Scavenger hunt

          The third week of Sweenglish class was not at all what I had expected it to be, although I will admit that I was relieved to have somewhat of a break. During class on Monday, we participated in a scavenger hunt so that we could become better acquainted with our library and its resources. After our groups had found all of the things on our lists, we had to share what we found with the rest of the class so that we could all know a few new things about the library. Thankfully on Wednesday, school was cancelled because of the snow. During the snow day I could’ve spent the day being productive and getting some of my homework out of the way but instead I just relaxed with my dog and watched a movie or two. Once we came back to class on Friday we had to discuss “The Chrysanthemums” because the wonderful snow day had put us a little behind. Like most other stories that we had read this far, “The Chrysanthemums” was an odd story that was a little hard to understand. After a long class discussion about trying to interpret this story, the class decided that the woman in this story was bothered by the fact that her husband did not see who she really was but instead only who she appeared to be on the outside.

No days off

            The second week of Sweeney’s English 102 class began on with a day off of school because of MLK Day, which sadly, I spent working my life away at the carnival (Shoe Carnival) like usual.

In class on Wednesday, “The Yellow Wallpaper” was the story that was up for discussion. In this short story, a woman who suffered from a slight depression and some anxiety problems, was taken on a summer vacation by her husband. He wanted their vacation to be almost like a treatment for her, she was especially not supposed to work or write. But as the story began, she was completely intrigued by the huge house, especially one room in particular. The room that she had become so fascinated with became a reason for her to write in her journal because her husband would not listen to her curiosities about the room. She believes that there is a woman trapped in the wallpaper and quickly became extremely bothered by it and decided to lock herself in the room so that she could set the woman free by ripping the wallpaper off. When her husband realized what she was doing he tried to stop her. Apparently when he finally got the door open, he fainted in the doorway. His wife’s last words in the story were “I had to creep over him every time!” which left me with a creepy but curious feeling.

Elephants are my favorite animals but “Hills Like White Elephants” was definitely not one of my favorite stories that we have read so far for class. This story was simple, although I will admit that it annoyed me. It was pretty much just a conversation between two people who I had assumed to be a couple that took place at a train station bar while they waited. What I gathered from this story was that the female character was pregnant and was unsure about whether or not she was going to keep the baby or not. She seemed to be making her decisions based off of what the male character wanted. That’s what mostly annoyed me about this story, even though the two characters were probably a couple I think that the woman should have made her own decision without letting somebody else influence her.

Welcome back to school :-(

As a long and wonderful winter break ended, a very interesting English class began. I had heard great things about Sweeney’s English classes and I was determined to have him as a teacher for English 102, so here I am now. After the first day in class I quickly realized that his English class was not like others that I had taken in the past. On the first day, we discussed the syllabus, our grade contract and blogging. For Sweeney’s class, it was required that we create a blog and keep up with it weekly. I was already familiar with a blogging website called tumblr but I never really wrote too often on my personal blog, I mostly reblogged pictures instead. 

According to the schedule given to us on the first day of class, we were to read “How to Become a Writer” to discuss in class on Wednesday. This short story was hands down one of the weirdest stories that I had read in a while. The main character in the story had a dream of becoming a writer but she ended up finding out that she wasn't as good at writing as she wanted to be. Reading the story was difficult to do because it had many incomplete sentences and thoughts that were sometimes random and didn't always go along with the story itself, but I guess the flow of the story went along with the way that she wrote her own stories. Most of the stories that she wrote lacked a plot and had bizarre encounters with death. The next story we read was “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven”, and even though that story was also a little strange, it was a lot more interesting than the previous. It made more sense than “How to Become a Writer” just in the title alone. The main character was an Indian who could be represented by Tonto, while the white race could be represented by the Lone Ranger, lastly “Fistfight in Heaven” stands for the struggles that the main character faces in his dreams.

After the first week back to school, I may not be overly excited to be back but I am excited to see what Sweeney's English 102 class has in store for me this semester!