12 AP Acknowledgments

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     After a whole school year of blog posts, new novels, harkness discussions, poetry, and essays, the school year finally came to an end for us seniors. It's only right that my final blog post of high school is dedicated to all the authors, pieces, novels, and people that inspired me throughout this journey in AP Lit.

    To start, I would like to mention my favorite author and poet, Cathy Park Hong. Most of my blog posts have already been dedicated to this author, but the impact of her book Minor Feelings, especially The Indebted, and now her multiple pieces of poetry resonated with me as her avid fan. Park Hong's pieces are usually about the Asian American experience, which is something that I hadn't been able to read much of growing up, so now finding an author whose experiences are relatable and understandable makes Park Hong an important author to me.

    Now, although I am not a fan of poetry and it was certainly not my favorite part of the AP exam, my pod's poetry panel project poem, Diving into the Wreck, has changed my opinions about poetry. At the first read of Diving into the Wreck, I genuinely only understood the poem at its most basic level, but as I kept revisiting the poem, my understanding of its message become more clear, almost as if I was a part of the poem and a part of the dive myself.

    Moving on to novels, the novel that by far has affected me the most this year has to be Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. At first reading through the first few chapters, I wasn't really sure in which way the novel would progress. I was pretty confused, but as I kept reading the novel started to not only make more sense but also teach me lessons of understanding myself or trying to become more connected to myself. (also our class's little yoga session makes this novel more memorable:)

    Taking a slight detour, I feel the need to mention my overall growth in this class. Looking back at my blog posts, my writing has improved a lot. I went from having stiff sentences and trying to sound too formal to now becoming more comfortable in my writing and making my thoughts flow better. Instead of trying to sound formal, like my very first blog post about names, I now just write whatever I think of and edit my writing if I find it necessary. My tone in my writing has taken a pretty drastic change from last year, especially after looking through my blogs from 11 AP I have to admit I sounded really stiff and formal. Now I aim for a tone that is more casual and sounds conversational rather than like a speech. My growth this year is really evident in my blog posts, so I'll probably be spending the Wednesday after school reading through all my blogs from this year.

    Now, I saved the most important part for last, all the people that really motivated me this year in 12 AP. First I have to say, by far the closest friends that I have made this year all come from my pod: Sonnet, Cecelia, Alex, and our late addition Lily. These four people have to be the most important people that I've met this year and our pod really feels like a small family. We have so many random inside jokes and especially after texting Cecelia about this, the hardest I've laughed all of this year was because of this pod. It still hasn't really hit me that in three days I won't be able to see these people every day, and it feels like a habit at this point. We've promised to stay connected and keep meeting up with each other after our senior year comes to an end but I want to make sure that they know that I'll always be supporting them no matter what they decide to do(also sorry Sonnet I know we planned to go to Cali together for college but I'll make sure to keep in contact with you especially:). Now I wouldn't forget Mrs. Liamini, a teacher who teaches but is also like a friend, and also one of the easiest teachers to have a conversation with. I knew my college essays were in good hands when I asked Mrs. Liamini to look over them for me and I'll always be grateful that I had her as my 12 AP teacher.

    Wow, that has to be one of the longest blog posts I've written other than our midterm project, but I did have a lot to say and give a lot of credit and acknowledgment where it was due. This class truly wouldn't have been the same if it was any different at all and I will for sure never forget the experiences I had in this class.

3d people standing in the circle and holding hands together Stock Illustration | Adobe Stock

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