A Reflection on My English 1020 Class

As this class draws to an end, I do find myself being both relieved and a little nostalgic. I've often found in high school that English classes have never been much of a challenge for me. I've always heard teachers tell me, "This isn't the kind of assignment you can do the night before and make a good grade on," to which I always mentally retorted, "You wanna bet?" However, English 1020 was actually challenging for me, which was bittersweet. It was both stressful and refreshing to actually feel like I actually had to really work at something to do well. This is also the first English class I've had where we've had to read works of literature and really examine them to write something about their meaning, not just summarize the plot in a book report and tell our classmates it was a good read.

Our first read, Bram Stoker's Dracula, was a bit of a rude awakening to me. I have a lot of trouble reading something that does not immediately interest me, and knowing that I had to force myself to read this book made me want to invest even less into it. However, I was pleasantly surprised by how it picked up and grew to appreciate the struggle of making myself read through things I didn't find interesting at first. The writing assignment was a bit challenging to me, however, because I felt as if my understanding of the book was somewhat lacking. I ended up completely writing one topic, trashing it, and completely starting over with a different prompt. This taught me that it's okay to write something that isn't good and start over, because sometimes you will end up with something you're a lot more proud of than if you had forced yourself through something that wasn't working.

Following was Macbeth. I wasn't incredibly familiar with Shakespeare's work as the only piece of his I had ever read was Romeo and Juliet in English I, where we had our teacher there to hold our hands and walk us through all the meanings. I have trouble understanding plays and also have difficulty with Old English. However, reading this play and really trying to take time to understand it made me less intimidated by these hurdles, and I feel as if I have benefitted a lot from having to be able to analyze something I had trouble with.

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Assessing a film, like we did with The Dark Knight, was a lot of fun for me and a totally new experience. I've never had to really analyze the characters of a film and use their behavior to support a thesis, but it was honestly a lot of fun. I really enjoyed writing the essay discussing the psychology behind the Joker, and it was very interesting to be using a film instead of a written piece.

With Hamlet, I felt less discouraged by the previous struggles I'd mentioned facing Macbeth. I really feel as if having to read something I knew I had trouble with and to make myself analyze it and understand it was a great learning experience for me. One of the most interesting things I discovered through reading these works was that, because of the Old English, the way that you translate things to modern meaning is somewhat up to interpretation. There are a lot of possibilities of ways people will theorize about these works.

Although English 1020 was stressful and crazy at times, I am happy that I accepted the challenge of taking it. I did feel at times that the fast-paced learning style (while necessary due to time constraints) made me feel overwhelmed at times, but I think that that's also part of what this class teaches you. As high schoolers, a lot of us are used to being able to slap something down on a paper the night before it's due and get straight A's for it. This class was really a wake-up call, teaching us that you have to work really hard sometimes to accomplish something. Despite all the stress and complaining, though, I truly feel more accomplished from completing this class than I have any other one.

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