Through the blogs, gists, and literary analyses, I can easily say that my writing has improved over the semester. I feel much more confident in my writing. I know how to properly cite things, my language has improved, and I can effectively express myself through writing like I couldn't before.
Strategy wise, I really found the individual meetings with you and the constant gist writing to be the most helpful aspects of the class. I better understood what you were looking for and how to better articulate my idea after our individual meetings. The gists helped me to understand the proper MLA format, academic titles, short literary analysis characteristics, and allowed me to begin to consider literature in a new way.
I don't know if I could call any of the papers the "easiest," however, I might say that the Dr. Faustus analysis was the least challenging. I think this is purely because it was the last of the three, so I had a better idea of how to form an argument and effectively use it to get my point across. Dr. Faustus also has a lot of journal articles available, which helps immensely in the research process.
Honestly, the day that sticks out in my mind is the day that we read "Recitatif" and the other articles discussing racism. You mentioned that your favorite part of class is discussing ideas rather than the other technical aspects of literature, and I couldn't agree more. I really enjoyed how every day was like a new theme or life lesson, and once I figured this out, it was much easier to draw parallels and recognize themes in the assigned readings.
I am, without a doubt, more prepared to write college level papers than I was at the beginning of the semester! The literary analyses that we completed were very challenging, however, they gave me a great base for the papers I'll be writing in the future. All the work was well worth it!
