Blog 16 : Final Reflection

In this semester, the most interesting class that I had was ENG102 because here I learnt may different things that helped in improving my reading and writing skills. This class was different from rest of the classes as the class had a new concept of Blogs and a theme Supernatural. It was really interesting as we were not limited to only one topic and were free to research and write about anything under the supernatural theme. The class did not require us to do essays on separate paper as we did all our essays on blogs. The blog really helped as we could see what our peers are doing and then give feedback to each other. Professor Smith and all the peers were really helpful in giving their feedback and improving the essay before the blog was graded. I learned to find the story hidden in the poem, its tone and the symbols in it and then analyze and interpret the poem. I learnt about the Dictionary of Symbolism as I did not had any idea about it and also learnt that Wikipedia can be used for research work. The other thing which I learned was Monomyth or Hero’s quest. I learned about Hero’s quest from the interview of Joseph Campbell, reading about Monomyth on Wikipedia, watching a film “Spirited Away” in class and then discussing about it with the peers and professor. Mostly all films have Hero’s quest in them in which an ordinary man has to go through a journey and do different kind of tasks and then in the end return as a hero and gain knowledge from it. I got an opportunity to apply what I had learned about Hero’s quest in my chosen film “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within”. The experience of applying what I learned has helped me a lot as now I am more interested in watching films because now I can easily identify the different stages of Hero’s quest in them which I was not able to do earlier. The other thing that I learned was to pick a short story and for that I had picked “Berenice” by “Edgar Allan Poe” and apply the psychoanalytic approach to it and then analyze the different themes in the story. This helped me to analyze the characters and also made me understand that how different themes can be applied in one story. This class was a good learning experience for me as every day I learned something new and as I gained knowledge I got an opportunity to practically apply it which helps a lot as when you gain knowledge and practically apply it then you never forget it. The class gave me an opportunity to create my own blog and gave me confidence and also made me realize that even I can work and analyze poems, stories and films. The overall experience for this class was great and I would recommend all my friends to take this class as you get to learn so many things but in a different way and actually I did recommend the class to one of my friends because the concept of this class is different from the other English classes as there is no need to do essays on paper. The other good thing is you work on blogs and get to know what your peers are doing and can interact and give your feedback to them. Thank you Professor Smith for helping all of us in learning so many things and also making the class so interactive, interesting and enjoyable for us.

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