Hello again!
To be completely honest, when I registered for this course, I was mentally preparing myself to simply “get through it”. I knew I needed to get the literature requirement for my degree and that’s all I was hoping to gain out of this course. However, to my pleasant surprise, instead of being my least favourite/most hate course, RMST 202 ended up being one of my favourites this semester:’)!
I truly wasn’t expecting to love it as much as I did. From the class discussions to writing and reading everyone’s blog posts and of course, reading all these novels that I probably wouldn’t have read otherwise, I genuinely feel as though I’ve learned so much more from this course than I expected to and engaged in many interesting and memorable conversations. Right off the bat, this course was quite different from others. I never would’ve expected to be able to choose my grade prior to actually engaging with any class content. However, this structure was something I ended up liking about this course. There were never any surprises and our weekly work was always repeated which made for an overall relaxing interaction with the course. Moreover, knowing what grade we contracted for helped me stay on task and focused since we knew exactly what we were working towards.
I had come into this thinking it would be like a high school English class, where the professor would probably annoy us to death trying to get us to “find the deeper meaning” and “look beyond the surface” for tiny tiny things within the novel. But instead, Professor Jon always posed genuinely interesting and through-provoking questions, guiding us to think about more substantial and relevant topics. Moreover, his enthusiasm for this course and the texts we were reading really reflected on how he taught, making for a far more enjoyable and engaging learning experience!
I also really liked the use of Blog Posts. Not only do we now have something to look back on even after the course ends, but writing and receiving comments made me feel as though I wasn’t just doing this for a grade, but also for others to read. Plus, it’s always nice knowing that someone chose to comment on your post because they felt like you said something meaningful/worth commenting on!
As for the texts themselves, I’m really glad we had such a wide range to choose from! Many of these I probably would have never thought to read otherwise, but having taken this course and read them, I couldn’t be happier. The two that stood out to me the most and I’m most definitely going to remember for a long time from now are Proust’s Swann’s Way [Part One: Combray] and Lispector’s The Passion According to G.H. For Combray, I really enjoyed the style of writing and being able to follow the stream of consciousness, allowing each word to paint a picture in my mind. Also, it was the first book that I read without caring too much for or about the storyline and instead focusing on the experience of reading the words –this approach changed my perspective on reading and has made me enjoy reading a lot more than I used to! As for The Passion According to G.H, I only have one word, cockroaches (hehe)!
As for a question for this post: What were the most memorable and interesting things you learned from this course?
Thank you so much, Professor Jon and our TAs Jennifer and Patricio for all you have done for us this course! I enjoyed it so so much and am really glad I registered for it!
: )
