This class has to have been one of my favorites I have taken in college so far. Most of my classes haven’t really had the type of collaboration we had in this class and it’s really great to not have to just come in and be lectured to. It also helps that the subject matter was more interesting than I thought it would be. I initially looked over this class because it was listed as American Literature and those have always been my least favorite as I find myself bored and uninterested in the topic as a whole; but I looked at the description again and saw that it was just on Moby Dick. I had read it before and understood absolutely nothing, but I was intrigued more by the fact that we would get to spend an entire semester on such a whale of a book. It only made me wish that there were more classes like this where you really get to go in as much depth as we did for bigger works.

The depth we went into also came with the whole “so what” of close reading. I’ve gotten used to analysis of texts over the years but I don’t think it was ever to this extent. Even if it was, I never felt like I was good at it, but coming to this class to share my thoughts and doing the essays really did help me feel better in my skills as a reader overall. But this class also helped me remember to not feel bad about not mastering this novel, or anything really. Especially with the discussion last week, this class has shown that what we all take from reading is really more of a reflection of ourselves, so therefore there can’t really be anything “wrong” as long as you’re showing where you’re pulling from the text. I’ve always struggled with thinking my interpretation is wrong or sounds dumb or nobody would get it, but this class has helped me get over that more than any other has, so I’m excited to continue in a similar environment in the AI literature class because that’s a topic I’m even more interested in.