I had a very new experience while travelling through literary theory. There are many things that I want to share about the journey. I had studied the authors in my final year of Masters Program in India but they were lecture classes where the teacher dictated notes about a particular theory and we wrote them down without thinking. Therefore, reflecting upon these theories was never possible or a discussion was not there. I had diaries full of notes which I somehow forgot to bring here and I think in certain ways it was a blessing in disguise because I had to read them all. I started understanding the difference between reading them and taking notes from the teacher on them. Notes are very easy to understand as they are generally dictated in a very comprehensive way whereas reading the authors was completely a new experience for me.  I say this as a journey precisely because of the act of reading them. This act of reading took me through various phases of emotions – anger, frustration, irritation, excitation (when finally I was able to understand some parts of it) etc.

The other part of the journey was writing blogs. I never wrote any blog before this nor have I read so much on blogs. I am always very afraid to speak in front of everybody about my views and also hesitate that everybody read or listen to me. But this concept which initially made me feel so nervous had actually benefited me in many ways. First, I read the articles every week to write something on the blog and at times not once but twice or thrice especially the one about which I was writing. Earlier I was only bothered about writing something on the blog as part of the work that has to be completed but slowly I also started reading other blogs and it was interesting when I started receiving comments on what I wrote. The hesitation that I had earlier about my classmates reading what I think has somehow started disappearing and now I enjoy a discussion on this forum and also share my opinions. The other relation between the blog and the reading that I found interesting is when I re- read my blog. Earlier they were just a summary of the text in my own words, later I started comparing them with each other (texts) and see how they were different, much later there was observation of the reading of different periods and in the last few blogs I started relating the articles with incidences from my country.

I think it would be far more enjoyable if we had read it in two semesters so that we had less reading for each class and then the discussion in the class. For me, it was a sudden stop in that journey when I just started enjoying my travel through the literary theory!!