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Christopher Perkins

Mrs. Crandall

AP Lang, Block 2

18 December 2019

My Reflection

One of the rhetorical strategies we talked about during this semester was using definitions

to give readers a clear understanding of what a piece is about, but what am I about? Defining

myself academically, two things are clear: I find value in having freedom with my work and I am

terrible at working under time constraints.

It was made evident to me throughout the semester that, as a writer, I greatly value

creative control and freedom in my work. The freedom I had in deciding what my research

paper was to be about made the project unfathomably more enjoyable: I have constantly noticed

throughout the media how prisoners are being treated, rehabilitated, etc., and the research paper

gave me an outlet to express my opinions on prison reformation and education. I want to write

about something that matters to me, not something that matters to the curriculum. I realized that

my best work comes with having freedom, not with having to conform to the boundaries of a

rubric.

Although I think I have always been a good writer, I am really bad at writing under time

constraints, and I feel this year definitely showcased that. Whenever we had to write an essay in

a class period, I either failed to finish or ended up blindly throwing stuff together as the last

second just so I could have some sort of finished product. I was able to see this more clearly in

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this class than others, but I do think that I made steps in the right direction: Timing myself when

writing helped me be more conscious of the pace I was and the pace I needed to be at, and giving

myself a set time period to read and comprehend any articles associated with a prompt made the

writing process easier. With that being said, working under time constraints is the main thing I

am planning to focus on to prepare for the AP exam.

This has been my favorite literature/language class I have taken thus far; the freedom we

had with our research paper was something I haven’t had in any previous class and I actually feel

like the things I learned can be applicable to the ‘real world’. I am constantly finding myself

pointing out rhetoric and fallacies in commercials to my family, and I feel like I will be able to

use that knowledge to tell when people are trying to persuade me in the future. Even though it

was extremely stressful at times (it’s my fault for procrastinating the learning contract), I had a

great semester and am glad I took AP Lang.