole. Therefore, we would form study groups in which we would bounce interpretations off of each other, as well as ask questions. I believe that this form of participation really helped me because I would be able to see a single situation in many different lights, and that would help my own understanding of the meaning of the work as a whole. This was definitely a tactic that my friend and I employed in order to actively participate in the class as well as be successful in it. We all had the motivation the truly understand what the pieces were saying, and we would ask questions, answer questions, and discuss topics ranging from things like the use of literary terms to the understanding of the plot development. After the first week in this class, I quickly learned that in order to be successful, you have to put in the time to truly learn how to analyze pieces effectively. In the beginning of the trimester, I would struggle a lot with tapping into the deeper meaning of the piece of literature as a whole. However, through the repetitive, positive discussion about literary device usage, major themes, and complexity, I was able to slowly be able to analyze pieces at a faster speed and to a much greater depth than I was able to before.

The first time stamped goal that I would like to discuss is the learning of literary devices. After taking the first practice AP Lit exam, I had realized that the knowledge of literary devices was vital. Therefore, I had adhered to a study plan that I had created in which I would progressively study the definitions of these literary terms and I would see an example or two of them. In the beginning, I felt that this was the right course of action because I was able to memorize a vast majority of the literary devices present on the Edline page. I even looked at a few examples. However, after going through class, I started to struggle to choose which literary device is being used from an example. The problem was that I focused too much on the memorization of the literary terms, and less on the actual application. Therefore, I slightly adjusted my study plan. The change was that whenever I got a piece in class that I had to read, as I would read, I would try to keep an active eye out for literary devices that were being used. I felt that if I could read a piece and start to pick out different literary devices that were being utilized, than I would have more practice with the application of these literary terms. The main benefit of this method is that the ability to identify literary devices becomes much more universal because if you are given a new piece, you will still be able to read it and understand the different devices employed. Therefore, one of my initial goals was to learn and apply literary devices throughout the progression of the first two months of first trimester. However, as I began to do so, I realized that I needed to course correct myself and slightly adjust my method in order to increase my ability to apply literary devices. I believe that this method worked because as I eventually began to read more pieces of literature in class, I was able to identify the usage of more literary devices that I was able to at the beginning of the trimester.

Another part of my time stamped goals, which I believe was very important, was learning how to effectively analyze poems and prose. Initially, I decided that I wanted to read a lot of poetry outside of class, but I soon altered my goal to just focusing on the poetry that we would read in class. Therefore, whenever we would get a piece of poetry in class, I would try to make an organized database of all of the poems. Then, apart from only analyzing these pieces at school, whenever I got home, I would analyze the piece that we focused on in school again at home. I felt that the more time I spend carrying out an in-depth analysis of the pieces, then I would be able to start seeing patterns in regards to universal themes and forms of complexity such as irony and paradox. This was a progressive goal in which I would constantly do through the progression of the first trimester. The indicator of which I would measure whether I had improved my skill came from the differences between my beginning of the trimester AP test performance and my final AP test performance. I thought that the results were quite interesting. I actually scored the exact same things the first time through on both tests - a 65 percent. This made me really question whether I had improved at all this trimester. However, after test corrections, I understood the state of my progression. In the beginning of the trimester, after I had taken that initial practice AP test, I got a 65 percent, but there was a catch-for every question I missed on that test, I had no idea what the right answer was. I was not able to narrow my answer choices to only two, rather I would end up picking from a group of 3 or 4 answer choices. Although my initial recent test performance also resulted in a 65 percent, after taking the retake and getting an 88 percent, I had realized that this time, I was able to successfully narrow down my answer choices to two. When I initially took the final test, nearly each question I missed was because I picked the wrong one out of two choices. When I went through the test and picked the other choices that I narrowed it down to, I got 12 of the questions right. This shows that I did in fact achieve some progress. However, I want to solidify this progress and make it stronger by getting to a level where I can get the right answers the first time through.