AP Lang: Year In Review Blog #8

 Connor Franklin

When I signed up for AP Lang last spring, I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting myself into. I had always been fairly good at writing essays and analyzing texts, so I wasn’t too concerned about the difficulty or how the course would challenge me. As I had come to understand it at that point, AP classes weren’t exactly difficult in their material but rather challenging in that they gave students tons of material to memorize. However, walking into my first day of Lang in the fall of 2023, I found something completely different. The class didn’t focus on learning the best test-taking strategies or writing the most essays we could. The class wasn’t based on objective truths, but introduced discussions where we would try to get a handle on the “best” truth yet never seemed to find one that we all agreed on. In AP Lang I found myself participating in lively debates on all matters of things both related to test material or, - if Mr. Barron felt like it - something completely different and wacky. Sure, here and there we would have a daunting essay worth half of that quarter’s grade or a 50-page reading assignment, but mostly class just consisted of us sitting around and talking. That wasn’t something I had experienced in school before and E block became something to look forward to as I became more and more comfortable speaking my mind and participating in the discussion. No matter how decisive or outlandish somebody’s opinion of the text was, they would share it and the class would become all the more enjoyable because of it. Either because we utterly dismantled the speaker’s hot take, or because it opened up a new rabbit hole for the class to dive into. Sometimes Mr. Barron would respond with “Oh I actually hadn’t thought of it that way” or he would say “Yeah Frankie that’s total BS”. Apart from the spicy takes and intriguing discussion, we examined various articles, essays, and books that ended up being far more entertaining than I had thought at the start of the year. On day one, Mr. Barron wrote the word “rhetoric” on the board and explained that this class was going to be breaking down and creating texts based on the idea of rhetoric. The idea that there is motivation and purpose behind every bit of writing and that often, they are trying to convince their readers of something wasn’t a thought that had crossed my mind before I took this class. I'm glad I know about it though because I can say for certain that as the year has gone on, my writing style has developed and incorporated elements of rhetoric in ways that I hadn’t previously considered. I’m grateful for that as it’s a skill I’m going to use for the rest of my life. Don’t get me wrong, I'm not trying to glaze AP Lang. It wasn't always sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes Mr. Barron even made us annotate. The horror. That being said, if a fellow laker asked me what I thought of AP Lang and if they should take it next year then I would tell them that I give it my seal of approval. Maybe even give it a gold star. I would tell them to take their pen and fill in the “English” box on their course sign-up sheet with AP English Language and Composition. 

Rating: 8/10