Week 6: Famous Last Words

So this week was a bit tough for me. It started on Monday, when I burned the midnight oil until about four in the morning writing an essay over The Grapes of Wrath for my class, along with doing some last minute reading and response paper writing. Like all the late night writing experiences I've had, it was tough to push through and do the things I needed to do when my brain is not functioning at full capacity, but I gritted my teeth and finished everything. I thought my paper turned out pretty well, and just in the process of writing the essay I found myself learning about and appreciating the nuances of Steinbeck's book more. This, in my opinion, is ultimately what such writing is for. As we gather the evidence for our essay and endeavor to validate our argument, at the same time we should be learning more about the work we are writing about and growing to see more clearly what the author was intent on doing at the same time. Not every writing experience has done this for me, but this one did. I felt accomplished having written the paper. Here's to hoping I made a decent grade!

The other tough thing that happened to me this week was having to read a large portion of a historical fiction book entitled Fire in Beulah for Thursday. Now while the book itself was fairly interesting, the fact that I hadn't started reading it yet and the Thursday assignment was to read 126 pages of it left me daunted. I read a little bit of the book the Wednesday before, and decided to reserve some time to get as far as I could in it the morning of the next day since the class doesn't start until 12:00. I set my alarm for around nine with the intention of getting up and logging in at least a few more hours of reading, but either my alarm never went off or I just didn't hear it, because I ended up waking up at ten. In the end all I could do was skim as much as I could and hope that the professor didn't have a mind to give out a quiz. Despite my panic over not being where I was supposed to be in the book, I made it through all right and determined to catch up over the weekend. I'm hoping to at least get to page 200 before Tuesday's class. There's nothing more nerve-wracking to me that coming to class and not being fully prepared!

Things in this class are going pretty well, I'd say. My most recent blog story, "Yamato and the Demon Boar," is one of the better re-tellings I've written so far, in my opinion. I thought the use of a frame structure that allowed for me to explore the theme of loyalty vs. self-aggrandizement worked out pretty smoothly in the story. I also feel pretty happy with my storybook site, which I was able to make look a little more distinctive by messing around with the site layout and adding a neat banner at the bottom. I'm pretty satisfied with the introduction I wrote, and I am really looking forward to writing about one of my favorite mythological heroes ever, ranking right up there with King Arthur and Gawain (which, given my love for Arthurian mythology, is no small compliment).

Penguins! (Wikipedia Commons)