Reflections

  Looking back on this term, so much has happened in such a short period time. While this class has been fast, and chaotic, I also feel like I learned so much. However, because of the time constraints, this learning process has felt a little like my head would explode from too much information all at once. Like this:

• This class has been very interesting, because even though I felt a state of panic the majority of the time, I realize now how much I have actually processed. While writing my paper, I was suddenly aware of how much work we have done over this short term. Instead of getting a topic, and trying to come up with something interesting to say about it while jamming some scholarly sources in there randomly, the process was drastically different. I began by coming up with a book that I have always loved- Anne of Green Gables. No matter what I had to write about, at the very least I knew I would enjoy rereading this book. Next we began to explore our books through different media resources, like this. I also found that there are many different ways to read the text, like online audiobooks.  After getting WAY too many ideas about possible topics, I found myself kind of wandering around through a million different topics. At this point it was important to get some feedback from my cohorts, so they could help me narrow down my ideas. Talking to Erica Oldroyd and Sam Jenkins really helped me discover which of my ideas were worth pursuing, and which ones really were at a dead end. Eventually, I came up with my thesis for my paper, and began to write about it in short spurts. Like so. This entire time, I was also working to get social proof about my ideas, or to contact many different people in order to get feedback. I did this by hunting down different bloggers, posting on facebook, talking to fans who had written reviews on goodreads, and even emailing many, many different professors that had taught classes on Anne of Green Gables. Some of my contacts really had great ideas about my topic and really made me think more in depth about what I was writing about. In particular, my contact Darcy Cowan had some wonderful things to say about imagination. As my ideas and paper was progressing, I also tried to think about my topic and how I would talk about it differently if it were in a different medium, compared to a scholarly research paper. This line of thought lead to the creation of a book trailer! This really helped me to think about what the most important aspects of my topic were. Along the way, I was also looking at scholarly sources and seeing how m interpretation of the text was different hen looking from scholarly sources to social sources. Eventually, all of this information led to the creation of my paper. This process was lengthy, but it really made me view research papers in a different light. When I actually started writing my paper, I felt like I had pondered my topic, by using every available resource, including ones that I had never realized existed before this class. I had talked about my topic with many different people, and had compared my own topic to my fellow classmates. When we got in a group and discussed our ideas, I felt like I learned so much from my cohorts, and also helped to shed some light on their own theories. Then by taking these ideas and proving that people were interested in them by getting them to contact me to talk about it, really made me more interested in my own topic! This way of writing, while long and complex, really made me feel like I did everything I could to write about a relevant topic, as well as engaging a larger audience than just my Professor. Although I wouldn't typically take this long to prepare for a paper, I will definitely use some of these new skills to write in the future. Although my paper definitely wasn't as smooth as I would have liked, the process was more important than the end result.