I have managed to attend this class twice this week, a record as of late. I went in for an appointment on Tuesday and was admitted because my medication was damaging my kidneys and liver. A mess that I have to keep watering down because I am swamped with biology and physics. Although, I won't be in school for much longer, I've decided to get a bone marrow transplant. This is the only cure for my illness. There is a 70% chance it will work, and a 30% chance I will die. I suppose there is a percentage of how likely a person is to die any given day so I'm not bothered by it. Death is not the scary part. The worst part would be holding my mother's hand as she watched me slip into nothingness. Or seeing my baby brothers for the last time. Though I can't let my fear intervene with the reality of this situation. I am a frail being, and chemotherapy in itself might kill me. I've accepted this. So when I look back on this week I see exponential decay. I see the gleam of my jaundiced skin, horrifying, but excited to be back to school. I see devastation as I found out I was going to be back in the hospital, missing more school. Then I see nothingness as I realized that I won't be able to continue taking this class for much longer, I won't walk at my graduation, may not see my brothers grow old. I reflect, and it's painful. Soon I will look like the child in the picture and life just won't seem worth it.
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Another week has come and passed and I missed the entirety of it that involved education. Alana presented our project on Literature. I feel bad that I wasn't there to help but I put a lot of effort into the slideshow so that it wouldn't be too hard for her. She is a kind person.
This Sunday I went to church and was prayed on, not for. Touch is a powerful thing, and as I stood at the alter and multiple hands pressed against my being I was once again in the presence of God. Shaking and speaking in a language that I can not interpret. I learned that I have to stop letting fear and pride come before my Faith. I felt stimulation in my legs and it would be ridiculous of me to think that in some way that it was my bone marrow beginning to work, that I am healed. But I know that I will be healed and that the process must come before the goal and the goal is to do what God has created me to do. I don't know what this has to do with Literature, but it's what I have learned this week. Making up everything I have missed might be terrible, but I know this is temporary.That I will graduate and my rough waters will be calmed. I am who I am, who am I? That is what I am searching for and in that endeavor I believe this class is helping me. *The wonder drug that might help me* I spent the entirety of this week in the hospital. I thought I would have a panic attack the moment I returned to the 9th floor at Helen DeVos but I handled it better than I thought I would. I was stuck in the mindset that I was in isolation, that I couldn't leave my room for any reason. I was scared to. I've learned little in AP Lit this week, except that I am grateful to have an understanding teacher and partner. I always try my hardest not to let people down and it's difficult to do that when I am locked up. It's a battle, constantly. Between myself and God, because we should trust Him through all things, which I do trust Him. I just don't understand why this is happening to me everything was fine until last year. He hasn't revealed that to me yet. I really just wanted a normal senior year, and now people will wonder why I am away. I hesitate when I tell them because if I say Aplastic Anemia they don't understand the severity or what it means. If I say blood cancer, I feel like I am lying. It's treated like a cancer pretty much. Cancer is so final too, I don't want to claim it. They'll react very strange and I don't want to watch their faces contort as their minds sculpt the different way they will look at me now. In Manistee everyone knew that if I was tired it was because I had little oxygen pulsing through my body. I don't know how this reflective blog will score, but it's me reflecting on my life at the moment. The only positive thing stemming from my current situation is that I have more time to write. This week, we have been given an interesting way to work on our project. As opposed to being walked through the process of constructing the final product, Mr. Schoenborn allowed us to tackle the task and way we preferred. The was confusing at times but he made sure to assist us when we needed it. The environment is rather encouraging, being able to converse with a teacher in a manner that is relaxed and relatable. He explains himself through metaphors to make sure we understand what he is trying to say. The clarity helps to give me and my partner new ideas as well as simplifying the misunderstanding that we had been faced with. I enjoy how each time we look at a poem and analyze it, we do it from different views and perspectives each time. For example one day we may read the poem and talk about wording and the next day, we can discuss the mood. There are many ways to analytically perceive a piece of art and doing so from many standpoints is helping me to focus on little things that I wouldn't have picked up on before. It makes me a stronger reader and writer, because I see what authors incorporate in their work and get ideas for what to put in mine. I am inspired by the discussions we have in class and I hope the other students are as well. I chose a crossword puzzle as my imagine this week because Mr. Schoenborn compared our project to a big puzzle, we have to find the pieces we like and start there, then gradually build up to the masterpiece.
This week was filled with reading books, poems, informational text, and short stories. I am not very fond of reading if I don't enjoy what it is that I am reading, so this was a challenge. we have been given a lot of work and not a lot of time to work on it. Everything I am reading is helping me with the project that is due monday so it is bittersweet. I am glad I chose to work with a partner, sometimes it is easier to work on my own but when the workload is heavy it is nice to know a dependable person that you know won't make you do all the work. I find that I am becoming accustomed to living in Mt. Pleasant quite nicely. Everyone is very nice and I share one thing with everyone in this class, we all had the same desire to take AP Literature, and to have a teacher that is passionate about the topic motivates me as well. The poetry that is read allowed is important as well, this is like a closed circle that people open up in, like a meeting for alcoholics only less dramatic. For example, this week we read "Bright Star" and it's really about the vulnerable state love puts us in. Not everyone can relate to being in that state but I found it interesting when Mr. Schoenborn said, "I hope that if you've never been in that situation, that you are someday." It was a very human moment in my opinion, I know few other teachers who would relate to their students in that fashion. Literature is something that no one ever took the time to explain to me, before this year. I think that comparing it to art helps me understand that literature isn't definite. There are many different ways to look at it, and there isn't a yes or no answer, usually it is subjective. I learned that literature isn't something that is put into the movie, only the story is.
Aside from the educational aspect of this week, I was intrigued with the poem of the week. I found it beneficial that the topic was so universal, everyone can relate to the feeling or state of depression, which opened doors to good discussion. I also was able to look at a depressive state from the perspective of wanting to be in it. It is comfortable and safe, so it would make sense why someone may want to be in that mindset. I was gone twice this week, and so it seemed ironic to hear the poem "Did I Miss Anything?" I hate missing school and I wasn't suppose to miss on Friday but I had an emergency trip to Grand Rapids, and as important as school is I guess my health is more important. I'm wondering if there is a possibility of me doing well in this class even though I am absent a lot? I hate to be a bother to my teachers, but my life requires me to be. I hope I will be present for an entire week, preferably this week. This week in AP lit was very "figure it out on your own." As opposed to normal lectures, we were able to get into the groups with our essay partners and do our work in the way we wanted to. Mr. Schoenborn allowed us to come up with ideas for outlining and discussion on our own, which in my opinion helps me in the long run because boss's or college professors are not very invasive, they don't care how you do it just as long as you get it done. My group discussed the books and our different opinions of them. For example some of the group members thought that both novels, The Reluctant Fundamentalist and The Fall, contained people with two different perspectives colliding. I found that when I read the books, the listener was silent and we could only tell what they were thinking or their movements by what the storyteller told us. There wasn't any colliding, they both had civil meals. Being able to disagree and find a common ground is hard but we did find a way to reword the essay so that it didn't sound too biased towards one idea or the other. I feel like myself and my group were able to contribute viable information. Though there was not a specific leader in our group I think we all had characteristics or leaders. Everybody had something to say and this opened me up to different ways of looking at things. What they said about the characters different perspectives is not wrong, I just didn't look at the novel in that light, so it gives me new ideas as well. Overall I think this week was beneficial for long term success. This week in AP Literature we spent a lot of time dissecting a poem and working with groups to write an essay. I learned to look at a piece of writing from many different perspectives. The class studied how some of the expressions used in "The Eagle" affected the reader as well as the pattern of the poem and the stanzas. From this activity I grasped that there are many different things an author can do to influence the meaning of a piece they create. This will help we write the comparative essay. Now I will look for certain words that are used that may convey a bigger or deeper meaning than I thought they had before.
Aside from gaining understanding in respect of how to analyze writing, I also learned that people may interpret things differently. For example, each group in class had to share an idea they had about a section of "The Eagle" and what they said may have differed from what I said, but that is okay. Mr. Schoenborn said that he would be learning things just like us and I could tell from his facial expressions that as people shared their ideas there might have been some he hadn't thought of so he had to process them. This encouraged me to not be scared to share what I picked up from a story. Many poems and creative pieces are not set in stone, and I think that is the beauty of them. I find that I am better able to open my mind to the understanding of writing if I hear my peers share. I think I learned a lot this week as far as analyzing goes, understand that a single word can change an entire line. Is focusing on a poem and writing an essay on it something we will do throughout the year? I find it increasingly beneficial to be able to practice so that I am thoroughly prepared for the actual essay. Until then I will continue to read great poems and analyze them. This week in my Literature class I learned a wide variety of things. Though they were not things that directly pertain to the curriculum they did teach me a lot about the class that I am taking. Some main ideas we developed and talked about this week were: being comfortable in class, appreciation for written art and understanding each other better. For the first idea, Mr. Schoenborn told us all to get up, walk outside, and on a piece of paper write down what got us into taking this class. After everyone had three things written down the entire class sat down in a circle and shared one thing about themselves. We all clapped once after someone shared, indicating that we heard them and understood. There was definitely a lot of interaction and that will help myself and my peers to communicate. I learned that this is a very open and supportive environment through some of this activity. The second idea, appreciation for art, was demonstrated by listening to spoken word and reading poems everyday. It opens us up to different types of writing and poets. Finally we were told to create a website and a page within it describing who we are as a reader and a writer. After we all completed the assignment our peers read what we wrote. This helped me to figure out more about my classmates and for me, helped me connect to some of them. I even learned some things about myself by writing out who I am as a read and a writer. We were able to learn all these things through being physically and mentally engaged in the class. Overall I feel that all of these ideas and experiments helped us to get used to our surroundings and get us in the mindset needed for AP Literature. I would like to know if getting in a sort of Socratic seminar circle is something we will do often. I feel that my participation was adequate and that I fully understand the ideas previously mentioned. Though I do need to learn how to be more open with sharing. Something I'm sure will improve. |
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April 2017
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