This year in AP Lit, I’ve been able to expand my boundaries both in content acquisition and class communication. The two readings that we’ve devoted the majority of our time, Scott’s Better Living Through Criticism and Greenblatt’s Renaissance Self-Fashioning, are, at first glance, pretty different. The style of writing, references, and base content stand out in stark contrast, and I remember wondering over the summer how we would connect the two in class. As we’ve worked through the ideas presented in these readings and how the arguments work, I’ve had the chance to engage with a wide variety of intellectual concepts, from aesthetic experiences to aliens and authorities. But what has stuck out to me, when looking back at the year so far, is not necessarily what I’ve read in the selections but what the class discussions have brought out in those texts. The class has a pretty unique style of individual learning/thinking, evidenced in our commonplace books, and group discovery, achieved through our class discussions. In previous classes, the structure has often been that each reader brings their own interpretations to the class and we spend the time merging those interpretations together; there isn't as much new discovery. In this class structure, I’ve noticed, there is more opportunity for us to talk through concepts that we don’t necessarily have a firm grasp on, and in that find new meaning, and not just reiterate the understandings we had already reached. My commonplace book, in particular, has been a resource unlike what I’ve encountered in previous courses, and it allows me to move between organized ‘final draft’ definitions we produce in class to quick just-jot-them-down thoughts and back again. In the commonplace book pages that I chose, one page is the class definitions that we produced together for Scott, and the other presents a less focused view into my thinking, just listing some questions I had along with a diagram from class. These styles of commonplacing fit together to form a detailed and comprehensive record of my thinking over time. Looking back now, I realize that I don't totally agree with some of the thinking I was doing, or rather, I think that my questions, thoughts, and conclusions would appear very differently now. Even though the two pictures are from different readings, I think that the structure that we used to examine them remains very similar. During this class, I’ve had to restructure my thinking, looking at the class intellectual less as a journey from A to B, but as a discovery process where every new bit of information or new point of view can shift the thinking process. In looking forward, I’m excited to add more readings to our discussions; I’m sure that we’ll continue to make references to Scott and Greenblatt throughout the year. I want to continue to offer my best, most succinct and fully formed thoughts to the class, in order for others to respond more fully, so that our discussions can be the most productive versions.
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AuthorRobbie Kane Archives
December 2019
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