My Acknowledgments

 My year in 11 AP Lang was made possible by a group effort of many people that were introduced into my life and projects that guided me through it all. I cannot leave 11AP without mentioning my parental unit, who were there through the late nights, who listened to me yap about pieces we read in class and who shared my curiosity with topics we discussed. Since the following likely does not include everyone who helped me through my journey, I want to formally thank all of those who helped me understand pieces and talked to me when we were forced to have co-ed conversations. 

The one who made everything possible:

o   I am deeply indebted to Mrs. Valentino, for her contagious and mocking laugh, for her out of pocket commentary, for her curiosity, and for her excitement for new discoveries. Still, most importantly, for her unwavering guidance and constructive criticism through this school year and her willingness to share her insightful advice with others.

Pods:

o   I cannot begin to express my thanks to my maus table group, who gave me deep analysis and interesting conversations. Thank you, Olivia Jackson who was, my go-to for partner writes and partner talks first semester and for your humor. Thank you, David, for your sass and for the heated arguments that I started just to make you mad. Thank you, Tashi, for your cool head when our table was chaotic, and for the laughs and comments that added to what we said. Thank you, Edison, for taking 8 hours to stand up to write things on the board-you gave us something to remember. Thank you, Tyler, for never raising ur hand for sharing, for actually sharing when the group voted you to share, and being the reason I didn’t have to share. 

o   I would also like to extend my deepest gratitude to my semester 2 table group: thank you for welcoming me when my go-to person left us for another path, (Olivia changed class hours). This group provided me with encouragement and patience throughout the passage of the weekly essays, evidenced with encouragement after disappointing grades and tips during peer editing at times. Thank you, Hannah, for becoming my new partner for writing and for disassociating during class so neither of us would know what we were supposed to do. Thank you, Arya, for competing with me for the last chair/table at our group because both of us were too lazy to get another table. Thank you, Divya, for your out-of-pocket comments and for sharing 80% of the time so none of us had to. Thank you, Natalie, for your compliments. Thank you, Millie, for relating with me when it came to french and for backing me up when I asked if anyone related to something completely random.

Blog Posts:

o   I am extremely grateful to the blog posts we did every weekend for homework because if it wasn’t for your resilience, strength, and consistency my grade reaching an A would not have been possible. Thank you for giving me a reason to rewatch part of spider-man movies “for homework”and “research”. Thank you for reminding me of my childhood and being an outlet to creative writing. You played a decisive role in helping me learn the relationship between power and language, and how it can not only connect the present and the past, but it can also help me learn and grow into the future.

In Class Essays

o   Thank you ICEs for teaching me that I can always get my grade up. Thank you ICEs for showing me that with practice anything can become routine. Thank you to the rewrites that saved me from a god-awful grade and helped me fix my mistakes. This can be seen through my sentences in ICEs that went from “To have identity does not necessarily mean separation from others, and in order to be united ignorance of identity is not required” to “Eminent domain is on paper ‘productive and beneficial’, but in reality the only eminent thing about this amendment is the distress of property owners, and untouched central planning that truly only benefits corporate businesses, making it ineffective and un-American”.

Seminars

o   Thank you to all the seminars from the first semester, where Mrs. Valentino bribed us with extra credit in order to get us to speak. Thank you to everyone who actually added something to the conversation instead of just repeating what was already said. Additionally, thank you to all who were competitive enough to look for things to talk about just so we would get an extra point that could result in our victory and extra credit.

Partner Writes:

o   Thank you to the partner writes that never let me down as evidenced with the consistently great writes that helped boost my grade. Thank you to my two most frequent partners Olivia and Hannah. Thank you for being the alternative to an exit ticket or another long discussion post and thank you for being short and sweet. You were another reason that the weekly vocab quizzes weren’t my grade’s downfall.

Unit

o   I would like to extend my sincere thanks to the units that made up our school year and extended a great amount of assistance in my growth as a writer, as evidenced by the changes in my ICE grades. Thanks to the name unit, I learned about injustice through racism, and expanded my understanding of how even things that seem insignificant can become extremely problematic and harmful if handled the wrong way. The satire and irony unit coupled with the food unit taught me that people tend to poke at the problems in our society with sarcastic comments because in reality nobody will ever truly change if they feel attacked. I learned that we are constantly finding ways to make people see their wrong doings but having to be careful not to say the wrong thing in fear saying something wrong will only make matters worse. I’d like to specifically acknowledge the assistance of the Nacirema piece, along with various other works such as The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, that challenged my thinking and showed me how language can be incredibly unique. The complete fiction and hyperbole the DBR piece offered and the style, context, and structure of the Nacirema piece such as the word choice that made it seem like a true scientific recounting of a tribe and the metaphors of the DBR piece showed me how I could expand my writing. Although there were many other units like this, these were the ones that had an invaluable contribution to my success and changed my way of thinking.