11 AP Lang Acknowledgements

  

    I would like to express my deepest appreciation to Ms. Valentino. The luckiest thing that has happened to me this year, other than the Econ EC that saved my grade, was getting you as my 11 AP Lang teacher. Spending a year learning from you has shown me how much difference a teacher can make in her class. Your genuine enthusiasm has really reached me as well as the entire class. This year, English has been one of my favorite classes, which has never happened before. I was so shocked and happy every time my essay score improved, I’ve never seen so much improvement in my own writing before (no bragging intentions). Also, going to Clyde's was an unforgettable experience...in many ways.

    I would also like to extend my sincere thanks to my pod: Erin, Jessica, Naya, and Rachel. You guys made this class what it is and I would not have enjoyed English as much without you guys. To Erin, who was the speaker for our table when we all didn’t want to speak. Thank you for your smart inputs and for keeping our table together. I will always appreciate you answering my last-minute Econ questions. To Jessica, the one with the most mismatched humor, you're an amazing comment troller. Thank you for your TikTok humor and for your Life Time knowledge. To Naya, my forever favorite track star, your confidence and courage are something I look up to. Thank you for making this class fun and for always getting a reaction out of Ms. Valentino. To think that I would have probably never known you if not for this class. To Rachel, our edgy sandwich bread, you never fail to make me laugh until I lose my breathing function. Thank you for your funny blogs, superb dancing skills, and for walking with me from Orchestra to English. This pod will have a special place in my heart forever.

    I would also like to thank Linsey. Although you weren’t in my hour, you were still my little English partner. I loved commenting on your blogs, it sort of became a duty for both of us. Our out-of-school literature analyses were so fun, especially during the Maus unit, where we turned everything in our lives into a symbol. Our rhetorical treehouse was the best thing ever invented, no one will ever understand the supreme meaning behind it. Being the only two people in the group chat to have Ms. Valentino, I am grateful I had someone to hear me out. It was also extremely entertaining to hear about all our other friends complaining about Opalewski and Allio. Thank you for spending your time with me in our car talks and tennis matches. I'm grateful we withered in our depression together after every SAT by doing nothing the entire day except eating pickle chips and having Big K soda shots. I appreciate your no-BS opinions and couldn't imagine life being the same without you and our daily hating sessions.

To Rachel and Linsey, who can't stay awake at a play :P

    Moving on to the academic part, I would like to thank David Foster Wallace for writing “This is Water”. This was one of the first pieces we read in the school year and it was really eye-opening. I loved your dark humor and the analogies you used showed me how beneficial it could be. Some of the things you said in your piece continue to be one of my favorite quotes. “None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to, or many 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head.” Special thanks to The Great Gatsby, a piece that taught me the intangibility of the American Dream. Fitzgerald’s symbolism throughout the novel is very intriguing. The psychoanalytic reading we did on The Great Gatsby, how dysfunctional everyone’s love was, as well as African Americans’ role, and the interesting portrayal of women and queer people in the novel was very thought-provoking. A thank you to Lynn Nottage for her amazing works “Sweat” and “Clyde’s”. The character analysis of Cynthia and Tracy, past vs. future, us vs. them, escapism, and the relationships between every character was profound. Of course 11 AP wouldn’t be complete without Maus, the motifs and symbols went crazy in this graphic novel. I feel like after reading Maus, I got a lot better at analyzing. The theme of generational trauma was also very eye-opening. Thank you to the people who wrote “A Biological Reality”, this was a piece that was confusing and hard to grasp at first. I held a preconceived assumption that people would be more different genetically. It was also funny that I read this right before we started our genetics unit in AP Bio. Thanks to Brent Staples for his piece “Just Walk on By”, you brought the interesting and unspoken perspective of a black man, challenging stereotypes. Your use of irony was well implemented, as well as portraying both perspectives, the fearful and the feared. I would like to acknowledge Judith Butler for her interesting opinions, Judy Brady for her unique writing style, Michiko Kakutani for addressing the overratedness of politically correct speech, and Steven Pinker for pointing out the irony of people preferring direct speech but still expecting people to talk in indirect speech. A deep analysis of language taught me things like double entendres, veiled threats, whimperatives, innuendos, calculated ambiguity, and authority ranking. 

    Last but not least, I would like to acknowledge the improvements I have made in my essay writing. I will be comparing two rhetorical analysis essays, the Sonia Sotomayor essay, and the Plastic Pink Flamingo essay. To start off, I definitely achieved more unity with the flamingo essay. All my points tied back to my claim that Price was “criticizing America for its ignorant culture.” One of the main reasons why my flamingo essay did better than the Sotomayer essay was that my rhetorical identification skills improved. With Price’s essay, I found a lot more rhetorical strategies that I would have never noticed before. Price incorporated irony everywhere, so I just wrote about irony for my essay. Even the title of her essay, “The Plastic Pink Flamingo: A Natural History”, is a mockery of America’s consumerism. With the Sotomayer essay, my evidence sort of ran off course and didn’t support the claim about her identity. Another thing I noticed was that my utilization of tone and syntax improved. An example, “Price then goes on to address the hypocrisy of American’s flamingo obsession…” Lastly, my analysis significantly improved between the time of the two essays. With the Sotomayor essay, I incorporated the evidence that “[Sotomayer] addresses America’s problem of being ‘colorblind’ through these differences that would otherwise be very obvious.” However, I failed to dig deeper and just kept it there without further explanation. As with the flamingo essay, I dug deeper and analyzed her point more. I wrote, “Price conveys the irony through a paradox. How can a plastic flamingo be natural? Throughout her entire essay, nothing is natural. Whether it be ‘hundred of new hotels” being built or “the new electrochemical pastels” the plastics industry is producing.” Here, I broke down my claim that “Price conveys the irony through a paradox” instead of just leaving it there like I did with the Sotomayer essay.

    All in all, I have enjoyed my time this year. It was always a joyous thing when I saw my improvements and each day in class was fun because of Ms. Valentino's and the students' efforts. Thank you to Room 214 for forming and strengthening my friendships with these amazing people, I will miss this class.

    Also, one thing I noticed at the beginning of the school year is that "Valentino" looks similar to "Valentine" and the room number is 214.