I am a bit surprised that I actually enjoyed this course so much considering that I mostly just took It to fulfill my literature requirement. It was a great opportunity for me to read so many books because if I hadn’t taken this course I honestly probably wouldn’t have read any this term at all. I really appreciate the opportunity to branch out from my usual classes and take a course like this one because its nice to be able to read and talk about books for class.
I’m not sure if I have a favourite book necessarily however I really liked our most recent read “My Brilliant Friend” by Elena Ferrante, and surprisingly to me after looking back on what we’ve read I actually think I really enjoyed “Agostino”, but at the time I thought it was too weird. I now appreciate the author’s authentic and honest writing style, and I can now see its more about adolescents and confusion growing up than being weird and attracted to his mother.
Something that I liked about this course was the contract we have for our grades. I thought that it was a unique way to always try and maintain control and be able to know and expect your grade. But I also think that it did make it hard for me to contract for anything low because its hard to say no to a good grade at the start of the year before actually having to do much work. However I do think I is still absolutely reasonable to accomplish even if you contracted high so thats why I really enjoyed this type of grading.
Overall this class was really great and definitely something that I would recommend to others. My question for the class is: What was your favourite part of RMST?
Thanks for your concluding blog post! I would definitely recommend this class to others; I think it was a great way to uncover new things about literature, writing styles, and themes connecting to historical movements. The contract grade allowed me to feel less stressed and actually enjoy the book. I wasn’t worried about writing a huge essay, but I was able to enjoy the words and be present with the book. My favourite thing about RMST was the blogs! Sharing our own ideas without the stress of it being correct or wrong. We were able to connect with many other blog posts and compare/contrast our ideas of the book and how we came to understand it in our different contexts!
hey Daelyn, I really enjoyed reading your concluding thoughts about the course! I really enjoyed Agostino and My Brilliant Friend as well, I felt that they were both intriguing and had a really well-developed storyline. To answer your question, my favorite part of RMST was the course structure. I felt that it stayed really organized and was easy to manage as there were no huge assignments or surprises along the way.
Hey Daelyn!
I also loved “My Brilliant Friend” and the format of this course. My favorite part of RMST was definitely the discussions we had about the novels. Hearing about other people’s perspectives, developing my own, talking about what the authors wanted to convey with their stories and the overall exchange of ideas was very stimulating and taught me a lot about literature in general. I would also recommend this course to anyone as it provides great flexibility while also teaching a lot about the subject.
Hi Daelyn,
I am glad to hear that you ended up enjoying the class. I wish that I had contracted more but, at the beginning, I was a bit scared of the idea of reading a book a week. My favourite part was probably the class discussions because I like to hear the connections metaphors that others deciphered but I hadn’t. Thank you for sharing.
Hello! I totally felt the same as you described in your post. I definitely would not have read this many texts if not for this class, for sure. I think my favourite part was also the contract grading. I think it was actually really nice as it took the pressure off of writing something super meaningful and allowed us to focus more on just finishing the story and interpreting it how we wanted, rather than just looking for what we think the grader would want to see.
Hello! to answer your question, i think my favourite part of this course would have to be how the grading was structured. Feeling in control of this definitely took a huge weight off my shoulders!