FINAL REFLECTION FOR WORLD LITERATURE 2020-2021

     As we all know by now,  2020 has been a history-book worthy year. With Covid-19 as the story's antagonist it has definitely been an awful year. However, there were some things to keep us occupied, one of them being this hectic first semester.

    Where to begin? It's safe to say all of my courses this year have been different than any I have ever taken, for evident reasons. Aside from that I wanted to point out what made this course that much different. The main factor that made this course so distinct was Dr. Preston's investment in the class and his unique method of teaching. His open-mindedness in approaching school differently than what is conventional in our time. The comprehension, acknowledgment, and adaptation in accordance with the students in this course also made it stand out and was rare to see among others. 

    There was no room for scrutinizing the course in the opening weeks since all the focus was on adapting to the confusing schedules. Once that went away I was able to fully submerge myself into the material that we were learning and analyze what was meaningful. I especially found, and continue to find, Les Misérables by Victor Hugo consequential since it mentions and covers many hardships we still face today, like poverty and war. My "The Right to Your Opinion" essay is something that I'm proud of in this course and a piece of work that I'd be comfortable sharing with anybody . It was really interesting and fun to work simply because I just fell in love with the complexity of the topic. Yes, I wish that I could've perfected my time management. Although I have gotten much better, it still is quite the endeavor for me.     

    I have learned many things so far. And a funny analogy occurred to me while writing this: it's as if every day we receive a dime and at the end of this course we can either choose whether to spend them wisely or let them get lost in our piggy-banks of knowledge. Aside from an expanded vocabulary and new literacy techniques, I have learned that stepping out of my comfort zone isn't as scary as it seems. The blog posts, journal entries, and the recently-implemented MOM's have allowed me to be more open-minded about writing my thoughts on a page and meditating. We live in a super fast world and meditation and writing are great ways to cool down and will surely help me in the future. 

    Over the past four months I haven't read many pieces so it wasn't too hard to choose 3 texts to write about. The first piece was a fun one and concentrated entirely on alliteration, Fox in Socks by Dr. Seuss. Despite being entirely on alliteration there was also a strong use of imagery. If you read the picture book version this would be less prominent and have little to no effect, but if you read the pdf version you would find that painting images in your mind is fairly simple due to the descriptive nature of the book. A hint of repetition is also used in the book in order to create the effect of clamor which adds to the fun factor of the book. The second book is my literature analysis choice, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K Rowling. Prophecy foreshadowing was a big literacy technique and in this case it created more than suspense, it kept the readers wondering whether every little event that occurred had anything to do with said prophecy. In this book flashback was very much needed as information had to be presented to reader, but such information couldn't be presented as a present-time event. And the plot wouldn't be as good if the information was forced to be directly presented by a character from the present time. It is very useful technique and that was clear in this piece. Onomatopoeia, imagery, indirect characterization, and allusion are just a few others that were used in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The third piece would be the excerpt from Crimes Against Logic that we read in the beginning of this course. While paradox and satire are two separate literacy techniques they work together in this text to make the statement that citizens of democratic societies in specific, but common, cases are not actually entitled to their opinions. And how naïve some people can appear by using the entitlement of opinion to settle a losing argument.. These two techniques make the readers want to keep reading and find out why the author thinks in such a different way than most, regarding the topic. The third technique is repetition. This technique is used when words like entitlement, right, and opinion are used over and over again to make an imprint in the reader's mind, so that s/he is left thinking about the claim.     

    It has been quite an exhausting semester. I am so ready for a nice and relaxing break. Even though I know that at some point during the break I will have nothing left to do and be wishing that school came sooner so that I'd have something to do and learn.