One day in the middle of summer, my mom hands me my schedule for the upcoming semester at my new school. I begin to look over it, curious to find out who will be teaching my classes for the next 9 months of my life. Suddenly, my eyes notice a familiar name. MRS. H! All the sudden my stomach turns upside down.
What am I suppose to do? Although ninth grade year would be my first year attending my new school, I was fully aware of this teacher. Most say her class exerts the most stress and anxiety on to the students. My nerves had already pained me with the thought of a new school. Now I will be pushed even farther with the pressure of Mrs. H as a teacher.
Due to this anxiety, I started off the year with little hope of achievement in my English class. Yet, I set certain goals for myself, knowing the class would present stress at all times. I made a decision to, no matter how hard it got to always try my best. As well, I chose to try to learn all that I could in the next nine months.
Now that the semester is coming to an end, I look back and think about my goals and if I accomplished them. Overall, on my assignments I tried my absolute hardest. I tried to always put as much time in as possible and work to my best ability. Yet, there were times when boredom and tiredness might have prevented my top work. However this happened on only rare occasions.
I remember one day when I had to write an Open Prompt IRJ. Not only was weariness taking over me, due to late studying the previous night, I also had two more tests the next day. As I sat down to write, I had no idea what to do. Yet, when I remembered my goal to always try my best, I began to type a daunting and uncanny story. This IRJ still holds the place of my favorite out of the many I have written
As well, previous to entering ninth grade, my writing needed a lot of improvement. With my goal to learn as much as I could always hanging over my head, I see now that the amount of skill I posses in comparison to last year is unbelievable. When the class was asked to incorporate literary terms into an essay comparing two books, Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salmon Rushdie and a Simpson’s Episode Itchy and Scratchy and Marge, this newfound knowledge was clearly noticeable. I found myself writing about juxtaposition, irony, symbolism, and allegories; things I had no idea about before this class.
Earlier in the year, Mrs. H assigned the class to create a Webspiration chart in order to describe an archetype. My first thoughts were “What in the world are archetypes?” Yet, I asked questions, paid attention and finally understood the material. In the end a put together a whole chart and analysis about the “genius” archetype and did well. Mission Accomplished.
So, as the semester passed, not only has my writing developed with the corrections of “to be verbs” and proper comma use, I also feel more confident in my knowledge on the process. When writing another paper on the book The Golden Compass where I had to juxtapose two characters from the book, I followed a format.
Previous to this year, I wrote whatever I wanted in whatever way I wanted. Now, an order and format has been added. I knew the purpose of topic sentences and the importance of dividing my paper into paragraphs. All of this together provided an essay of newfound skill and hard work where two secondary characters were juxtaposed to prove traits within the protagonist in order to find a theme.
Overall, with my goals set and my writing improved, I begin this next semester without fear, but excitement to have Mrs. H as a teacher.
Image Credit: http://teacherweb.craven.k12.nc.us/NBH/susanwo/
