A struggle is to me is not disheartening; instead, struggles are the next challenges that I have to overcome. They are something that I have not mastered yet, and that is enough motivation to get me to overcome them. With that being said, I felt challenged this year in Literary Analysis. Literary Analysis is the examination of a piece of text; it is about answering the “why” of the story. We read many texts in the first semester of Language Arts. To prove that we were critically reading the literature, we had to complete the Literary Analysis. While reading, we would take notes in the form of Cornell Notes. We learned a set of tools called “Depth & Complexity Icons”. These are a set of icons, each with a different meaning to them. The meanings pertain to investigating the text. You utilize these icons by annotating (drawing) them to the side of the text. However, there was a story that I particularly struggled with, which was “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”. I scored relatively low on this analysis. I was specifically challenged in being able to write out my analysis. My outlines/notes were very detailed. I struggled to convey this information into a well-written response. When I got the grade back and saw the feedback on it, one of the comments stated “This is more of a development of the setting, not the characters”. For this essay, I had gotten 100% on all the notes that we took. This further proves that I understood the text, but I was not able to convey it. I knew what the prompt for the essay was, but I wasn’t able to answer it.

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Currently, we are working analyzing poems. This is my last chance to really prove to myself that I overcame my struggle. As I work on this essay, I think about the things that I did wrong. My strategies are to re-read the text, looking for a deeper meaning. As an attorney in the Mock Trial project, I had to re-read the testimonies of my client in order to succeed. I felt really confident with the case that I created, and the grade reflected this. The Mock trial taught me this important skill which I will use for the poem analyzation essay. Overcoming this struggle would be a great achievement for my 9th grade year so that it won’t be a struggle for 10th grade.