Kofi Osei-Aning
Marlen Harrison
ENGL 121-003
Friday December 11, 2009
Final Letter
First I have to start by saying when I first was introduced to your class I wasn’t sure how I would be able to handle the workload. As I sit here writing this letter I feel like the work load was nothing at all. I use to struggle to write a poem or a blog but now at this point it all flows out relatively easy. I feel like this class was a free “A”. I knew from the beginning that I would not drop the class because that has never been an escape for me but I am glad that you told the truth when you said the class would become easy. I don’t know how many people dropped this class at the start but I wish they hadn’t because they would have learned a lot about themselves as I have.
My initials doubts were confirmed by the book Watership Down. I mean I don’t have a passion for reading and this book was about the lives of rabbits. Little did I know there was a greater meaning behind the journey Fiver and the gang embarked on. Aside from the book being about rabbits I was coming home at the end of the day having to face my roommates asking me why I have so much work to do for this one class alone. For the first month I was caught falling asleep at the mercy of my key pad, trying desperately to finish my work.
A turnaround was in the woodworks and I began to take a liking to class discussions and the online organization of the class. The over wheelmed feeling disappeared and I found that sitting down at night organizing and typing my thoughts allowed me to paint a clear picture of what I had learned day-to-day. This was the first time I had ever been involved in a course where most of the work was evaluated online. I have no complaints about how you taught this class as I believe it was effect for many of us. I think my favorite part of the class was blogging because it encouraged me to think about a subject and express it in whatever way I saw fit.
Although I remain a person who is not infatuated with reading I did take a liking to one book. The color purple by Alice Walker was written like no other book I have ever read. I got lost in this book, in the characters, they seemed so real. She wrote this book as if it was in her personal diary and that is why I believe I was attracted to the book. Another text book that interested me was Awakening The Heroes Within because the information in that book was all new to me. I had never been taught about Archetypes and such. I found out a lot about myself while reading bits of this book as I must admit I used it more as a reference book than anything else. I learned about the reoccurring cycle of life that people go through. The book also allowed me to look at different stages of life I have been through and the different personality traits that went along with those times.
Buying into monomyths was fairly easy for me to do as well. We all know that you went through a public Belly of the Whale instance and I think that drove home the life-like situations behind monomyths. You were faced with a crisis and the situation seemed bleak but you worked hard and made the best of the situation. From what I have learned about this monomyth I could suggest that you were able to become one with yourself because you were not engulfed by the situation.
Now let’s get to MiddleSex. I have given it another chance to grow on me but I have previously written that this book does not move me. However a good point was brought up by one of my classmates and that was a comment about the amount of history that is in the book. My classmate as well as myself notice that there was good history written in this novel and that was something I liked. Aside from that I still feel there was an excessive amount of detail and like the author admitted, over plotting.
Overall this class has allowed me to grow like you said it would. I have no regrets with my decision to stay in this class. If anything I am glad I did because it gave me the chance to reminisce about where I have been and look forward to where I may end up. Life is a long journey but a short one at the same time. Just yesterday I could swear I was in elementary school thinking I would not get to high school fast enough. Now I am in college about to graduate and who knows where I will go from here. I want to thank you again for your commitment to teaching the class through any condition and I wish you all the best with your future endeavors.
With great appreciation;
Kofi Osei-Aning
