As the year comes to an end...

When I first walked into English class this year, I was completely unsure of what I would encounter. I was supposed to be enrolled in AP English, but due to a schedule conflict, I decided to take honors. At first, I wasn’t sure if I would be challenged enough, but I turned out to be very, very wrong.
I’ll admit, when we started the year off with “Red Shift,” I got a little worried. I came into the paper about it feeling very confident in my writing but not in my ideas, but despite receiving a high grade, I learned that my analytical writing still needed work. I think I truly found my niche at analytical writing when we wrote the explication of The Stranger. It was easier for me to find the deeper meaning and purpose in the text of a book or novel than in the poem, most likely due to inexperience working with poems. After finishing the Ted Berrigan poem, however, I started to feel slightly more comfortable with poems.
My college essay also proved to be a growing experience. I always thought that nothing remarkable had ever happened to me, that I was just the run-of-the-mill student. But, when I wrote my college essay, I found something inside me that made me different and made me think deeper about myself. It was an honor to write about my cousin and his impact on me, and maybe one day I’ll be brave enough to let him read it.
Then, when we moved on to independent reading, I was so excited to choose a book that interested me. I chose Reading Lolita in Tehran and it had a profound impact on the way I view things. That book took me inside what life is like for the women in Iran, and I gained an appreciation for my own life and my own ability to read and get an education. The assignments that went along with it, namely the creative piece and explication, were some of my best work of the year, and I am very proud of them.
The most difficult, challenging, and thought-provoking unit of the year, by far, was A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. When we first began reading it, I knew that getting through a James Joyce novel would be a feat in itself. Using the dialectical journals seemed to help focus my thoughts, but learning about the criticism also was very useful in analyzing the text (once we understood it). The paper that we wrote for Portrait was the hardest paper I’ve ever written but turned out t be one of the best. Incorporating the feminist criticism and the psychoanalytic criticism was a skill that I had never learned before, but it is something that I can use in the future to write papers in college. As I said on my blog, it was the only paper that I stayed up past 1 a.m. to finish, so I hold it in a special place as a deeply challenging, yet successful, paper.
Hamlet was a welcomed relief, and turned out to be one of my favorite Shakespeare plays. Reading it together in class really helped me get everything out of it that I had hoped. From past Shakespeare experiences, reading it at home and then discussing it in class was the worst method for me, so the fact that we experienced it together as a class really helped me understand to my full potential. My Hamlet notebook was a guiding tool to help me remember what I had read and learned, so I feel as though I got everything out of Hamlet that I could.
Last but not least, the research paper was a great way to learn how to organize, categorize, and compile a successful paper that utilizes a wide variety of sources from different subjects, topics, and mediums. I never thought of myself as much of an art person, but I gained a new appreciation for the work that my artist Vik Muniz does. It doesn’t seem that analyzing art is that different from analyzing text. It’s all about the hidden meaning within and learning to interpret it with evidence. It was the longest paper I’ve ever written, but I found it easier than the Portrait paper because I found my own evidence to fit my original thesis, and that made it a lot easier to process.
Overall, my year in English has been very successful. I’ve been challenged to my fullest extent, and I especially enjoyed doing the work on the blogs. I think it is a very useful tool that classrooms should take advantage of. I will be ale to take all the skills I learned in this class and put them to good use in college. Thanks for a great year, Mr. G!

Let's Start at the Beginning...

So, to start off this collection of my work from senior year, I figured I should start from the beginning. I was so nervous about applying to college that I started my college essay over the summer. After months of changing things around and editing countless times, this is the final draft that I submitted to colleges with my applications. Feedback is welcome! As for the picture, I took it of a painting I saw when I visited the Museum of Fine Arts over the summer. There's only one section where they allow you to take pictures, so I was glad I could capture this one.

“Hurry up!” I called to my family as we made our way across the field. I couldn’t miss this. As we took our seats, the music echoed around me. Pomp and Circumstance. As the Newmarket High School Class of 2007 paraded onto the football field and up to the stage, my heart swelled.

“Joshua Letourneau-Desmond!” echoed the principal. Tears welled in my eyes as he paraded across the stage, shook hands with the administrators, smiled at his parents, and triumphantly held his diploma over his head. That single instant was the culmination of deep resolve and immense faith. I beamed as he approached us, gave me a giant hug. Surprised, he said that he could not believe we had come 75 miles to be part of his graduation. I told him I would not have missed it for the world. And I meant it.

Ten years ago, doctors and family were skeptical that my cousin Josh would survive his operation to remove a brain tumor. But there he sat, smiling proudly in the direction of his parents and his sisters. He hadn’t seen me yet, but I could see him clearly; his illuminating smile outshined all of his peers.

As an infant, Josh had multiple seizures, but their cause remained undetermined until he was almost eight years old. At that time, the doctors found the tumor. He was referred to Children’s Hospital in Boston for the surgery, and he and his family stayed at my house. Traveling from New Hampshire to Boston without any help would have been taxing on them. We held our breath as we waited for news.

With a bandaged head but a positive outlook, Josh returned home to New Hampshire, hoping that his tumor would not return. As time passed, I would see him occasionally, maybe a few times a year, but the memories of what he endured lingered in my heart. Despite what he had been through, I cannot remember one instance during those visits that he was not smiling. Even at a young age, his bravery, courage, and zest for life astonished me.

As time passed, as it does in most families, we saw each other less often. Josh became part of my childhood memories. Then, one day during the spring of my junior year, my mother handed me an envelope. Inside, I found a letter from Josh. In his own simple but perfect grammar, he asked about my life and proceeded to explain the last four years of his life. He was excited about being a senior, his upcoming graduation, and his future plans to attend a vocational community college in the fall. It took me aback. I was amazed at my cousin’s accomplishments. I wrote him back a few days later, explaining my hopes and aspirations with just as much intensity as he had. But as I placed the stamp on the envelope and mailed it off, a feeling of guilt panged at my chest. Although I am proud of my own achievements, this letter from Josh truly gave me pause and a new perspective. Had I taken my extremely “normal” life for granted? Without encountering major challenges like Josh’s, were my accomplishments as remarkable?

I continued to dwell on this uneasy feeling until the following week, when to my surprise, another envelope arrived, addressed to my family, from Josh. I found inside another letter from Josh, in which he praised me for all I had told him in my letter, along with an invitation to his graduation. It was at that moment that I realized we shared a mutual pride in each other’s accomplishments. Neither was better than the other. We weren’t as different as I originally thought.

At his house after the ceremony was over, Josh told me about his girlfriend, his prom, and the cruise he and his classmates were taking that evening. As I listened, mesmerized, I realized that success can take many forms. I always viewed success as performing well in school, graduating from college, finding a job, and having a family. It was a very narrow definition. For Josh, success was persevering and overcoming traumatic brain surgery. This was his high school graduation, the pinnacle of all that he had worked for. It made me think that success is always when people strive for their personal best. Josh and I each had our own type of success. We truly weren’t that different after all.

Unfortunately, as my senior year progresses, I will inevitably continue to stress about the pressures of school, college acceptances, and my grades, but fortunately, Josh will always be in the back of my mind, keeping me in perspective.