This has been quite the semester – there are three main things that I’ve learned that I will carry forward into next semester and the rest of my life. 

Slow down and balance. During high school, I was a control freak about time, scheduling every minute of every day. When I skated, when I did homework, when I read, when I wrote, were all laid out in google doc where I planned ahead for days. If I didn’t finish something in time, I sacrificed sleep. But this semester, I started college apps early and took early dismissal, and loosened my grip. During this “time off,” I learned that I’m not and never will be cut out for 16-hour days, and no one should be expected to. I also learned that I was sacrificing my health and quality of life to get work done that I was scheduling for myself – and that doesn’t make me better or more capable; it just means I’ve gotten tunnel vision, and my priorities are off. Getting a text asking to hang out the next day and feeling stressed because I had wanted to finish a book that day and then immediately wondering if I could stay up to do both and how little sleep was enough so that I could still get up early the next day to skate – that isn’t normal. I love studying and reading and discovering new worlds through documentaries and podcasts, but there’s so much more to life than what I can do on my own and the tangible things I can squeeze out of every second. There are times when I just need to sit down and get it done, but there is also infinite value in slowing down and regaining perspective and balance. Life demands both mindsets. To my fellow seniors, give yourself a break. Especially after this semester. 

Find your people. As someone who consistently scored about 90% introverted on 16personalities since 8th grade, I never had many friends in high school, and until this semester, a part of me was never really okay with that. I had a number of romantic endeavors that failed before they ever got off the ground and a number of friendships that seemed promising at first but then sizzled because one of us never texted back. This semester though, I’ve come to terms with that. I learned to see every “failed” endeavor at a (romantic or platonic) relationship as another experience, a chance to see how the other person handled the relationship and to see what their life is like for the brief time that I’m on its fringes. I’ve spent more time hanging out with my closest friends, and made a lot of online friends from summer camps that I can bond with over shared interests. I learned that not every relationship has to work out – most won’t. I shouldn’t force anything, and if it’s not working, it’s probably not me, and it’s probably not them either. It’s just both of us together, and it’s too bad, but there are people for almost everyone, so I shouldn’t stop trying to meet new people from different backgrounds and interests, and I shouldn’t be scared it won’t work out – it doesn’t need to in order for it to mean something.

Books are more than their plots. It was difficult to put this idea into words, but AP Literature made the shift from analyzing the characters within the context of the plot (as we’ve been doing throughout high school) to trying to extract a larger meaning from the plot that the author was trying to convey. I liked to consider historical context and the author’s life/intent whenever I read a book, but this went way deeper. I realized that the question we were answering was, what was the author trying to say about the world using the plot, the characters, and the events? Connecting fictional events in a book with an author’s larger meaning totally outside of the plot was a new concept for me, and my difficulty with this concept returned to me in the form of an unfortunate grade on the Summer Reading Timed Writing. As I looked over my rubric, I thought: I clearly misunderstood the assignment. I am still working on writing a better analytical essay and connecting the plot with a larger meaning. This ongoing effort provoked thought and opened doors for me in my independent reading and in the two books we read this semester; it’s helped me view fictional writing in a different light. 

As for advice for incoming seniors, I would recommend starting college applications early for those who are applying. Just start. Starting is always the hardest. Set aside an hour or two on a weekend to get a feel for which colleges you want to apply to, how much time it will take you, and when you’ll do what you have to do. Having a plan offers a lot of peace of mind. Sometimes, it can get harder to start the later it gets in the semester as excuses become normalized, so just gather up your willpower and do it. 

Also, I would advise incoming seniors to really sit down and read these two assigned books (As I Lay Dying and Beloved), word for word, twice or three times if they are inclined. I would argue that AP Literature is as much about life as it is about literature, and about how the two intersect. These two books come from very different corners of America and each say different things about life; there’s so much to learn from them about history and human nature. It’s an amazing opportunity to have the resources provided by Mrs. Trowbridge and the thoughts/ideas of your peers with you as you discuss and explore these wonderful books.