Thank you :)

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First off, I’m deeply indebted to Mrs. Feldkamp. She taught us so much both in and outside of the curriculum. Inside the classroom, she helped me realize everything I previously stated. Outside of the classroom, she taught me that:

  1. It’s okay not to be okay :)

  2. There is not always one right answer to a given problem

  3. There are multiple ways to perceive an event, and how we choose to perceive it knowing all the details matters.

I also love talking to you about general things like how our day went or about stressful tennis matches haha, thanks for making every day better, Mrs. Feldkamp!


I’d also like to thank the class in general for teaching me to think in new ways and for alleviating each other’s pain throughout the year. I loved making fun of book characters and struggling through this year together. You showed me new ways to think in and out of the classroom and encouraged me to do better in general. Thanks for making this year much easier than it would’ve been without y’all!


Additionally, there was one time Naser amazed me and my whole table group that I will never forget - I think it was the Harkness discussion about deception that he didn’t even take notes for and didn’t speak for a long time at first, but man, when he spoke, he completely turned the discussion around. There’s that “aha!” moment in every discussion, and Mrs. Feldkamp normally gives it to us, but this time, it was all him. This showed me that deep analysis in a short amount of time is possible if you analyze the piece properly and with genuine interest (maybe not by me at this point in my life, but it is possible haha).


I also want to give a shout out to Shriya for always contributing the perfect amount of information during discussions. She always allowed everyone to speak, but at the same time, gave ideas that always moved the discussion forward. She showed me how to be well-prepared and how to properly involve in discussions!


One of my biggest realizations this year is that you don’t have to know how a story ends in order to start writing one. Similarly, you don’t have to know the complete outline of your essay in order to start writing one. Also, I know this is cliche, but I have learned that our interpretation of a piece can be very different from the author’s intention for writing that piece. With songs, sure, it’s interesting to know the backstory of why the singer wrote the song, but we tend to always relate the lyrics to us. I realized I was doing this while interpreting pieces in class this year, which isn’t really the way to go if I want to score well on my essays. So, I learned that when I am reading literary pieces, I need to address/interpret it on the author’s terms, not mine.


Here are pieces that greatly influenced me:

  1. “The Vanishing Half”

  2. The piece about the mother/daughter relationship where the girl likes music and the mom tries to push her away from it (I forgot the name)

  3. “The Stranger”

  4. “Othello”

  5. “Siddhartha”

All of these pieces really got me thinking about complexity and encouraged me to dig deeper into hidden meanings in texts and in life.


That being said, I hope everyone has a wonderful time doing whatever you pursue after high school! Thanks for being awesome - I can’t wait to see what you all do/accomplish! :)

Signing off,

Amritha



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