TOW #28: TOW Reflection

1. Perhaps the biggest change in my TOW posts, from the earliest ones that I completed in July of 2014, up to my more recent ones, is simply the efficiency of my writing. In considering the many ways that I've grown as a writer during this class, I think that this is the most important and most meaningful way that I've progressed this year. I also feel that my writing has lost the edge of verboseness that I carried over from the gifted program, and became more approachable in nature.

2. I've mastered the art of extracting meaning from quotes within a passage, among other things this year. I look back at my analysis of Foster Wallace's Consider the Lobster, and my later analysis of Mark Twain as evidence of this. I think I've also grown tremendously as an analyzer of visual texts. During the summer assignment, I struggled with extracting meaning from the images that accompanied many of the works of writing in our textbook. Having analyzed a great many visual texts during APELC, I now feel that some of my analysis of visual texts, as in my analysis of the Ferguson, MO. political cartoon, to be some of the best writing I did for this course.

3. Too many things to list. More than anything else, I would still like to improve my time management skills. Even on the AP Exam, I felt that I took too long working on the pre-writing, and the quality of my writing itself suffered as a result. This is the biggest thing I still see a true need for improvement on after this course. 

4. The usefulness of TOW posts can't be overstated, in my opinion. There is only so much time that the class can devote to formalized writing activities, which is precisely where the value of the TOW posts lie. In a class where the date of the impending AP exam was constantly hanging over our heads, in a very literal sense, the value of weekly time dedicated to writing and analyzing diverse documents played a big role in my success in this class, and my success on the AP exam.