Letters
Dear Marlen,
When I first got my email over the summer, I was very excited for this course. I was like ok I like English and I like reading so this class should be ok. On the first day of class when you told us how hard the course was going to be I was like ok I can do this, he is trying to instill fear into us. He just wants the weak ones in the class to leave. I can’t recall if anyone in my class actually did drop out. After the first few weeks I was frustrated. Not only do we have to read books but we have to connect it to the monomyth. We also have a blog and a poem to do almost every night. And I suck at poems. If all of that isn’t enough we have little readings or videos to watch every night and sometimes both. I felt overwhelmed and was kind of pissed off in the same light. I knew though in the back of my mind that I could do it, and that is where I am now.
I really like the monomyth and the archetypes once I fully grasped what they were have never learned about either of those before in an English class. I think it is interesting that we can connect literature with both of them. I did not however like Watership Down or Siddhartha. I do like to read and I am all for finishing what I started but those books were boring. I felt like I was back in religion class while reading Siddhartha. Watership Down was a little more bearable but I felt like I was reading a drawn out fairytale that should have ended 300 pages ago. I do however like The Color Purple. I am about 50 plus pages in by now. I think the style of writing is interesting. I like learning about history and you get to see what an African American women’s life was like during that time. I think feminism is interesting and I have learned things about it and we have only been learning about it for one day. I never really knew or have studied it before. I can’t wait to finish the book. I am excited about making a poem book because I will get to show my creativity.
I like how the class is loose and relaxed and is a big group discussion every day. It helps me to see things in others point of view rather than just my own. It helps to know that sometimes other people feel the way I do about the class. I think that by discussing things we really make connections to life and to other literature. The groups work out good because we get to discuss things, like if you didn’t pick up something in the reading someone else may have and they can share that with you. I like that you know our names and we aren’t just students in you class. It’s like you really want to know us and get to know what we are thinking. I like that we do mostly everything online. I think blogs are easy. Having a class webpage is easy for me to read when and what my homework is. Instead of you having to tell us what it is or hand us out papers about it I just read it online. I like that we don’t just do book reports, because those get old.
Things that could be changed would be to have a system where every other night we do things. For insistence if one night we read and one night we have to write a blog and poem instead of all together. I don’t mind having homework but I have other classes I have homework for also. I have many main major classes that are more important that I do well in. I would like to learn more about types of poetry and about poems. It would be easier to write poems if we had time in class to do them. Maybe just once every other week or so, that way we could bounce ideas off each other. Also if we talked about styles of poems it would be more beneficial instead of playing guessing games to see if the style I got matched up to the style I picked. I wish we could watch more movies and then connect those to the monomyth. I would have liked to have dates when we needed to be so far in the book, so that way when we have a quiz about it I know where to have read up to.
Overall I like the course even though it is a lot for a hundred level course. Both of my two previous English courses have been complete blow off. This class challenges me every day and when I say that I mean that. I feel I have learned a lot more than in the two classes combined. I have held my head above water for this long in the class and I know I can continue to do that for the rest of the semester. I am proud of myself that I have passed every quiz so far except for one. I have accomplished a lot of reading. I am sad that you will not be teaching here anymore. I would defiantly recommend you to other students that were up for the challenge. I think if and when I get an A in this class I will be feel very proud of myself. I will feel as if I accomplished a lot. Until then I feel beat and I am struggling to get everything done.
Seriously worn out student,
Amanda Emricko
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