A Conflict of Interests

As we all know, the group poetry presentations this semester offered a very diverse range of humor and humiliation to all involved.  Although playing the game “human knot” is always fun in AP English (I can’t believe that I’ve played that twice in my AP English career), my favorite day in AP English 12 occurred on one of the poetry days, when it was the Dream Team’s turn to present their powerfully patriotic poem. On this day, the Dream Team pitted each poetry group, and Ms. Serensky, against each other, in a style similar to Othello’s rant, “I will kill thee,/ And love thee after” (5.2. 18-19). They gave each group the opportunity to properly analyze a part of the poem, and then had all the groups vote another group off. While each group answered, the Dream team filled a container with candy they believed properly represented the depth to which the answer was analyzed. As conflicts began to arise and teams began to slowly be voted off, all that remained was the clunking of the candy in the Dream Team’s jar, our group, and Ms. Serensky. With the communal feeling that “There’s never been anything but the sorrow of loss,” we sent up our history buff/team delegate Kyle to battle with Ms. Serensky in a sudden death round (Currie 121). I, personally, “dislike arguments of any kind,” so I was glad that I was not the person who had to argue over the outcome of our team (Wilde 52). However, with the ring of the bell and a successful answer by Kyle, our team won the bucket load of candy that the Dream Team had so carefully gathered. As we left the classroom, each group member with a large bag of candy in tow and a smile on their face, I could not help but think that this was my favorite day in AP English 12.