On Monday, my group and I presented our Prezi about Structure and Symbolism. It went much better than expected, but that's really not saying much considering I thought I would make a fool of myself. I feel like I did fairly well, although there is always room for improvement. It was suggested that we as a group need to work more on making sure those we were presenting to got a better grasp of the concept. For me personally, this is important for more than just class presentations, because I want to be a teacher.
Ways to improve at being a presenter would be to make sure that I am not reading directly from what we had written. This is somewhat difficult for me because when I present I get very nervous and my mind gets wiped clean, and all I can think to say is "Uhhh" or "Umm", which isn't exactly the point that I'm ever trying to get across. Another thing I need to work more on is providing examples for the materiel I'm explaining. If those I'm presenting to don't understand one concept I'm saying, and all the other topics go along with the original one, they will be lost throughout the whole thing. As a presenter and a teacher, the ultimate goal is to be understood, so this is something that I definitely would like to improve on.
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This week was a very busy week, so I am glad that it's over, but it was a very productive week. My group had been struggling with finding an angle that we wanted to take with the stories, and this week we accomplished finding one. Once we did that, it was pretty much smooth sailing. This week my main focus was time management. I have a very bad habit of making lists of things I need to accomplish, getting stressed about said list, and then not do any of it because I am too stressed to function. However, this week I worked very hard with time management, and I am very proud of the progress I made. I learned that sometimes when you're so stressed out that you don't know what to do, just begin writing your thoughts down. Usually, there is something in the jumbled mess that will help you find a starting point. Once you have a place to start, the rest is smooth sailing. Time and stress management will not only help me in English, it will help me all through my life, which is a good thing because stress and time management consume me most days. With the group presentation and paper due soon, time management is needed in order to get them done in time. Not only done in time, but done with care and quality. For me, this means working on the prezi in class so that my team and I can take advantage of the time we have together. Digging deeper into the poetry from this week we've mostly been working with our groups, and I am trying my hardest to learn how to be a team player. I'm trying to open up when it comes to being sociable in group projects, because that is a thing that I repeatedly struggle with. Learning to work in a group and accept criticism is important, especially for me because I am aspiring to be a teacher.
We've also been learning how to explicate poems, which is really helpful when we are writing about the poem. I am a huge fan of poetry, and learning how to dig deeper is very enjoyable. Not only is it enjoyable, it is also a very helpful tool to know when wanting to express one's interpretations. Digging deeper into the poetry for me involves trying to delve into the copious amounts of symbolism that one usually finds in poetry. The explicating we do in class will help me in my own poetry because it teaches me to look at poetry on deeper levels, and not take everything at face value. When I write poetry, I tend to be far too literal. Reading all these poems, and explicating them gives me examples of different ways to correctly use symbolism -- and not be too terribly cheesy. |
Mattie BarberAP Lit student. |