Wow. It is really amazing to think about how far I have come in the past year. This is usually the part that I hate so much about lit classes: when the teacher makes you reflect on your progress over the semester/year and write down goals. I don't know exactly why, but I have always found it to be so boring. Maybe it's the amazing class mascot that erupted from my mind in ambient speech, or our seemingly ridiculous obsession with predatory portmanteaus, but this course has shown me a lot of new ideas. Everything from the terms, the independence of our class discussions, the interesting literature that we have read, and so many more things that I am too tired to write about now, has simply redefined the way that I look at literature. I am most certainly glad that I signed up for this class, even if I was an idiot and missed the first meeting. But that was innocent baby junior Abhijit that had no idea what a paraprosdokian is; this is senioritis/nostalgia-stricken Abhijit who is freaking about that AP Exam in 2 WEEKS!!!! In short, thank you Holmes!
Anywho, what have we done in the past four weeks?
For one thing, we finished reading Ceremony! Now I can see that Holmes was 100% right when she told us that this was the most complex selection of the year. This is quite the overstatement, but it makes Hamlet feel like a Magic Tree House book (no offense to Shakespeare, of course). In our discussions, we have found so many new points of interpretation, particularly the colors and animals. This made the theme statement all the harder, of course, and I thought that each hour had its own interpretation of the same message, which is cool. Honestly, I would put meeting Silko on my bucket list because I still have so many questions to ask her about this book. In our discussions, we also read a series of articles, splitting them up across the entire class, which I found interesting because we were using our classmates as our own filter to pick up on the important info, with only un petit peu of Holmes' guidance. We have also started reading Fifth Business on our own, and I am really waiting for those in-class discussions because I have yet to make up my mind on this text. Then again, I also have yet to finish it.
With regards to test-prep, well we've just been diving head first. Poems, essays, selections, the whole nine yards. The blitzkrieg was definitely an interesting way to go through analyses, and I really like how we're focusing in on the thesis element of our essays. It has become very clear to me that the thesis is nearly always the hardest thing to put together, and in the context of 40 minutes, it is quite a gargantuan task to come up with a well-composed set of ideas, but I do find that it is becoming easier each time. I also thought it was very helpful to see the 2013 test. Not only was it pretty cool to see the test from just last year, but seeing the format and getting a skeletal feel (but that's better than nothing) has alleviated at least a bit of my anxiety.
Well, that's all folks! It's been quite the journey, and we're nearly through!!!
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