An Assessment

I have always enjoyed the traditional literature class structure, so this class was a huge shock to my system from day one. I thought the classic setting for a lit class was appropriate and definitely facilitated the material and made it easy to learn. It was always easier for me to learn poetry if a teacher held my hand and walked me through it. This class threw me for a loop in that the focus had completely deviated from the norm. This class is more self-exploration and reflection with each poem. I had great difficulty with this at first, seeing as in all my years of schooling, I had never really encountered a class like this. It's a much more demanding style than I'm used to. More critical thinking, less critical listening. I definitely thought that I was learning a lot less about the poems than I had in my previous classes in the beginning, but I think that as we have progressed, my skills of interpretation have improved, and thus I've gathered more on my own. I have never been particularly good at analyzing poems, but I feel that I am better now than ever before. This class has structure, being mainly student-content driven has been very rewarding and interesting to me. Usually there is very little participation by students in my literature classes, but this is definitely an exception. I like the idea of classes being experimental like this, but I feel that one thing must be changed. I feel that in the course description, it should give heed that this is a very experimental class and is not for everyone. I could see those who are in a more science or math oriented field having great difficulty. That is the main thing I would change, because we all essentially entered this class blindfolded with no idea where we were going. I feel that I have greatly improved my skills in dealing with poetry in this class. It is sometimes difficult to post blogs at a fast pace for me, because I like to take as much time as I can to work on something before posting it, but I feel that I have done a pretty decent job keeping up and still being thorough with my work. I would like to see more classes like this in the future, and less of the whole read a poem, professor walks you through it, test, then research paper classes I'm used to.