Project Summary-

I am currently enrolled in AP Lang with Mr. Prince. For our end of the semester project, we combined skills that we've practiced through out the school year to our project. Our assignment is titled connecting themes, the object of this was to select a theme do research on it, where you construct abstract questions, thematic claims, and reflective analysis's. We did this for four documents (essays, articles, tv shows, songs), and than used it to construct an essay on our theme where we would include all of these things. The next step was to create a model that represents our project and has our quotes from the essay attached to it. We would first brainstorm/ sketch, construct a prototype out of carboard, and next semester go to the engineering room to construct it out different kinds a materials, but our main one being wood.

The topic that I choose for my connecting threads project was Motivation. I was drawn to this specific topic, because motivation is something that's needed in life to succeed or move about day to day. I found that I was particularly lacking in this department, which started to reflect into my life. Which is why I thought it would be interesting to dig deep and learn more about motivation, how it affects us and different perspectives of it. Main points that I learned from this research was that motivation doesn't always equal success, there are multiple different factors that play a role in your life's success and only having motivation won't allow you to achieve your goals, and motivation/ blind motivation can negatively impact us and lead to depressing lifestyles. My complex claim for this project was, "Motivation is what keeps the world spinning, that although it sometimes can be complex because it doesn’t always lead to success."

I feel confident about continuing this project next semester, because I feel as though I did the heavy lifting first semester such as constructing an essay, creating a video slide show presentations, and creating a prototype. I think it will be great to finish the project, and see how all the pieces come together and watch my hard work pay off.

'Because I could not stop for Death,' by Emily Dickson is a poem centered around death and your passage to the afterlife. The poems theme focused on how death is an ever pending event that will occur, and how in death you re-visit your key moments in life before your taken off into an eternity of nothingness. The poem also conveyed how when dying you don't look for death he comes for you, stopping all of the life you once held in it's tracks. The line, "We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain – We passed the Setting Sun -Or rather He passed Us –" represents how in death you do not move through time anymore rather it moves through you. Forever frozen at the spot in which you passed, you no longer experience a life, in which you watch things, but rather they watch you. In our score we used a lot of minor chords, to convey the depressing, dreadful tone of the poem while also inciting a bit of mystery/ fear.