The End

Week 13, the semester is coming to an end, and it’s time to reflect. I think my biggest takeaway from this course is I was definitely wrong about books. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always respected the medium of literature, and known its importance, but nevertheless I just never cared for a novel, or rather I couldn’t care for one, as much as I would have liked to be a voracious reader as a child, books always evaded me and my attention span. This led me to believe books just weren’t for me, and that’s what I thought coming into this course. Reflecting back now, I can say with confidence my perspective has shifted. Although I am still definitely not a voracious reader, I have gained a new-found appreciation for literature, and the experience it provides. I still find it hard to sit through a book, and continue to find myself skipping lines and going back any time I read something, but through this course, and the conscious effort I believe I have tried to make, I have been learning how to appreciate literature more effectively, how to immerse myself into a book, the way I could a movie. Moreover, through all the blog posts, and interactions with my peers, although I was never the most talkative, I have picked up a new respect for the fervour a book can provide. I understood this even more while reading If on a Winter Traveller’s Night, as this book made me step back and think about how transcendent and therapeutic literature is. My favourite book in this course was probably Money to Burn, because of its strong themes, which I’m a sucker for. My least favourite book was probably Nadja. I found Nadja, and Combray for that matter too, quite hard to understand and relatively arduous to read. Additionally, I’d like to mention my appreciation for the entire teaching team. I remember being quite anxious of Professor Jon on the first day, as he seemed quite an experienced, no-nonsense teacher, which are qualities I admired, but I was worried I wouldn’t be able to keep up. I think now I can say I was both right and wrong, because, as much as they pushed us to keep to the work, I was consistently inspired by the intensity and comfort I found in our classroom. Especially as someone relatively introverted, I appreciated how inviting and respectfully discoursive this class was. In closing, I’d like to ask – what did you imagine when you first signed up for the course, and did it live up to that?