It's strange tonight, I'm home from senior supper and it's starting to hit me that it's all ending. There's the old literary cliche that high school is but a chapter in life. I'm starting to see the truth behind it. Even though I know there is going to be another page, there's still an empty feeling, like somehow the rest of the current page is going to be left blank. It's been fun looking back in the spare moments I've had this week, though if I could lodge one complaint it's that it seems the school has collectively decided to push us out the door at full steam, as opposed to let us gradually glide into the exit. There's something to be said for the ripping the band aid off approach, but it doesn't leave a lot of time or energy for reflection. Here's my last ounce of reflection that I think I can spare.
It seems like so long ago that I walked into my first day of African-American Lit. I really didn't know what to expect, our summer reading had been Native Son. If you haven't read it, you should, but it's a hard read, Wright wasn't writing to make it an easy read. I remember bits and pieces of discussions from that class, I remember my first poetry discussion was of a poem called "Liberty." I remember I liked it because it was so short. Not that I was avoiding reading a long poem, but I admired the effort it took to get the point across in six short lines. Besides that I think I probably talked at most ten times that entire semester. I really focused on my blog, but I was never really happy with it. Looking back on my first post makes me laugh and cringe, the level of insight there is pretty minimal, but it was a start, and starts are never perfect.
I was excited for Coming of Age. The book list looked great, even higher expectations that the books I'd read (and enjoyed) the semester before. Then Joyce hit me. How could I expect a book that began "Once upon a time, and a very good time it was" to be such a challenging book. It wasn't just that it was written with pre-1900 Irish slang, it was also the effects Joyce was going for. Catcher was easier, I really like Holden, that was my first and probably favorite pastiche. Black Swan Green was nearly equal on my favorite scale. I started to talk a bit more that semester, though then I felt like, well I'm just a junior in a coming of age class, these senior who will be graduating in a few months must have more personal insights because of where they are in their life. I think this was probably the highlight of my blogs. It was the perfect timing of feeling more comfortable to share my thoughts, and also the drive to write well thought out and meaningful posts.
Over the summer, going into 20th Century Novels, I made it a goal that I was going to talk more. I said to myself-you're a senior now, with two semesters of these types of classes under your belt, you gotta step up. And in a lot of ways I think I did. Not only did the number of comments I made increase, but I think the quality of them by and large did as well. I still remember my favorite comment I made in the entire semester, it was second day of reading The Sun Also Rises, and I described my first impression of Brett Ashley that she was intoxicating. Now I don't know if this was particularly original, but it still stands out, in large part because that was by far my favorite book of the semester, and the description of Brett as having "curves like the hull of a racing yacht" I still can't get out of my mind to be dreadfully honest. I admit, I think my blogs went down a bit, not so much because I didn't have interesting things to say but more because I didn't have as much time or will power to work on them.
And then this semester? Well I don't really know if I have the perspective yet really for good reflection (though would you say any of this reflection has been good?). I mean you were in class with me, you probably know how I was. Talked a lot, even when I didn't really have something to say, kind of lazy on the blogs. Now, if for some strange reason you did read my first blog post, and got all the way to here on this one, you may notice they have similar rigid structuring. This was intentional, I figured, may as well end how you started, really tie this whole blog in one nice big digital literary bow of varying insight. And here and now, forever closes my chapter.
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