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Drew Cassino

Mrs. Michko

AP Lang

08 June 2023

End Of Year Reflection

To the beloved Mrs. Michko whenever my LAMP begins the grading process,

What a year. Really. This class was an absolutely amazing experience, not only academically but

also personally. I’m still unsure of how to really describe the progress I’ve made this year,

because really it's been in every aspect of my reading and writing.

In the beginning of this year, speed, efficiency, time management, and text analysis were

some of my absolute worst skills that would significantly impact my ability to write. Coming

into this year, I had never sought to nor understood any rhetoric in writing, much less in speeches

and other shorter pieces. I had a brief understanding of what a timed write was, due to my

brother previously taking the course before me, but their rigorous nature was unfamiliar to me.

Based upon previous knowledge, I was able to improve my annotation skills during this class.

Some work that highlights my progression through this year are my timed writes; my first

one of the year was 2.5, but by the end of the year I was able to double that score almost

consistently. This is something I take pride in, as writing, especially under pressure has never

been my strong suit. Despite this, I have managed to stay relatively consistent throughout other

assignments this year; precis, and large scale writing assignments have stayed at a relatively

similar grade this year. Although this may be considered not a good thing, due to the fact that it
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means I haven't improved in these topics over the span of a year, but truthfully I do consider it

improvement because the curriculum has become more difficult and the standards have raised;

meaning that my writing is improving along with the standards.

Some stand out units this year have been the “Rhetorical Situation- Reading”, and the

“Claims and Evidence- Reading” units from AP Classroom. The first stood out primarily because

it was the first unit that I fully understood and showed improvement nearly immediately after

completion. The other unit, “Claims and Evidence”, strongly benefited me not only in Lang but

also in US History. Near the time we were doing this unit I was writing a paper in history, and I

think that the newfound knowledge about properly obtaining information from a text, both better

information and more efficiently doing so significantly helped me.

In general, I do still struggle with time management as a whole; seeing as I’m writing this

on the night it’s due. I did plan on doing this tonight though; once I had completed everything

else, making it my final writing for this class. But in other essays including the Educated essay, I

did struggle with properly dispersing my effort and dealing with distractions. In the future, I do

hope to continue to work on spending my time more efficiently and procrastinating less.

For my senior year, I hope to continue to improve my writing skills and my reading.

Reading, being something I’ve always struggled with (minus the book “A Matter of Honor” by

Jeffery Archer, and nearly any book by Andre Dubus III, those are still the best books I’ve ever

read) and I hope to continue to improve my understanding of the books that I do read.

Academically, I would like to continue to improve in all fields until I graduate, and to still find

time to appreciate the stuff that I do, in and out of school. One thing I will always remember

from Lang was the causal yet productive environment it procured. I still had fun and the ability
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to work with my friends, but I still learned all about the English language and text analysation.

For a skill, I will remember to see the rhetorical choices used in advertisements and everyday

writing, as I do now. Seriously though, I can't look at ads anymore without seeing how they

creator is trying to persuade me.

With good faith and much praise,

Drew