Brooks Antweil

E 375L – Victorian Literature

Stand Outside the Person Standing Outside Yourself and Write What You See

The person who wrote about the person he was looking at a little over a month ago has changed quite a bit.  In fact, that person has changed almost as much as the one he was standing outside of and writing about.

            As most people reach the end of their semester, they tend to get tired of their work just as it piles up.  This comes from false comfort since the end is near.  I have gone through a completely different kind of burnout in the past few weeks.  In my preparation for the dreaded LSAT, I have been forced to work much harder than I had been all semester.  The preparation class that I am taking has more homework than any of my classes so far this semester have given me and meets for a full eight hours per week.  This additional class has slowly forced the work that I have had to do in my other classes to either degrade or not get done.  My original LR goals have been destroyed by this class, but I do not think that this is necessarily a horrible thing.  I think that through the realization of my abandonment of my LR goals, I will come out even better at all of the things that I set out to do.  In my experience, total failure leads one to quickly change and improve.

            My first LR goal was the one that needed the most improvement.  I was horrible at managing my time at the beginning of this class.  There were only two instances where I had written a paper before the night before it was due, and one of those was because of an extended deadline that I was not aware of.  Through a concerted effort to manage my time more efficiently, I have succeeded in becoming much better at it, but there is still a lot of work to be done.  I now often find myself thinking ahead and trying to figure out what must be done so I split up my work accordingly.  I have only started one major assignment on the night before it was due (and it was not in this class).  In fact, I started all of the major assignments in this class at least a week before the due date.  I have found that starting at least a week before allows a lot of time for me to ask the questions I will inevitably encounter when working on a major assignment.   Being able to ask questions while doing an assignment has led to higher grades and better understanding of assignments.

            I have also done pretty well as far as reading my assignments more closely.  I executed my plan of using a highlighter and a pen to record my thoughts and responses, and this has greatly helped.  I have improved considerably, especially on assignments such as journals where I need to cite specific information and quotations.  Writing my thoughts as I read is a great tool, and I find that I understand what I am reading and am able to pull more insightful inferences with this new method.

            I also think that I have done a good job of taking an active part in class discussion.  In many previous classes I did not talk on the first few days of class, and I got into the habit of not contributing much to our discussions, but I think that I have done a better job with that in this class.  I think that a large part of this is getting comfortable with the people in the class, and letting them know what to expect when I open my mouth.  The road map presentation helped a lot to establish my sense of humor and make me more comfortable with speaking in the class.  I do not usually have a problem speaking in public, but I think of public speaking more in the sense of a formal presentation.  I am a little bit more timid in an informal class discussion, and I think that this is because a class discussion is more personal and intimate.  As I learned (or actually affirmed; I already was suspicious of this) in my LR A1, I am slightly introverted, so my timidity in class is expected.  However, I learned that this can be overcome if I am put in a situation where I am somewhat forced to talk to the class about myself.  Also, as I am slightly egotistical (something I did not learn from LR A1), I jump at any chance to show off my wittiness.  I think that I achieved my goal to take an active part in class discussion.

            I have taken advantage of many opportunities in order to boost my grade, but I think that I could have taken advantage of a lot more than I did.  After the last required journal, I started to write journals much less frequently.  This is mostly due to the fact that the last required journal was right before I started this LSAT preparation class, so I had much more work to do during this period.  However, I did take advantage of some extra credit opportunities, and not just in this class.  In my government class, I went to many extra credit events to help boost my grade.  I did somewhat reach my goal to take advantage of grading opportunities, but this is the goal that I need to improve the most.  In future classes, I will hopefully be able to build on the progress I made this semester and therefore boost my grade even more.

            On the LR midterm I added a goal: I realized that I should work on doing more than the minimum.  I have reached this goal in some respects, but I could still do more to reach this goal.  For instance, in my government class, I had a final paper that was required to be seven to ten pages long, and I wrote nine pages.  In my earlier college life, I would have likely written until I got to the seventh page, and then tried to sum everything up so I could get to the conclusion.  But in this case, I did not even pay attention to where I was in the page count and instead wrote as much as I could.  From this I learned more than I think I would have if I had just written seven pages.  I think that the difference is this: when one does an assignment with the intention to simply meet the minimum and complete it they do not take full advantage of the assignment as a learning experience.  Instead, they try to write whatever they can in order to fill space.  I found that while writing this final paper, I learned a lot.  I think I would have learned considerably less if I had just tried to meet the minimum requirement.

            On the course-instructor evaluation forms, one of the scaled questions (Strongly Agree – Strongly Disagree) is as follows: “At this point in time I feel that this course will be (or already has been) of value to me.”  Like many of the questions on the CIS surveys, it is difficult to assign a value to this and to do so in such a short amount of time.  With much thought I have decided that this class has been a great value to me.  I think that the true way to measure this is to find out whether one will take anything from this class and apply it to one’s life.  One of the best aspects of this class is that it makes one think about how one is learning while one is learning.  Becoming aware of the learning process makes one better at learning.  Another nice thing about this class is the stress on unifying concepts that we encounter.  Constantly stressing this forces one to abstract one’s findings and become aware of general things that are applicable to the world instead of a small subject.  Also, this class excels in covering many subject areas.  Instead of studying a narrow band of literature from a clearly defined period of time, we looked at many things such as architecture, art, photography, and music.  This broadening of subjects helps to put all of the subjects we learn in perspective.

            Along with abstract concepts, this class has taught me concrete skills.  The second project allowed me to explore and learn the basic aspects of Flash, which I can now claim as a skill on a resume.  Also, I learned more about both book and internet research which will likely be a great help to me in my future endeavors.

            There are also some aspects of this class that I think could be improved.  First, I think it would probably be a better learning experience if more of the journals were required.  Since many of them are not required, it is easy toward the end of the class to decide that one can do without them.  This also encourages not reading the assignments and therefore makes students less prepared for class.  Also, the course packet needs to be reformatted and renumbered to avoid confusion.  The website, which is ultimately an incredibly useful tool for students, needs some reorganization as well.  Also, the small project where we were required to do a short presentation on a work of art should be worth more points, because when it is only worth 15, it is easy not to treat it as an important assignment.

            One of the best aspects of this class is that it is so undefined that one can make whatever of it that one wants.  The assignments are not too clearly defined, and though I admit that I did not like that at first, I have come to greatly appreciate it because it allows for me to do what I want to do for most assignments (as opposed to what a teacher wants me to do).  This openness has let me really exercise my creativity and thus expand my knowledge.  As we learned early on, it is becoming more common for people to be hired because they have right-brain skills as opposed to left-brain skills.  This class helps to exercise both, so we can become better educated individuals.

            In the future, this class could do more campus touring.  I found that although I have gone to UT for three years, I had not explored many of the things that are very close to me.  I would really have liked to have gone to the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum, because I have not been able to motivate myself to go no my own, but I would definitely go if it was required for a class.  I learned much more exploring things outside of the classroom than sitting inside talking about readings.  I also enjoyed the out-of-class activities more, which probably contributed to my learning more.

            Since there are 250 points left to be attained and I need 40 more to get an A, I think that I will get an A in this class.  Although the amount of work that I have done has slightly waned, the quality has not suffered, so I think that I will at least be able to turn in work that is of the quality of forty more points.  I like that there are many opportunities to get an A, so one can focus on a certain kind of assignment that he/she likes and do that.

            This class has been a great asset to me in my college life.  So far, only a few classes have stood out as great classes, and this is definitely on the list.  The manner in which it is taught, and the sincere focus on learning have been fun and educational.  If given a chance, I would love to take a class like this again.

Some intense coloring.  Sharpening those right-brain skills, eh?

A drawing of the Littlefield home.  I never claimed to be an artist.

Writing about nature.  Hey, isn’t that supposed to be a different course?

Before we became such a close bunch of individuals.

After we became a close class.  See how much more interaction there is?  Yeah, me neither.