Dimensions.of.literature: Eng 325
the dark and unknown pathways start to become clear
sophomore year, fall semester, pt 2.
During the same time in which I took my first Shakespeare literature class, I was also enrolled in English 325, Dimensions of Literature. I once again did not think this class was going to be difficult. I took my cocky IB skills into the course, thinking all I was going to have to do is analyze a few passages from books here and there and read some poetry. Boy, was I wrong. This is, by far, the most challenging literature class I have taken thus far in college, and not only did it change my outlook on classes and how I view them, but one of the recitations itself changed my career path and my overall journey as a person.
the.recitation.that.changed.my.life
So.after a rude awakening during Eng 325 with the expectations from my professor, Dr. Nanian, the realization that I couldn't skip without being utterly and completely lost, and the course material being more.complex.than.I.expected I started to get serious. Many freshman will agree with me that there is a point in their college career where they realize skipping.is.no.longer.an.option, they hit that level of classes that they can no longer skip if they want to do pass and be recognized as a good student. Our literature was a very wide spectrum of poems, books, and even a little Shakespeare thrown in as well. The compliation of poems we read and annotated with our interpretations were recorded on emails sent through a listserv, or a group email system. We were graded for our participation with those as well as two in-depth papers, one of which was extremely.challenging for me.
.Not.onlydid this class completely alter.my.view.of.a.college.English.class, but it practically changed.my.career.path. We were required to attend recitations every wednesday night for 2 1/2 hours, most of which I would lazily doze off in or day dream about other things on my mind. There was one night though, that had a poet in to talk about his process of being a writer. Since he was not a very well known writer and I had never heard of him, nor were we going to study any of his work, I was uninterested when he began his lecture. SInce most people who listen to talks generally pay attention for the first 15-20 minutes, I listened to his summaries of how he wrote this poem and that poem, this was his favorite, this is his work-in-progress, etc. But as he spoke, he kept including the name of a woman who he had not given a title to. He discussed how she helped him incorporate this into that poem, or how she didn't like this part of the poem but he kept it in anyways, and once he finally said, "Oh, shes my editor", I was immediately enlightened. I started thinking about what if I had that job...what if everyday of my career, I could come to work and help.writers with their ideas, compile them into coherent pieces, and watch them become.published, knowing that I had a hand in guiding their ideas. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do it. I was already in love with reading and annotating novels and poems and plays, so why not take my skills and turn them into a more realistic approach? The following week, I changed my major to Professional.Nonfiction.Writing and Editing, focusing more on the editing portion. I realize it will take me a good 10 years or so to land a job at a publisher and get to the position I would love to do, but what college kid comes out of school getting their dream job? In the mean time, I have come to be interested in technical writing as well as copy editing, two positions that will definitely give me the experience I need to one day become that editor I know will suit me perfectly.
Links
Even though this may seem trivial to one, to me, it was a shining part of my teacher, Dr. Nanian. He was a stern and hard grader, but at the same time he was very passionate about his work and knew what he was talking about. He tried hard to encourage us to look outside of the box and gave his all to explain interpretations from every angle. He gave us help wherever he could, including a help site on quoting text. No teacher takes the time to show the correct methods of quoting in papers and on a works cited page, and this is something I will never forget about his devotion to his students.
Dr. Nanian is not currently teaching English 325, but instead Eng 301. I wanted to incorporate a syllabus to show the course load, but instead I will use his current syllabus to show you how the group responses are put together. They are called Synthesis posts, and each student is placed in a group by letters, A, B, C, etc. If you click around on the site, you will see how he constructs the questions in the synthesis posts on the current reading material, which helps the student absorb more text and information.
Below, I am going to list the synthesis posts I wrote as well as my two larger, more comprehensive papers.
Synthesis 1 Synthesis 2 Synthesis 3
Paper 1 is on the novel entitled The Asiatics, which is about a man who travels around the Middle East and vividly describes his encounters and relationships he meets along the way.
Paper 2 is on a poem entitled A Grammarians Funeral, which is an eight page poem about the art held in writing and how people should value and cherish it. The Grammarian himself is the valued art being praised by his students, showing the respect that he deserves. Grammarian's are not as they were in the earlier days, just like art itself.
This is the actual poem for A Grammarian's Funeral in its full form if you are interested as well.