My Goals for the Upcoming Marking Period

These are my goals for the upcoming marking period:

• Follow through with better study skills
• Improve on analysis and discussions
• Write excellent papers
• Get a 5 on the AP exam

My short term goals are listed in the first three bullet points. My long term goal happens from a successful follow-through of my short-term goals.
In order to improve on my study skills, I just need to get into the habit of finding 10-15 minutes each day to review over my notes for the day. 
In order to improve on analysis and discussions, I need to just get more practice by attempting to analyze more works and have better discussions with my fellow classmates by improving my awareness of the text.
To write excellent papers, I need to improve on my analyses and getting together more evidence and examples.
My long term goal of getting a 5 on the AP exam will happen if I achieve my short-term goals.

What I'm Thinking about Reading and Writing in College

I hope to get a 5 on the AP exam and be at a more advanced level during my freshman year of college. Then, freshman year I will probably pursue a literature course that focuses on literature from other countries. However, I do not see myself as taking many more literature courses because I am set upon going into the medical field. What I do learn from the class will carry over when I am reading my textbooks and writing papers for other classes as well. Having gotten a decent share of APs during my high school years, I feel prepared for the college courses, although I am a little nervous because I still don't quite know what to expect in terms of the workloads and paper requirements. While I may be a little nervous, I am also eager to experience the college courses and to see how my writing style changes with varying requirements for different papers. I am also eager to see how I compare to my peers in college-level literacy.

My Areas of Weakness as an AP Literature Student

So far as an AP Literature student, I have noticed a few areas of weakness that need to be fixed in order for me to succeed not only in the class and on the AP exam but also in aiding my understanding of various pieces of literature. 
One of the things that I need to improve upon is my study skills. Although I do put forth the time when I need to, I do not make a habit of studying for English every single night. This is caused in part by my time management. With 4 APs, my workload is immense so I am focused only on what is due the next day. When I am given the rare gift of a light workload, I focus more on classes that need to pulled up higher. However, I should still use 5 or 10 minutes to go over what I lear each day. 
Another thing that I need to improve upon is my analysis and discussion. Although I consider myself to be decent at analysis, I am not excellent, and excellent is where I want to be. I think to improve this, I just have to get more practice analyzing and looking at the analyses of my fellow classmates and peers. 
These are what I consider to be my biggest weaknesses and things that I am working upon improving.

My Areas of Strength as an AP Literature Student

So far, I consider myself to be a pretty decent writer. Even under a time constraint, I am able to outline and set up a neatly written essay with strong points and good analysis. As a fast reader, I am able to save time by being able to get through passages quicker than most. As a writer, I am also pretty organized so that helps when writing essays, especially in a time constraint. I have fluid writing with good transition skills, which goes along with my essay-writing abilities. For example, when we were asked to write an essay in class, given the entire hour and no warning, I was able to skim through the poems rather quickly and make a quick and organized outline with some annotations. Then, I was able to spend the remaining time constructing a solid argument with a good introduction and decent analysis with various pieces of evidence.  Thus, I consider my writing to be my strongest strength as an AP Literature student.

What I've Learned So Far

One of the most important things that I learned this year is that with poetry, there are no right answers. "There is no answer. There is no guide. We are lost in a world of ideas. All we can do is seek and be curious and try to find out". 
However, I also learned many new things within m first two months in AP English. 
Before AP English, I had not know what Diction was. Maybe I might have analyzed literature using various elements of diction, but now I am fully aware of how I analyze works and what elements I am using to analyze them. Some new elements of diction that I learned include jargon, colloquialism, precision, concreteness, and more.

^ This is an example of jargon v dialect v regionalism. ^

I also learned many things about the rhetorical argument and learned the various elements of the rhetorical situation, such as an allegory, paradox, or hyperbole. 

This year, we learned how to make our writing be clear and sophisticated. In the past years, I had thought sophistication meant being wordy and lengthy. Little did I know, it was the complete opposite. As an AP English student, now I must be sure to use clarity, plain style, rhetoric, and syntax. Or else, I could end up being as unclear as these signs:

So far, those have the only writing and analyzing techniques that I've learned. We did go over some examples of multiple choice and AP essay writing, but we will have to continue working on those things to further comprehend how to efficiently save time and answer the questions correctly.