Last Postttttttt (⁎⁍̴̛ᴗ⁍̴̛⁎)

I still can’t believe the semester is already coming to an end, and this is my final blog post! 、

Honestly, at the beginning of the semester, I was quite worried. First of all, the setup was quite different from the usual classes – the contract grading. It was entirely about self-discipline, which was a completely new challenge for me, but I do enjoy challenging myself. Another aspect is reading itself. In fact, I’m not particularly “skilled” at reading, and sometimes I can get easily distracted, so I was quite afraid that I wouldn’t be able to finish a book within a week. However, thankfully, even though it was challenging at the beginning, once I got familiar with it, many things fell into place (looking back now, I’m proud of how I handled myself!). Additionally, I enjoy the flipped classroom format. We can watch lectures at home, and then in class, we can discuss our viewpoints, ideas, and so on. So each time, it feels like time flies by because everyone’s contribution to the discussion is so interesting.

Out of all the books we’ve read, the one that left the deepest impression on me was Death with Interruptions. I loved the setting of this book, and its themes about death taught me a lot. Especially one part in the story of those people who were supposed to die but had to continue living due to DEATH’s strike – it was torture for them. This resonated a lot with my recent experiences(realization of the death of my beloved grandma), and reading this book made me rethink and understand death anew. I admire how the author could discuss death from a relatively lighter perspective.

The book I didn’t enjoy as much was probably the first one, Combray. I’m not sure if it was because it was the first book I read this semester or because of the author’s writing style, but I found it hard to focus. I’ve never read such a “chaotic” book before, and it was a significant challenge for my comprehension skills. Looking back, that week was a bit of a disaster for me, but thankfully, I gradually got used to the rhythm of the class and became more adept at it!

In this class, there were many themes of coming of age and relationships between men and women, which I found quite interesting. It was fun to see different authors using different characters and setting to address these themes.

Finally, I want to thank Professor Jon for creating these lecture videos. For some of the more challenging books(for example, Combray^_^), it’s really beneficial to have someone guide me through the thought process. I also want to thank the TA, Daniel and Tesi, for diligently reading our blog posts and making connections in the comments. And thanks to my classmates for asking such interesting questions/comments – some of them gave me a new perspective on certain elements of the books.

Reflecting on the goals I set in my introduction, I want to say to myself, “You did it!” Achieving the goals I set for myself is quite an accomplishment!

QUESTION: Which part/particular of our class time did you find most interesting? (For me, it was Deep River, because we had to draw maps based on our memories of the book, and I remember classmates grouping up to draw the maps, and the presentations were really fun!)

Blogs, Bye, Last, RMST

1. 

   Arella Ng

   2024年4月5日

   Hey Lucy! I also found the Deep Rivers class to be the most interesting since I believed that was the session where I interacted most with my classmates. It was fun listening to people present their presentations and try to explain why they think certain locations are where they are on the map.

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2. 

   Jon

   2024年4月6日

   Lucy, many thanks for all your thoughts and contributions, and I’m glad you enjoyed the course. Thanks for the note that you particularly enjoyed what we did during the Deep Rivers discussion. One of my own few regrets is that, because especially of the main classroom that we had, we weren’t able to do so many activities like that as I would have liked.

   Thanks again and have a great summer!

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3. 

   katiewong

   2024年4月7日

   Hi Lucy! One part of this class that I thought was interesting was the activities the TAs had us do for “Death with Interruptions”. We ended up being in a different and smaller classroom and the TAs prepared some very creative activities for us to do. For one of them, we were separated into different groups based on the main characters in the book and we had to take on their perspectives and think about how they perceived the absence of death.

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