A Sort-of Short Introduction!

Hi everyone! My name is Zara, and I am a third year student in the Faculty of Science. I am from White Rock, BC. As a result of living near the ocean, I enjoy taking long walks by the beach while listening to music! I am a huge fan of all genres of music (some of my top artists this year were Frank Ocean, Tame Impala and Beach Weather) and love discovering new music. Feel free to reach out if you have any recommendations, I would be honored to exchange playlists haha.

My decision to take this course was guided by my interest in literature and my desire to take an intriguing, contrasting elective (since most of my courses this semester are heavily science-based). Moreover, I am especially excited to be able to enhance my critical analysis skills through reading various new literary works. I hope that by analyzing these works, I will be able to learn more about society during the author’s time period and respective location. I realize that art often acts as a lens for the real world: literature can be a mimesis. I am interested in making these real-world connections and hope that doing so will improve my understanding of the text and society at the time. If time permits, I also am interested in exploring the influence of a specific work in shaping our literary scene today.

I look forward to having a great time reading these novels; and who knows, I may even add some new favourites to my tier list. I am also incredibly excited about the “book club” aspect of this course in the discussion sections and can’t wait to share our interpretations of the novels with each other. It will be incredibly interesting to hear all your thoughts and synthesize our ideas. I love engaging in constructive discussion that allows us to broaden our outlook and deepen our textual understanding.

However, like many of you, I have one concern: novel selection. I am genuinely excited to read each work I choose and designed a schedule, in response, to keep me on track until the “weekly routine” fully sets in. I will refine this schedule according to the books I select so that I can make the most out of my time in this course.

Overall, I am really looking forward to learning more about literature in roman-based languaged. Cheers to a great semester!