Battle It Out

I’m not the most comfortable when it comes to tests, quizzes, and quests. To be honest, I get nervous and I feel as if I am forgetting everything that I have learned. This morning during AP Literature, Mr. Burge began the class with the statement, “I have a quiz for you guys.” My head began to throb probably because my brain was putting all my knowledge into the recycle bin and shutting down. I try to remember what types of poems we have read and what we had already gone over in class so that I had some sort of chance passing. But then I hear the sentence, “I think I lost your quiz.” I start to feel relieved. My headache fades. Class continues and I’m intrigued to everyone’s opinion on the poem A Hymn to God the Father. But, as class starts to get closer to ending, Mr. Burge finds the quizzes! He explains to us that it’s a poem from a past AP test and that we have only fifteen minutes to complete it. “Great, I spend hours working on poetry homework. How am I supposed to read a poem that I’ve never read before and answer twelve questions in fifteen minutes?” I read the poem and I discovered that I have no idea of what the speaker is saying or what they are describing. I felt that this was a challenge and that I would fail miserably. At the end of fifteen minutes, I didn’t even get to the tenth question. I felt defeated, but there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Mr. Burge told us to get into groups and “battle out” our answers so that we had a chance to discuss the questions and the reasoning behind our answers. I listened to my group and noticed more than a few of my answers were not like the rest. They explained often why they were right and I was wrong; I changed a lot of my answers. With a little over five minutes left of class, Burge had us pass our papers back so that we could grade them and see how we were scored. As he was reading off the answers, I noticed that some of the original answers I had chosen were right! I could not have believed it. I felt accomplished that I could actually answer questions to poetry that I didn’t even the slightest understand, but angry that I second guessed myself so many times. Next time I know to argue my side with more effort and to not give in to their explanations as willingly as I did today.