Over the course of the last 15 weeks, I feel like I’ve learned so much more than I could have imagined. I started off the semester not feeling excited about poetry (that was a tough way to start the year) to actually enjoying it. Where I feel I haven’t changed too much is in my feelings of writing papers. While I have come to look forward to writing my weekly blog post, I still struggle a bit with writing at length. I appreciated the most from this class was the overlap of diving deep into real world theories in works of art. Before this semester, every english class I’ve taken only focused on the story rather than the bigger picture and I hope I take those skills with me into my next classes and into my life.
I’m not sure if these count as pieces to be proud of for the semester, but my blog posts were by far favorite assignments to complete. Since our class is remote and I haven’t had a chance to connect with other students, the only way to learn about one another was through the blog posts. While online classes give us the flexibility to work jobs and was a saving grace during quarantine to study towards a degree at home, sometimes it gets lonely and is hard to feel motivated. The blog posts gave me the sense of community that I felt like I was missing. If I had to pick one blog post as my favorite, it would have to be the one on Desiree’s Baby. I enjoyed the story so much that I went to write my research essay on it.
My greatest difficulty this semester was definitely my essay writing. I have never been a gifted writer and have always dreaded writing papers. I never feel like I have enough to say and that they always come out really short even though I feel like I’ve said everything to say. I’m not a super creative person so I feel that sometimes that plays into my inability to expand on different topics. This is always been a weakness of mine so I do think that I ended up putting it off, out of sheer embarrassment but I will never get better without practice so even though it was a tough task for me, I think I improved, even if it was just a little bit.
Overall, I couldn’t have asked for a better semester or a better professor. It can be difficult to grasp concepts through online classes but I always felt accomplished and challenged when it came to this course, our weekly meetings were a highlight of my week. If I had to do it over again, I don’t think I would change anything or want any part of the curriculum to change. All the excerpts that we studied were very well written and I loved each of them. I’m very grateful for this experience.
