First Assignment; New School Year

The cookie-cutter rationalization for AP Courses is the college benefits.  "Just think of how much money you'll save!  It'll look great on your transcript!"  Those reasons may have been my motivation initially, but that is far from the truth now.  To be completely truthful, it's more about the environment at this point.  Nearly all of my friends are AP students.  Add to that the dullness of most College Prep classes, and the choice is pretty clear.  In AP classes, students are expected to rise to a higher level of academic excellence.  I don't believe there is anything inherently special about AP students, but the nature of the classes demands intellectual motivation.  As for this class in particular, there are a couple things I'm excited for.  I enjoyed sophomore year's Honors English, and am anticipating a similarly unorthodox experience.  A classroom that was dictated by logic and reasoning rather than regulations was a breath of fresh air, and I'm hoping this year will provide something similar.  Additionally, the technological aspect of the course is enticing.  I won't pretend to be an expert (there's still so much to learn!), but if I'm not a technology guru, I'm at least a technology lover.  Of course, on the other side of this esteemed AP environment is the grueling workloads.  An unhealthy number of homework all-nighters were pulled last year, and this upcoming semester I have both more numerous and more difficult classes.  I was told by some former seniors that this class's workload can be overwhelming at times.  Besides that, there's still the public poetry recitals.  While I like to think I've made huge improvements since "Richard Cory" two years ago, I'd be lying if I said I'm comfortable with public speaking.

With that in mind, I suppose one of my goals to become less nervous about an audience--especially if the course is going to focus on sharing content across the Internet.  Besides that, I'd like to get more recreational reading in.  Last school year, I hardly read any books that I picked out myself, and I intend to rectify that this year (starting with Brave New World, hopefully).  I cannot say with any certainty how my knowledge will be improved by the course.  Broadly speaking, I expect to improve my ability to communicate, whether through blog posts, speeches, or ordinary essays.  In a more concrete sense, more vocab is always beneficial.