ILP+Summation+Alexia

Summation As I put the final papers into my ILP Binder, I felt as if a large weight had been taken off my shoulders. I also felt like I was taking a little too much pleasure in hole-punching the papers. "No, Alexia, the ILP isn't able to feel pain," I had to keep telling myself. "Hole punching it will not avenge your stress." Never-the-less, I kept slamming the hole-puncher with full force, insanely happy that this piece of $*!% was done. During spring break, I had some insane idea in my head that I was going to sit down and write my whole ILP in those two weeks. Boy, was I in over my head. Anyhow, that's what I thought I'd do, so I sat down on Monday and wrote my Introduction. It came fairly easy to me, which was nice, and it was actually kind of fun to look back at my memories with Frank Carroll. So the Intro wasn't too bad for me. The same day I wrote my short story, which also came very naturally. I actually had some crazy idea inside my that the ILP might not be so bad. After all, I just got through two of the assignments in one day, and I'd already started the editing process for both of them. Not so bad, right? ** __WRONG.__  **

I was subconsciously avoiding the rest of the ILP because I knew I had the hardest parts left, so I didn't start writing again until about two weeks before it was due. The next piece I'd written after the Short Story was the Compare and Contrast Essay. The process of writing that was mainly typing curse words and then erasing them, and pretending to be writing when my parents came to check on me, when in actuality I was on Tumblr ranting about this hell-sent assignment. When I was finally finished with the Compare/Contrast Essay, it was complete __crap__. I couldn't even look at it. I literally had to set it aside for a few days until I was able to start editing it because it was just so bad, I didn't know where to start. I do think that it ended up pretty good, but it took quite a lot of work to get it to where it was by the end of the editing process. The next thing I wrote was the Artistic Response. My coach had the great idea of looking up the piece online, writing the essay, and then taking the picture of the piece at the museum later. I found a //Homage to the Square// piece on the Norton Simon Museum website and wrote the essay two weeks before it was due, very pleased with how it came out. So I went to take the picture of the painting at the museum. And the damn piece wasn't in their collections. So I had to rewrite the whole thing again. I didn't include the original essay of the Homage to the Square piece in my binder. But let me just you, the Art Response was a draining, painful, drawn-out, and tiring experience -_- That whole situation *SEVERLY* pissed me off, and it made writing the essay harder to write. Although, thinking back, it was probably just karma coming back to bite me because I didn't do the essay correctly in the first place. After this, I waited a while to write anything out. I chose to write my poem next, which I wrote during our lesson on poems. To be honest, it wasn't really that helpful. We worked on analyzing a poem, but we never actually went through what makes a good poem, as to how you should write it. Sorry :/ I was happy to get it done, and since it was a half-way decent poem, and considering I couldn't really figure out much to revise in it, I left most of it as it was. Last thing I had to write: Poem Analysis. Written two days before the ILP. The Saturday before the ILP was due I was up until 11:30pm on Tinychat getting help from Erica and Susie, having them help me edit the analysis so that I wouldn't fail it, which as far as I was concerned was a legitimate possibility. I couldn't figure out a strong ending (which I had a lot of trouble with on the Art Response too) and had to wait until my brain was functioning properly the next morning to think of something decent. Which I think I did. The rest of the ILP was editing so much that there wasn't so much as a shell of what the writing originally was, except for the original poem and short story. Overall the most helpful thing that came through to help me with the ILP was my previous experience with National Novel Writing Month. Just get the ideas down and edit later. I wouldn't have been able to do this project if I hadn't learned this lesson, so I'm extremely relieved that I made the choice to do NaNoWriMo, even with my highly packed schedule. The best part of this project was the relief of it being over. That was why I took such a maniacal pleasure towards hole-punching the papers. But that feeling was ruined by the thought of the Gallego ABC Book. So -_- Overall I think that my writing was fairly good for the ILP, and I'm happy that I was able to pull off something this big. But it was a very stressful experience, and it worries me for what I'm going to face in high school.