Spring Break was nice, although I didn't get as much annotating done while vacationing as I had hoped. The annotations for Ceremony took kind of a long time, and not just because of the length of the book. After I got far enough into the book, I found I was used to noticing when water or colors were mentioned, and I was able to draw the parallels between Tayo's story and the prose poems. But I think I spent as much time researching Laguna Pueblo mythology as I did actually writing stuff down. I know we covered some of the mythos in class before we started reading the book, but it turns out that there's a lot more that we didn't cover. Unfortunately, to get the full meaning out of the text, you have to know what it is. Although I appreciate having had class time to read, I think it would have been better spent discussing the background and symbolism in the book. After all, I can easily read a book at home. Understanding it takes more work.
I'm enjoying Fifth Business - I don't really read plays for fun (although I did end up enjoying Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead in particular), and of the two novels, this one seems like the only one I'd just pick up and read for the plot rather than for analysis. On the other hand, it's really hard to see meaning beyond the plot. In all of the other works we read this year, it was pretty clear that there were some underlying themes. I'm still not sure if there is meant to be a theme other than the idea of "fifth business" in this one. The lecture on Jung's theory was more of a review of Psychology for me rather than something connected to this book. Sure, some of the characters match some of Jung's archetypes, but I don't see how that's true for Fifth Business in particular.
The AP test is coming up pretty soon, and I'm not sure how to feel about it. I guess I'm feeling pretty good about the multiple choice, since I've been doing pretty well on them all year. It's the writing I'm concerned about (but I already talked about this last time). We talked about different parts of it, like identifying tone, identifying/using techniques, producing a thesis, etc. all year, but I don't think we spent that much time practicing putting it all together. The most essay practice we've gotten is the blog posts we did in the fall, but as those don't really get critiqued by Ms. Holmes (and since the peer reviews can be kind of wimpy), it's hard to learn anything from those so I can improve. I'm also not sure why we read the works we did this year. I assume it's in preparation for the AP test, but it's not for the multiple-choice. Which means it's for the essays? I suppose it's just a collection of works we can choose from for the Open Prompt, although I don't know why it was this particular selection of works. Even if we suddenly start focusing on preparation for the test, crossing my fingers and hoping for the best might be the most effective measure at this point.
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