TOW #29 Letter to a New APELC Student

Dear New APELC student,

Hi there, I’m Jacob Kang. Nice to meet you. I’ll keep things simple, you just made your junior year really hard by taking this class. But you’re one of the special kids out there that is taking APELC, so good for you. Not many people can do this. There is a long and exhausting journey ahead of you, but at the end of the journey you will become a new person.

So I’ll be honest. As I’m writing this to you, I’m looking at a B in the course. Yeah I know, it sucks. But it really doesn’t. The grade really becomes just a letter at a certain point, and to make things better, your weighted GPA actually goes up by getting a B in an AP course rather than getting an A in an honors course. So APELC is worth it.

APELC won’t just make you a better writer, it makes you a better person, a more aware person. You will begin to see the world differently, no joke. You will be able to dissect everything and anything humans create: writings, advertisements, artworks. That is the whole point of this course, to make you a better citizen who is aware of his surroundings and the society that he lives in. There undoubtedly is a lot of writing in the course, but APELC offers so much more.

When I said that there is a lot of writing in this course, I’m not kidding you. The APELC exam itself makes you write three long essays. Your hands will cramp up at some point in the year. I guarantee it. But boy, will you be able to write. SATs will seem like child’s play.

Now when things get rough, and they are bound to, make sure to consult Mr. Yost and Mrs. Pronko. Those two are your greatest resources. They are always willing to help and guide you. That was the mistake I made early in the year. I never really had conferences about my writing with Mr. Yost and Mrs. Pronko, and my essays weren’t improving. The moment I got off of my lazy butt and talked to them, I noticed a definite change. Don’t be scared of them.

You poor thing. I hope you do well in this class. It will be hard. It will be tough. But it change your perspective on so many things. You will be a new person and a new writer. You will learn so many great ideas. And remember, after the AP test, you are free. Enjoy.

-Jacob Kang

TOW #28 TOW Reflection

I looked back at my three TOWs "The Future is Now" from August, one of my first TOWs ever written, TOW #11 from November of President Obama's Speech, and TOW #19 from February of Naruto: the Last's trailer. Honestly put, I feel like I sounded like a child in my earlier TOWs and I'm amazed at the growth and maturation of my writing. I realized that as time went on, my TOWs followed a fairly systematic and straightforward approach that was simple and effective. I knew what I was looking for in texts and I noticed that I better explained author's purpose how effectively the author utilized literary devices. Theses became stronger and TOWs became overall much better.

Due to the TOWs, I believe that I mastered SOAPS, one of the first things we learned in class. Pulling from multiple sources not only gave me more awareness of news in our society but it allowed me to practice dissecting ranges of texts. I can efficiently find what literary devices an author uses and I became apt at learning the context behind texts in order to uncover their purpose in all sorts of writings, articles, speeches, and visual texts.

I believe that I could still improve on creativity. I noticed that a lot of my TOWs followed the exact same pattern after several weeks into the school year. I didn't push myself. I found a system worked, and sadly, I stuck to it. Changing the format of my TOWs could have pushed my boundaries and helped me improve even more as a writer. This creativity could be used in all forms of writing and will be extremely helpful in the future.

TOWs were beneficial in the way that they gave me practice, something that often isn't emphasized in English and writing classes. I was presented with new information each week and I got to practice important skills on each. Even though the TOWs were grueling at times, looking back on them, they were well worth it considering the practice I got and the skills I mastered.