AP English IV Ms.

Paloucek

April 5, 2013
The Perks of Being an English Student

The summer before my freshman year of high school I was anxious. I was excited

for high school, but mostly nervous because all my friends from middle school were
attending a different local high school. As a way to pacifu myself, I read a plethora

of

books that summer, my favorite of which was Stephen Chbosky's novel The Perks of Being

a Wallflower. Very early on in the novel, Charlie, the protagonist, writes "So, this is my life.
And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how
that could be" (Chbosky 2). Like Charlie, I was a loner, in theory, dreading the prospect of having to attend high school football games, go to dances, and make new friends. However,
the people, experiences, and literature from my English teachers throughout my four years

of high school have nurtured me both academically and socially,providing me with a

strong sense of community which has come to make me the reader that I am today.

During the second semester of my freshman year, I had to endure a month-long

poetry unit in English class. I strongly disliked poetry and it was not until the end of the unit that this view was radically challenged. The assignment was to analyze a poem of
choice ffid, barely understanding poetry, I selected one based on its comical title: "My Pog Practices Geometry" by Cathryn Essinger. After a few weeks of repeatedly readin! the poem in confusion, I finally acquired the first member of my reading community, my

English teacher. Helping me dissect the poem, my teacher and I figured out that the
opening line

"I do not turderstand the poets who tell

me

I that I should not personify"

oontains much of the poem's meaning (Essinger). Essinger's eccentric rhyme scheme and

diction all suggest that poetry is free-form. Everyone has his or her own style whether it
comes to writing, reading, or interpreting and no one can deem another's method as

incorrect. Moreover, the poem also helped me conclude that friendships are similarly freeform. After extracting the true meaning of the poem with the help of my English teacher,
the first member of my reading community, I was able to apply to real life the lessons learned from the poem. I became a reader and person who reads, writes, and acts based on his true self as opposed to others' preconceived notions. No longer did poetry or high school seem so enigmatic.

Two years later, during the first semester of my junior yaffi,I studied Nathaniel
Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter. Despite the fact that it was one of the most difficult
books I have ever read, I particularly enjoyed The Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne's writing style
and relentless use of symbolism and figurative language taught me to, as a reader,

hanscend simple interpretations and excavate a piece of literature's true meaning. The

ability to conquer diffrcult pieces of literature leaves me with

potent sense of

accomplishment that is paralleled by little else. As a reader, I now enjoy delving into

conventionally difficult reads with the understanding that the most enriching development
may occur) based on my experienoes with The Scarlet Letter. The final project required this

newfound development to be put to use. My group chose to translate Hawthorne's oldfashioned writing style into a modern video interpretation of the novel. Throughout this
process of community-based discussion and analysis, not only did I become confident

in

conquering difficult pieces of literature, but I also became more socially confident. The
chance to interact with others through literature and build upon my reading community

allowed for a great deal of academic and social development, earning us an "A" on the

project and me a greater degree of confidence and comfort with respect to literary analysis.

In addition to earning an A on the project, I built many lasting friendships and

exponentially increased the size and unity of my reading community. Even to this duy,
many of my best friends hail from my AP English

III

class.

Finally, after traversing three years of poems, short stories, novels, and everything
in between, I reached senior year. With a more academicatly and socially competent lens, I
read what turned out to be my least favorite piece of literature:

Virginia Woolf s "A Room

of One's Own." Woolf suggests that "awoman must have money and a room of her o\ m" in order to think for herself and generate her own beliefs (Woolf 4). Woolf employs powerful symbolic language to convey a message that has a universal academic and social

Woolf bearing, which I discovered through a communal study of the book- In one example,
meal describes an insipid meal that is consumed at a luncheon at Fernham. The subpar

this and other symbolizes the lack of intellectual stimulation available to women. Through

individual' symbols, Woolf suggests that one should approach the world as an empowered
to outdated formulating one,s own thoughts and opinions as opposed to blindly conforming
dogma.

through Overall, the challenge of understanding Woolf s essay both on my own and

worthwhile' I the help of my newly-formed reading community ultimately proved to be

it because I was able to appreciate the essay for its content as opposed to simply dismissing
to read a disliked it. From now on, I want to be the kind of reader who truly takes the time This is a variety of genres, forming a strong foundation of beliefs that I can call my own.
or when I am rule of thumb I try to define myself by on a daily basis, whether it be in class

with the people I call my best friends.

tf

Throughout The Perlcs of Being a lhalfflower, the fast that Charlie thinks and reads way too much becomes evident. Similar to Charlie, my curiosity, persistence, and animation are all stem from the art of reading. For me, however, much of what I achieved from reading resulted from the ability to explore literature through a community-based
setting, whether it be simply my English teacher when I was a freshmar\ a small group when I was
a

junior, or finally on my own and as a class when I was a senior. As a result of

the skills and confidence I have gained from my reading community, I have become a
reader who reads per his own intuition, strives to deeper meaning, surrounds himself

fully understand a piece of literature's

with complicated literature with the knowledge that it

will

be the most enriching in the end, and reads. a variety of genres as to generate his own

schema of beliefs. Four years later with friends and books at my side, I have

finally

realized the benefits of reading, and those benefits are the true perks of being an English
student.