Class Reflection

As a student I think that nI have grown in this class. I think that my appreciation for different kinds of literature has grown drastically. I also think that I have gotten more used to talking and sharing my ideas in front of my peers, as well as being able to think more critically about literature in general. One of the most challenging things for me still is analyzing poetry. The poetry that we read was good, but I still felt that I really had to stretch my mind to be able to dissect it. I think that I have improved as a writer. I think that with each paper I built on the weaknesses that I had in the paper before and always tried to clarify my writing and make it better.

I had the most positive reaction to Blankets, ABC, and the two novels. I liked these texts particularly because they caught my attention and were of interest to me personally. Although I probably wouldn't have read them on my own, I'm glad I got a chance to read them in class. The texts I struggled with were some of the poems and Shakespeare. I like Shakespeare, but it is just more intricate than the other texts and takes more time to understand. I felt the same way with the poems. Sometimes I find it hard to accept the fact that there are so many interpretations of 1 single text. 

I must say that at first I was very skeptical of the graphic novel genre. I didn't really consider graphic novels to be literature I guess, I just thought of them as comics, and lumped them all together into one category. I think that my interpretation of it was challenged by the first one we read. I wasn't too sure even then if I would like them, but once we started ABC I was hooked so to speak. I think that as we read these texts I found myself realizing that they were indeed literature. They all had a deeper meaning, and the pictures helped me to understand the characters. I have come to like graphic novels, and again, if not for this class I probably wouldn't have read one.

I really enjoyed the reading and the response papers. I think the response papers was a good opportunity for us to show what we were thinking and have a way to demonstrate our understanding of the text. Although there was a lot of reading I enjoyed it. I consider myself to be a bookworm, ad usually during the school year I don't have time to read, so this was a great thing for me, because I was learning and doing something enjoyable. I think that the blog posts would have been more effective if we had posted on each other's posts more often. I think its a good idea, but maybe could be more effective.

Overall, I do feel better prepared to think critically about texts. Since we covered a great deal of literature and many genres, I feel as though I could work through a text if it were given to me. I think that this class has given me a lot of insight into different genres of literature that I wouldn't have come across otherwise. As far as the course goes, I thought it was great and enjoyed it very much :)