I never thought there would be a whole class just on the book of Moby Dick, which is why I was interested in taking it! I have picked up the book once before, but never finished it until taking this class. Dr. Pressman made this class very enjoyable with all of the knowledge that she has on the book and how she presented it to us. Throughout reading Moby Dick, I was lost at points, but I slowly started to get it! I really enjoyed all of the marine biology elements of the book that Melville included, which made me very interested in certain chapters.

I never really knew what close reading was until this class, and I will be using it moving forward when reading any sort of book that is a bit trickier to understand. I am glad she pushed us to actually write in the book because I just used little stickies to label certain parts, but I couldn’t write my full thought on it. After a while of doing that, I decided to just write in the book, which was my first time doing which I didn’t really want to do, but I did anyway, to really dive more into it to see how I was thinking as I was reading. This really helped me grasp the end of the book, and I want to go back to the beginning as well to write my thoughts in it! The group in class discussions, I definitely learned more from others and how they interpreted the selected reading for each week! I thought the smaller discussions were very useful, so that I can tell others what I got out of the reading to see if I am on the right track with it! There were many chapters I didn’t fully grasp until I came to class and heard what everyone was saying, and then it clicked more for me!

I am very glad I decided to take this class for one of my first English classes at SDSU, and I will be recommending anyone to take Dr. Pressman’s class in the future! Thank you for teaching me this semester!