Ap_English

A Lesson Learned Through AP English During my junior year at Berea High, my English 3 Honors class was asked if we wanted to take AP English, and I decided to take it. My teacher warned me that this would be a tough class. Having taught me before, she told me that if I procrastinated like I had done many times, I would get behind very quick. However, I knew I could handle it, and I was determined to take the class. The class was very small with only eight people. All of us were girls except for two boys. We all knew each other and were fairly close, which made the class seem a lot more fun, and comfortable. The classroom was a normal size, and had illustrations of things drawn by other classes and posters along the walls. The posters were of movies that had been made from certain famous plays, such as; Macbeth, A Knight Tale and Much Ado About Nothing, to name a few. Mrs. Tisdale was our teacher. She was a slim, tall woman, who could be a little intimidating at first. She could be really fun and humorous, but also very serious. She loved anything about Shakespeare and constantly got off topic rambling about him and his works of literature. Mrs. Tisdale had already been my teacher when I took English 3 Honors. I loved her teaching styles and learned better from her than anyone else. She explained everything to a depth that no other teachers did. On the first day of class she handed out a syllabus, as usual, and began to go over it. “As you can see, for writing, we have an essay due each week, a revision due each week, and an in class essay each week.” She explained. Three essays a week! I thought. It was a little intimidating, but still, I knew I could easily handle it. Little did I know then, that “easily handling it” was not going to be true at all. The second week, our first writing assignment was due. I do not recall the topic it was on, but I think it was a present tense narrative about an event that changed our life. I knew the essay I was turning in probably needed a little more work, but I thought it was good enough, and I turned it in. The paper I got back had red pen marks over the entire thing with revisions. More than I thought there would be! It was a little frustrating, but I knew I would do better next time. When the next paper came due, I knew my essay was good! She was going to have to search hard to find many problems this time, I thought. And search hard she did. Again, I got my essay back with red pen marks all over it! It was like nothing was good enough for this teacher. Even the revisions that I turned in, that I knew were good, would come back with some kind of mark or comment. I understood that she wanted us to know we could always make our papers better, but nevertheless, it was still frustrating. Plus, I was beginning to fall behind in the class, due to my procrastination. With essays, plus re-do’s of papers, my make up work was piling up. When we would get an assignment for an essay, I would immediately dread doing it and put it off. I had loved writing essays before, because before AP English, I always felt I was good at it. After getting back so many discouraging papers, I started slacking off, because there was no way I could please this teacher. Near the end of the semester we were told to write an argumentative essay. I got started right on it, instead of putting it off, since I was interested in the topic. I wrote about the drinking age, and I thought I did really good on it. And I did! My paper barely had any marks on it, and was an A. After class the teacher talked to me and I told her I thought I did good on it because I actually liked the topic. She told me that I would have to write about other things I wasn’t interested in, and I had to learn to be good at writing about those too. She also told me if I had approached all my assignments the way I did near the end of the year, I probably would have passed the class with an A, however, I was no where near that grade. After I started putting off doing my essays, because I knew there was no way I was going to get a good grade on them, I started turning them in late, not at all, or poorly written. Then the make up work started piling up. Trying to get make up work done, was causing me to get still further behind. I learned that if I had not quit trying, and had not procrastinated, I could have easily done great in that class. But because I became lazy and had a bad attitude about it, I got extremely far behind. And in the end, the teacher would not take my late work. I made a 67 in the class. I was extremely sad, and mad at myself about it. If I had not been lazy, and waited until the last minute to do things, I would have passed AP English. On a positive note, I learned a lot in the class. I learned a lot about writing, different techniques and different types of essays to write. I also learned a lot about certain works of literature, their meanings, etc. I am still glad I decided to take AP English, I wish I had tried harder, but it taught me to not procrastinate, to try your hardest, and keep trying.