Masterpiece academy

Why did I ask for this?  I mean taking an AP class senior year! That’s analogous to shooting yourself in the foot on the home stretch of the race. Summer was ending. The days were growing shorter. The weather was getting colder, windier. Sitting on my surfboard I would futilely dread the bummer of the end of summer and with that the eventual due date of summer homework. Then, all of a sudden, bam. The first day of school, a whole school year in the past from now. I had my schedule which, of course, the wonderful student techs had messed up. Oh well. I remember that lunch I confronted Dr. Preston totally unsure of even taking his class. Preston convinced me in one short conversation to stay enrolled.

It’s funny how rhythmic we humans are. I mean, by the third day of school I had my classes memorized, where my friends were in the hallways, and had inadvertently planned out my whole year. What I didn’t plan out was how hard-hitting my experiences in my classes this year would be, specifically, fifth period English. I’m not gonna lie, this class hit the ground running and I literally felt like i had shot myself in the foot. Soon enough though, the class calmed down and we settled into the groove of comfortability and reasonable expectations. Now, when I say reasonable, I mean that my class totally could’ve busted whatever work we needed to, we just knew Preston was a little more understanding than most and thought we could get away with this. To be clear this wasn’t everybody on every assignment. I came thinking this was gonna be another boring English class. I was wrong. From the moment the class undertook Beowulf, I was hooked. Passions never die, but I would say that they can rest for a while. Not once since fifth grade had I been assigned to write a narrative, which was something I used to do for fun. In this class though, I “remix” the assignment anyway I to.

When we read Hamlet I was astonished how human the characters were and how real the emotions and actions or inactions were. I would have to say Pip was always the one character I was able to connect with. The utter ambition of becoming something better was something I could relate to. I can’t remember the character, but I believe in Hamlet shakespeare straight up called a character a ho and that made me tear up with laughter.

My favorite part of the course was when Dr. Preston sat down in the corner of the room and let the students become the teachers. I believe that the presentations I saw that stuck with me, were the ones that you could really tell the people presenting were passionate and totally in love with their subject.

This year we all dealt with hardships and stress, pain and loss, but I Believe that it is the overcoming of those terrible situations that strengthens us to the point where we can become the hero of our own story. So did I become a hero? I would like to think so.