Ayon 1

Emiliano Ayon

White

AP Lit. and Comp. Pd. 5

16 May 2022

Reflection

The items I have included within my Senior Portfolio are one’s that I believe to have had

the most impact on my development as a writer and that showcase my way of thinking through

literature. Beginning with my freshman year material. Nearly everyone’s Freshman year self was

not the brightest and that is okay. It was a process that my peers and I were willing to undergo. I

just had to keep in mind that mistakes were going to happen and that they were essential in the

process of developing as a better writer and presenter. As I moved onto my Sophomore, that is

when I began to understand a bit more of what the teacher’s were looking for and what I also

began to understand myself better. Junior and Senior year’s material carry many similarities as

not much has changed within my writing besides my character. The way I view the world will

inevitably change as I grow older although with the courses being relatively the same in work;

there was not much development there in my opinion. My Fast Food Nation work was dreadful. I

had never gone through the writing process University High made me go through but I am

grateful that I did. My Annotations for TKAM only shows chapters 20 to 24 which is weird but

think it has mainly to do with the fact that it was group work. The myth presentation was one of

the first serious analyzing presentations I had done. It was one of the first presentations that I

could not read off the board since that would cost me precious points. Through my Sophomore

year the A Day In The Life story helped me further develop my story writing skills. Although it

was not nearly perfect, by sharpening my story writing skill it helped me remember other useful
 Ayon 2

skills like: punctuation, sentence fluency and even spelling. Moving on to the reading portion of

my Sophomore year, I chose Rime of the Ancient Mariner as my reading choice since I

remember reading it and not having a clue what was going on but with patience I was able to

slowly but surely dissect a general interpretation of a poem. Presenting wise going better than

expected as my class and I had to argue for a certain issue going on within the world at that time.

My group chose college football players and whether they should receive pay. It was an

interesting topic and led me to research other interesting and important issues going on during

that time. Furthermore, during Junior year is when analyzing a book’s meaning came into play.

Some of the material I underwent was a comparison PA, Catcher in the Rye annotations and

Expert Power Presentation. Junior year has to be one of my favorites years from any English

class I have ever taken. Lang had so many readings that were exhausting but once one was able

to make reading them a habit, it was very interesting and I almost miss it. The different readings

we were told to read helped me change my outlook on life many times and the texts we had to

read and take notes on for a future essay were very beneficial in my development as a writer.

Although I did not pass my first time with the comparison PA, I did pass my Senior paper on my

first try. It was awesome not having stress on top of stress and it really made me think that

perhaps I have evolved into an alright writer throughout my four years of high school. I have no

one to thank but the teachers of the English department who never gave up on me, especially

Miss White since I have had her for half of my high school life. From my initial arrival at

University High, my understanding of writing was very weak, but now I am much more

confident in my ability to write an essay and even interpret a piece of complex literature.