Final Reflection
My annotated bibliography contains a lot of reflective detail on how I came to understand the methods we have learned. Reading the articles in the Dropbox (admittedly, some for the first time) made so much sense to me. I was able to connect with many of the methods described and have implanted the importance of them in my memory. What I want to talk about in this reflective piece is not what these methods did for my writing in particular, but what they did for me as an individual, and how I changed as a writer and into a better person as well.
I don’t know if you remember Bob’s story he told in class about how he went fishing with his brother and how it was different than the other times he has gone, but this struck a chord in me. Bob was having trouble putting into words exactly how he felt, but I sat there listening and filling in the blanks in my head. Bob said that the fishing trip he went on was different because of the way he acted and perceived the situation around him. Instead of sitting on the sidelines like he did on previous trips and letting his brother command the experience, Bob was intimate and in control. I think one of the words he used was ‘aggressive’. While Bob was having trouble relating his story using methodological terms, I understood completely. I wish I would have just told him then what he was feeling. Bob had entered into another virtual role that day. He had to become someone else to involve himself in something that he found mundane before, and he seemed to like being empowered by his new virtual existence, which he felt, but couldn’t explain.
This ‘virtual role’ is not used only in reading, but in life situations, so that one can experience them fully and get the most out of them. Isn’t that what life is about? I consider myself a shy person; I know it has shown in class when I am nervous about opening up myself to answer certain questions in front of a whole group of students. The one day I did, the day you lost your voice, and said that I didn’t want to share myself with the ‘strangers’ who were my classmates. I didn’t want to enter into a new virtual role, someone that was willing to open themselves up because they wanted to learn. That’s why after Mike’s blog, I think the class became something else than just credits I needed to earn (like my grammar and creative writing classes ended up being). I entered a new role, of someone that was going to get the most out of the class not only to become a better writer, but be a better person as well. I also noticed this in my reading habits. To Kill a Mockingbird was one of the first non-fantasy books I read after a long stint of reading only fantasy. I was expecting these plot twists and surprising deaths, but I didn’t find them. The book played out like it should have (conventional form). It wasn’t until I looked back on the book days and weeks after reading it that I realized how monumental it was. I projected the fantasy genre into my reading of To Kill a Mockingbird, and I don’t think I read it to its fullest extent.
Jane Gallop says, “Reading what one expects to find means finding what one already knows. Learning, on the other hand, means coming to know something one did not know before. Projecting is the opposite of learning. As long as we project onto a text, we cannot learn from it, we can only find what we already know.” Going into any situation, whether it is reading or not, calls for the person to either be excited, nervous, or not interested. If I want to get the fullest out of life, I have to cease projecting and sometimes be a different person. Not change myself, but be myself.
In our first conference together, something you said resonated in my mind for many days after. You said the whole universe can be found in reading. I was in utter disbelief; I think it was apparent enough in my responses and attitude. It wasn’t until class later that week that the bell went off in my head. When you told the class this, you replaced universe with ‘humanity’. It was then that I understood, and a wave of drowning awareness washed over me where I sat. It made sense now. It was so cool. When you said humanity I think you also mentioned ‘feelings’ or ‘emotions’, things that humans experience every day, most of them blindly passing through. Now I see that reading contains humanity because every human emotion can be experienced while reading. Whether its love, thrill, fear, adventure, or whatever, it can all be found in reading. That’s why I cried during A Walk to Remember and wasn’t ashamed of it. I knew it was humane. What makes a human a human, and not a robot, are feelings and emotions, right? Isn’t that what so many movies about robots showing humanistic qualities profess? That they have feelings. If emotions are what make one human, and reading/books have the power to reveal all emotions, then humanity really can be experienced from reading. I think a person could never truly be lonely as long as they have books. That’s the power of reading, and a reason why I will never be without a book because after all, I am human.
Doing the annotated bibliography was more than just a project for me. I learned so much about the methods, not by just reading about them, but by writing about them. Everything I talked about I was discovering as I wrote. It wasn’t just reading the text and connecting the methods that helped me learn. It was the process of discovering truths hidden to me by writing that made it special. This is why I want to be a writer, to find the truths hiding in myself. It was honestly fun after I really sat down and wasn’t distracted by anything. Doing the annotated bib re-established something that I had been missing for awhile. It rekindled the reason I came to college in the first place. A writer doesn’t need a degree to write, just a pencil and paper, but something told me it was important to go to college anyway. Taking this class has grounded my belief in doing so. Discovering concrete evidence of the methods not only helped me understand the class better, but made me remember how much fun it can be to learn something new, to step into a different role, one of someone eager to learn, to succeed. Sometimes writing can be such a drag, and I feel forced to do it. When I first started the annotated bib I was overwhelmed and hesitant. When I finally stepped into a different role, I fully experienced the joy of it all, the writing, the reading, it was fun. I learned so much. I have become a different person through writing and reading. Isn’t that what college is all about? Learning not only knowledge but also about oneself, transforming into the person that I must be to live life to its fullest. I can say that this class did that much for me, and I’m happy to be able to. Thank you.
My annotated bibliography contains a lot of reflective detail on how I came to understand the methods we have learned. Reading the articles in the Dropbox (admittedly, some for the first time) made so much sense to me. I was able to connect with many of the methods described and have implanted the importance of them in my memory. What I want to talk about in this reflective piece is not what these methods did for my writing in particular, but what they did for me as an individual, and how I changed as a writer and into a better person as well.
I don’t know if you remember Bob’s story he told in class about how he went fishing with his brother and how it was different than the other times he has gone, but this struck a chord in me. Bob was having trouble putting into words exactly how he felt, but I sat there listening and filling in the blanks in my head. Bob said that the fishing trip he went on was different because of the way he acted and perceived the situation around him. Instead of sitting on the sidelines like he did on previous trips and letting his brother command the experience, Bob was intimate and in control. I think one of the words he used was ‘aggressive’. While Bob was having trouble relating his story using methodological terms, I understood completely. I wish I would have just told him then what he was feeling. Bob had entered into another virtual role that day. He had to become someone else to involve himself in something that he found mundane before, and he seemed to like being empowered by his new virtual existence, which he felt, but couldn’t explain.
This ‘virtual role’ is not used only in reading, but in life situations, so that one can experience them fully and get the most out of them. Isn’t that what life is about? I consider myself a shy person; I know it has shown in class when I am nervous about opening up myself to answer certain questions in front of a whole group of students. The one day I did, the day you lost your voice, and said that I didn’t want to share myself with the ‘strangers’ who were my classmates. I didn’t want to enter into a new virtual role, someone that was willing to open themselves up because they wanted to learn. That’s why after Mike’s blog, I think the class became something else than just credits I needed to earn (like my grammar and creative writing classes ended up being). I entered a new role, of someone that was going to get the most out of the class not only to become a better writer, but be a better person as well. I also noticed this in my reading habits. To Kill a Mockingbird was one of the first non-fantasy books I read after a long stint of reading only fantasy. I was expecting these plot twists and surprising deaths, but I didn’t find them. The book played out like it should have (conventional form). It wasn’t until I looked back on the book days and weeks after reading it that I realized how monumental it was. I projected the fantasy genre into my reading of To Kill a Mockingbird, and I don’t think I read it to its fullest extent.
Jane Gallop says, “Reading what one expects to find means finding what one already knows. Learning, on the other hand, means coming to know something one did not know before. Projecting is the opposite of learning. As long as we project onto a text, we cannot learn from it, we can only find what we already know.” Going into any situation, whether it is reading or not, calls for the person to either be excited, nervous, or not interested. If I want to get the fullest out of life, I have to cease projecting and sometimes be a different person. Not change myself, but be myself.
In our first conference together, something you said resonated in my mind for many days after. You said the whole universe can be found in reading. I was in utter disbelief; I think it was apparent enough in my responses and attitude. It wasn’t until class later that week that the bell went off in my head. When you told the class this, you replaced universe with ‘humanity’. It was then that I understood, and a wave of drowning awareness washed over me where I sat. It made sense now. It was so cool. When you said humanity I think you also mentioned ‘feelings’ or ‘emotions’, things that humans experience every day, most of them blindly passing through. Now I see that reading contains humanity because every human emotion can be experienced while reading. Whether its love, thrill, fear, adventure, or whatever, it can all be found in reading. That’s why I cried during A Walk to Remember and wasn’t ashamed of it. I knew it was humane. What makes a human a human, and not a robot, are feelings and emotions, right? Isn’t that what so many movies about robots showing humanistic qualities profess? That they have feelings. If emotions are what make one human, and reading/books have the power to reveal all emotions, then humanity really can be experienced from reading. I think a person could never truly be lonely as long as they have books. That’s the power of reading, and a reason why I will never be without a book because after all, I am human.
Doing the annotated bibliography was more than just a project for me. I learned so much about the methods, not by just reading about them, but by writing about them. Everything I talked about I was discovering as I wrote. It wasn’t just reading the text and connecting the methods that helped me learn. It was the process of discovering truths hidden to me by writing that made it special. This is why I want to be a writer, to find the truths hiding in myself. It was honestly fun after I really sat down and wasn’t distracted by anything. Doing the annotated bib re-established something that I had been missing for awhile. It rekindled the reason I came to college in the first place. A writer doesn’t need a degree to write, just a pencil and paper, but something told me it was important to go to college anyway. Taking this class has grounded my belief in doing so. Discovering concrete evidence of the methods not only helped me understand the class better, but made me remember how much fun it can be to learn something new, to step into a different role, one of someone eager to learn, to succeed. Sometimes writing can be such a drag, and I feel forced to do it. When I first started the annotated bib I was overwhelmed and hesitant. When I finally stepped into a different role, I fully experienced the joy of it all, the writing, the reading, it was fun. I learned so much. I have become a different person through writing and reading. Isn’t that what college is all about? Learning not only knowledge but also about oneself, transforming into the person that I must be to live life to its fullest. I can say that this class did that much for me, and I’m happy to be able to. Thank you.