Freshman Year
Aristotle and Dante, Romeo and Juliet Text-film Comparison
I chose this essay about symbolism in Aristotle and Dante because it was a pretty major piece that I wrote in freshman year, and I feel like it shows how my writing was in the beginning of high school. It was one of the first essays with literary analysis that I had written at Newton North.
I’ve included the Romeo and Juliet Text-Film comparison (comparing a film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet to the original, in terms of effectiveness) below because it’s a piece of writing that I hadn’t really done before or after ninth grade. Comparing what’s written with what’s in a film is something I haven’t really done since ninth grade, either.
Sophomore Year
Macbeth, Speech
I chose the Macbeth essay because it demonstrates some of the subtle improvements I have made in literary analysis over the course of freshman and sophomore year. I think I still had difficulty fully explaining my reasoning at this point in time.
I chose the Sophomore Speech because it was a different kind of writing and argument than I was used to, and I had trouble getting it right. Choosing a topic that I truly cared about was extremely difficult, and I think I could have done a better job. Figuring out how to make the timing, gestures, and words fit together was also extremely difficult for me.
Junior Year
Self-profile, Cagematch
I’ve decided to include the self-profile (kind of a story about me) here because it’s the first major piece of writing I’ve done about myself, ever, and I found it really difficult to write about myself. It’s hard for me to think of myself from another perspective other than my own, and I didn’t know what parts of my life I should write about. While writing this essay, I learned that I don’t really like to think about myself that much, and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.
I also included the Cagematch essay (an "argument" between Lincoln and Thoreau) here because that was a wild essay and I just had no idea what was going on. This essay was extremely challenging for me to write, and although I’m not entirely happy with how it turned out, I’m glad that I tried to write it.
Senior Year
Educated In-Class Essay, Hamlet Essay
This is the most recent in-class essay I’ve written, and I chose to put it into my portfolio because I think that for the limited amount of time I had to write this essay, I did a decent job. Once again, there is my characteristic lack of reasoning and there’s also my tendency to repeat myself because I don’t know where to go from what I’ve written.
I chose to include the Hamlet essay (about whether or not Hamlet would have been a good king) because it’s one of the few major essays that we’ve written in senior year and I feel like when comparing the Hamlet essay to one of my earlier essays, there is an increase in writing ability. However, this essay suffers from some of the same problems as all of my essays: I don’t explain nearly as much as I should.