Blog 7

So far this semester I would like to say that I have made a good bit of progress. Before I came to this class, when I read I looked at the plot and the story structure and tried to analyze it and what the author was trying to say. However I really only looked at it from my views rather than a plethora of views. After being in the class for this long, I have begun to read even deeper into the stories that we read. I think about what was going on around the time of when the story was written and I think about whether or not a man or woman is writing the story. I have even begun to enjoy reading the scholarly articles and what these critics have gathered from analyzing the stories. It is really interesting to consider all of these different properties when reading the story because the story becomes much more complex and different to me had I just read the story for its plain literal meaning. I cannot say that I have noticed these developments crossing over into other areas of life, but it has made me a little more curious about everything. For instance, in my biology classes I will sometimes Google something that I have a hard time understanding or just do not know about. Before I would not do that; also when we read Sonny’s Blues I found myself Googling research on the story and its allusion to the bible when it talks about the “cup of trembling”. With that said, I still have a lot of improvements to make. I have a pretty hard time making it completely through the scholarly articles. They can be really long and even though they are interesting sometimes, they do not always keep my focus. I think if I centered more time around really focusing on what I’m reading and really understanding it thoroughly I would be able to accomplish a lot more a lot faster in this course.