Walking into our beloved classroom on the fifth floor of Hamilton Hall on Tuesday, I could feel the sleep derivation the second I walked in the door. Halloween Weekend had lived up to its reputation at Chapel Hill. While our class can occasionally struggle to participate, this Tuesday morning was an all time low for lack of engagement. Professor Blom began to walk us through writing thesis statements, but whenever class participation was required, we remained silent. I wish that I could say I stood out from the crowd, but I disappointingly stayed quiet with my peers. With some encouragement from Professor Blom, a couple of brave souls carried the class by speaking up, and I could tell everyone in the room was relieved.
After the powerpoint that helped us understand what makes a strong statement, we worked on an in-class activity of analyzing poems, in hopes of preparing the class for the upcoming feeder, which would guide our rough draft of our literary analysis. The class looked at a randomly generated poem, a fact that Professor Blom did not reveal until after our analysis. This prompted the question of whether the poem still had meaning, which divided the class in opinion. As the class drew to a close, we left with the responsibility of crafting our thesis statements for our literary analysis essays by Wednesday at midnight.
When writing my thesis, I tried to focus on choosing a statement that was clear, concise, and specific, while also not being too narrow. After a few tries of choosing what aspects of the book I wanted to focus on, I was pleased with the thesis I wrote, and felt confident in the direction I was headed for the literary analysis essay.
Thursday’s class was a much more lively and interactive class, and participation was back to normal. We analyzed textual analysis, and my group had an essay on “The Story of an Hour”. Each group, ours included, read and analyze the text paragraph by paragraph. As Professor Blom noted – we all might have written a bit too much, but the effort was definitely there and all the students seemed engaged and interested in their stories. The paper we read highlighted the symbolism of birds, wings, independence, and relationships. We were able to appreciate and note the strong aspects of this essay, where she could have improved, and it helped inspire and guide me when I began to think about writing my own essay.
Next, we spent some time editing our group members’ thesis statements, and I was appreciative of the feedback I received. While this was a faster workshop due to the concise nature of thesis statements, I think the class appreciated being able to receive some feedback, even if it was minimal. As the class came to a close, we focused our attention on the essay to come. As Professor Blom noted – the more effort we put into this essay, the easier we could transition it to the video essay. With this in mind, I planned to spend my weekend creating a strong and thorough essay for the rough draft, and I feel that many of my classmates had the same idea in mind. As I write this post on Sunday night, I am pleased with the work done on my essay so far, and plan to finish it up before the night comes to a close. The week will be busy with revising our rough drafts, but as Professor said, the more work we put in now, the better prepared we will be for our final projects.
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Google Images, Creative Commons License.