Hi everyone,

Time to write my concluding blog post. I have been feeling very sentimental about finishing my first year and the beginning of my post secondary academic journey. It really is the end of the beginning and I can honestly say that I am proud of how far we have all come.

Looking back on my introduction post, I mentioned that I took this course to satisfy my literature requirement. Although I have now satisfied this requirement I am glad I took this course for other reasons.

This course reignited my love for reading again. It has been refreshing to discuss books in an academic context that is somewhat relaxed and free of judgement. I mean relaxed in the sense that we communicate through less formal blog posts and comments along with class discussions. In addition, I think that sometimes in academia we feel pressured to say what we believe is correct or most valuable. However, removing this expectation helped reignite  my love for reading because the course was more about exposure and contribution rather than what is correct. We just got to read and yap about books and I love that I had the opportunity to do that. It felt like a book club. This course also exposed me to other books I would have never read before and expanded my genre preferences as a reader, even through I didn’t love all the books we read. On that note, I think its important to be exposed to books that might be unconventional or less popular because it makes us better readers and this course allows us to remain within our comfort zone but also branch out through the choose your own adventure structure.

One improvement I would make is being able to offer smaller class sizes, for more discussion based learning. I know that this is not always possible but I was in the small class for the first time on friday and I loved it. We were able to have a much more personal and intimate discussion. I also loved how we were able to express our feelings about My Brilliant Friend through memes :).

Favourite and least favourite books:

I think my least favourite book was Swanns Way. I know that this is meant to be a classic novel loved by many but I just found it incredibly difficult to read and remain engaged

My favourite books this semester were Mad Toy and My Brilliant Friend. I think these were also my favourite lectures as well. I related to some of the characters on a personal level and that made it easier to read the novel. Over the break, I will be reading the rest of the My Brilliant Friend series and watching the HBO series.

I have really enjoyed this course and have a great summer,

Nadia 🙂