Class Reflection

1) I feel that I have grown as a student in this class. I've never taken a literature course as a college student, and have not had to look closely at literature. I think I gained a better understanding of messages that are trying to be transmitted in literature that may not be seen with the first read through. 

The text Persepolis challenged my view of Iranians. I have stereotyped them as fanatics, and I think getting someone's personal experience was able to open my eyes a little bit. 

I think my writing has improved. I received good suggestions on how to incorporated quotes from texts into my paper. I've always struggled with that. I've also enjoyed the revision process. It's allowed me to look at my writing again, and I normally don't do that.

2) I really enjoyed reading The Bluest Eye, but that's because I've read Toni Morrison before and have liked her work. She has a beautiful way of writing, and there is a lot of depth to her stories. She sympathizes with almost all of her characters, or at least wrote in such a way to make me sympathize with them. I struggled with Shakespeare, but I didn't take as much time with his play as I did with the other literature we have discussed in class. I think I could have enjoyed him more if I had taken more time with his play. I also had a hard time deciphering his play. I really enjoyed the form of his play, but his language is not something I am used to, and I didn't always understand what was going on in the play.

3) My prejudice against graphic novels has been challenged. I've had preconceived notions of the lack of intelligence and maturity in graphic novels, but I have more respect for them now. I even recently ordered the graphic novel Maus online to read it over break. I never would have given it a chance before this class. I still have a harder time with graphic novels interpreting abstract ideas in the art. I've read articles on some of the graphic novels we have read and they interpret ideas about the panels by their spacing and ways the characters are drawn that I never would have seen.

4) I was challenged by the close reading assignment, and I enjoyed writing it. It allowed me to really dig into a book I really liked. Again, I've never really tried to look into a book I've been reading before and decipher deeper meanings in the text. It helped me enjoy the book even more. I don't think I liked discussing the response papers the day we were to turn them in. Some of the ideas people had were interesting, but most of the time we were talking about completely different things that didn't increase my understanding of the texts.

5) I do feel better prepared for thinking critically about literature. I know there is more to literature that I originally thought there was. I think I got out of this class exactly what I was hoping to get. I was exposed to different forms of literature I normally wouldn't have read myself as well as types of books that I already like but haven't read yet. We read classic as well as contemporary literature, and we discussed many ideas that texts discuss that are not always talked about. I don't think I could have asked for more.