India Lopez-Garrison

ENGL 112L

Final Reflection

26 April 2024

Final Reflection

Throughout my time in ENGL 112L Introduction to Literature taught by the most awesome, understanding, and enthusiastic instructor, Professor Weber, I have learned so many new things and life lessons that can be essential in my life now and in the future! One of the many things I have learned in this class is that it is okay to step out of your comfort zone. I enjoyed reading all of the poems, short stories, etc. It was a pleasure exploring different genres of stories, even those I didn’t know existed. I have so many favorite readings from this course, but the one that put the cherry on top for me would have to be our last reading of this semester, which was a play/script called “The Mousetrap”. This play was intriguing and had me contemplating how it would end. there were a couple of plot twists, which I enjoy in a story, it was also detailed from their actions to the dialogue between the characters, which made it easy to read and understand for the audience. I would say that the quality of these readings was sufficient and informative and had a wide variety of different texts.

One strength I have gained from this course as a reader is analyzing the text I am reading. Before, I had been reading just to learn what the story was about and trying to retrieve the message within the stories. Now, I am asking myself “Why did the author use these word choices?” “In what way are they trying to get the audience’s attention?” etc. I see everything more deeply now when reading which is one of the things that I was expecting to gain from this course because it helps me grasp the concept more. For example, I’ve had some trouble understanding certain poems because they use a lot of symbolic terms, such as this beginning line from “On the Pulse of Morning” by Maya Angelou; “A Rock, A River, A Tree”. This line can bring up so many questions such as “What does this mean?” or “What relation do they have with each other?”. These were questions I used to ask myself, but now I understand that “A Rock, A River, A Tree” means that these things help make nature what it is and work together to create change. I came up with this answer by re-reading the poem until I understood the message and using context clues. One thing I still would like to work on is strengthening my writing skills.

I feel that my attitude towards literature has changed. This was my second time taking this class but with a different instructor and I think my attitude changed mainly because of how I was being taught this subject. I feel that Professor Weber’s teaching methods helped me better understand literature and be more engaging with my work and the class. I think that I have succeeded in mastering most of the SLOs, which is another thing I expected to gain from this course. I have applied some of the things I learned from this class to my other courses such as my social science cybersecurity courses. When we read articles and answer questions about the article, or summarize it, I take the things I learned about analyzing from literature and apply them to my cybersecurity course. I enjoyed reading all of the poems and short stories from different authors and will continue to read more from them. Some of my favorite authors were Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Edgar Allan Poe, and Maya Angelou. My favorite type of poem I liked reading in class was the Haiku’s.

Overall, I enjoyed being in this class. The work assigned was a great amount, it wasn’t too much or too little. It’s the perfect amount so that you can get other work done from other classes. The instructions for the assignments were detailed and his grading system was fair. I also liked working with the other students in groups and hearing their answers, opinions, and feedback. Everyone was engaged with the lesson which made this class a successful learning experience!