Graded paper

<p>Middlebury requires a "photocopy of a recent, brief analytical or critical essay (not a research paper) showing teacher notations and comments." They also say to "be sure to identify the nature of the assignment."</p>

<p>Hate to admit it, but in my 12th grade AP Lit class we don't write hardly ever. We just take lots of quizzes over literature and discuss them. Last year in AP Lang Comp we wrote a lot of short essays but none of them, to my knowledge, would count as analytical or critical.. at least not in the way I imagine.</p>

<p>Here are the topics we wrote about (that I still have, with his comments and everything.. the rest I have the essays but lost the graded copy somewhere):
- we had to take 3 colleges and pick how we were going to compare them (cost, selectivity, size, whatever) and use an extended metaphor. For example, one girl did size and said small schools were like a local garage rock band, medium sized schools were like a school's pep band, and a large school was like an orchestra or a symphony..something like that.<br>
-we had to describe the process of the making of the minecar scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
-we had to pick a newspaper story that he pinned to his wall (the OJ simpson trial, 9/11, the Titanic..) and retell the story.
- we had to take the word he gave us and write about 3 different meanings the word had.</p>

<p>I actually don't know that I've written an essay that fits under either category during high school. As bad as that sounds, I've had really good English teachers.. Anyway, do any of those fit at all? Should I e-mail them and ask what they would want me to do? I could, I suppose, write an essay and ask my English teacher to grade it but I'm not sure if that's really what they'd want me to do in this scenario.</p>

<p>Advice?</p>

<p>it seems like you do a lot of reading in AP lit, albeit not a lot of reading. I would wait until you finish the book you're currently reading in class (or piece of literature, if not a book), join in on any discussion you may have with it, and then tell your teacher what's going on with your essay needs. Ask him/her if he/she will "assign" you an essay to write about something you're already doing in class. Midd wants to see how you think, how you write, etc., in a fairly formal setting--after all, especially at a highly ranked college like that one, you probably won't be writing little pieces about college searches. Just my two cents.</p>