|
| |
Looking Back
Looking back on my experiences in English 131 over the past couple months I
can see that I've changed in a lot of ways. My reason for taking the class was
simple, my consolers told me that I needed the credit, and on the first day when
one of my classmates ask me what I hoped to get out of taking it I answered,
" The credit, so I can graduate". In most of the other English classes
I've had before we went over spelling, grammar, punctuation, and other boring
stuff like that. I knew English lit would be different, I thought, " cool!
I won't have to write all kinds of papers like I did in English comp",
instead I figured we would get in circle, hold hands, read a poem or two, B.S.
about it for awhile, and then go home. It wasn't until the first day of class
that I discovered English 131 was a "W~" class which stands for
"writing intensive", then I thought, " O man! This will really
suck; I'm going to spend the next few months doing noting but writing
papers".
Those were all my feelings before I took the class; a lot has changed since
then. Before taking "English lit" I had never really given literature
any thought. One day last year my friend, Jessie Fink, and I decided to go up in
the woods and do some off-roading, we ended up rolling and totaling out his
$8000 truck, and for the rest of the school year our friends and I went around
chanting, " There once was a guy named Fink, Who didn't know how to think,
he went for a ride and began to slide, and then his truck went ching-chink."
In my mind a poem like that was what literature was all about, I didn't
understand why some one would write a poem that wasn't funny and didn't even
rhyme. Now that I've taken English 131 I've come to realize that literature is
something far deeper then entertainment. A good piece of literature produces
thought from the reader, if an author knows what their doing they might be able
to write a poem ten lines long and get several pages worth of thought out of a
person that reads it.
Throughout the quarter we studied a large variety of different literature, but
there is one piece that in my mined sets itself apart from all the others, Tim
O'Brien's book, The Things They Carried is one of the best, possibly even the
best piece of work I've ever read. The book is full of exciting war stories that
I thoroughly enjoyed and that was my reason for chousing it out of the list, but
that is not what makes the book special to me, without any regard to the topic,
O'Brien's book is a literary masterpiece, when I started reading it I wasn't
paying any attention to how the book was written, I was just enjoying the
content, but I couldn't help noticing the incredible style, technique, and
literary devices that went into the stories, just about anyone that has ever
been in "the service" has stories to tell, but what sets O'Brien apart
from the millions on others is the literary aspect of his stories. In addition
to O'Brien's book I read quite a number of other poems and short stories that I
found to be interesting and enjoyable, in fact the whole class overall was more
or less that way; interesting and enjoyable. I would be lying though if I said
the class was noting but fun, it did involve a fair amount of writing, but even
that wasn't so bad. First of all, it turned out to be far less time consuming
than I had originally thought, and each paper seemed to be just a little bit
easier to write, more importantly, I have never been an exceptional writer and I
still don't claim to be, but either way I feel that my writing abilities have
increased greatly as a result of English 131 and I honestly feel that the time I
devoted to writing papers in that class was well spent. In addition to
fulfilling the important objectives such as; learning about literature,
improving my writing skills and last but not lese, getting the credit I needed,
I was also able to meet some interesting people, as well as hang out with others
that I already knew; I found the group discussions to be interesting, and I had
an awesome time working on the presentation with my four enthusiastic partners,
so far my favorite part about college has been the fact that unlike public
school were very few people seem to really care about their grades, the
classmates I have now are generally more dependable and willing to pull their
weight, making things such as group projects much more enjoyable.
Overall I feel that I learned a lot in "English Lit". First of all my
writing skills have been greatly advanced as a direct result of taking this
class, these are skills that I plan to use on a daily basis, not only throughout
the remainder of my college career, but for the rest of my life. Secondly,
according to the handout that I was given at the beginning of the quarter one of
the main objectives of the class was to help me gain an understanding and
knowledge of literature, when I first read that I thought to myself, "well
that's all fine and dandy, but I don't spend much time reading poems and things
like that, so understanding literature isn't going to have much of an affect on
my life". It never occurred to me that the lyrics in the dozens of songs
that I listen to every day are a form of literature, part way through the
quarter I began to notice how I'd be driving down the road listening to a song
that I've heard a million times before and never really though about, then all
of a sudden I would notice that the words were not just rhyming lines, but that
they actually had meaning behind them, and the song contained a message of some
sort. In conclusion, I feel that the class was profitable and I ended up
learning skills that I will use for the rest of my life, furthermore I enjoyed
doing things like group discussions, and presentations, I hope that the future
English classes I take go as well as this one did, but for right now, I'm just
looking forward to"veging out" for the next couple weeks, and enjoying
spring break.
|