My First Love

I vaguely remember those moments when my step father would take me to church on a Sunday morning. I was about 5 years old. I would take the best naps on his lap throughout the pastor's whole sermon. However, I would always awaken to the sound of the pianist playing the same song my mother blasted on Saturday mornings, when she did her daily cleaning. I am not quite sure what had gotten in to me, but I would always courageously volunteer to go up to the podium and sing in front of a small group of enthusiastic believers. Singing gave me a feeling that was unexplainable. It gave me  a rush I had been unfamiliar with. It was the same type of rush you feel when you fall in love for the first time and you feel the butterflies kicking in. Singing was my first love.

As I grew older, I began to lose my courage. I became extremely shy, as entering school was something new to me. It wasn't until middle school that I stepped out of my comfort zone. I volunteered to sing Long Distance by Brandy for the TMA Fashion Show in 2010. Only this time it wasn't in-front of a small group of church folks, but an audience of nearly 200 people. My music teacher helped guide me through my performance. She eased some of the nervousness I had. When the day of the show came, chills ran through my body. As the host introduced my name I took a deep breathe and that's how it all began. The first 5 seconds of the song I was forcing each and every syllable out because stage fright had began to creep up on me. Suddenly, I stopped focusing on how I sounded and began to focus on the actual words I was reciting. I began to feel each word and I began to live each word and that's, when I became lost in the music. It was just me on that stage. I was at home, with a brush in one hand where my microphone once was, and I'm singing my heart out.
Singing is my passion and it is the one thing I am most confident about. It gives me this escape where I can express myself in a melodic and clever way. I would not be the same person I am today without it.

CRR

These first weeks of classes have been totally new for me. Juggling work and school is certainly something I'm not used to. There is no organization in my life. I can't keep track of when homework is due and that has been my major problem. I even almost forgot about this assignment as well.
To be strictly honest, I hate grammar rules. Don't get me wrong, I actually enjoy AP Literature, but all these intricate rules and details to grammar is very hard to get used to. I find myself struggling a lot with grammar rules.

Also, I have basically procrastinated the whole summer work packet. It taunts me every damn day, knowing that I still haven't gotten over with it. While I attempted to complete the assignment, there were moments where I was completely interested in the poems but then as I got to the RA's, I immediately became discouraged and began to refuse to complete it. This is still a working progress.

On the bright side, I really enjoyed the article "How Does A Poem Mean". I admired its comparison to the baseball players in the Bronx. I honestly just wished that more people in the class would have taken that article seriously because it gave a lot of persuasive points, in my opinion, that would have most likely sparked someones interest in writing. One productive thing that we did this week in class was that we made note cards that represented a different book on one side and on the other side we wrote down important things to consider such as archetypes, symbols and themes. At first I thought it was just a regular assignment but than I realized this would be extremely helpful when studying for the AP Literature exam. On the exam, there is an essay prompt that asks you to write about a book your read this year. The only tricky thing though, is that in order for you to get a good grade on that essay, the book you talk about must be at a high reading level. I believe that by May, our class would be familiar with a ton of challenging books.