Response to Course Materials: Reawakening

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern gave me little seizures of sympathy for them, and that is just about the highest praise I could grant them.

We also had some really good insights as we discussed this work in class, and I feel like I have a very solid understanding of the work as a whole. I was also very pleasantly surprised with the movie, and I'll keep the rant about 'good things happen when you let the author have some creative direction of the movie' down to that one sentence. Every now and then Stoppard would play up some things that I hadn't noticed, or thought were irrelevant. I almost felt, actually, that Rosencrantz was played to be a little bit too clown-ish, but I suppose it all went into making the emotional aspect of the play more poignant, and since I was already embroiled in the characters it felt extraneous to me.

While it's nice to be writing more closed prompts, I feel like fate is out to screw us all over. First we had a substitute teacher who was very lax with instructions, then we were interrupted by pizza box stacking underclassmen, and I don't think we've ever sat down and written one out without previous discussion and a lot (a LOT) of hand holding. The practice was great, but in past experience, the only way to feel truly secure about something hard is to throw yourself to the wolves beforehand so that the actual test doesn't feel like it's difficult. I've had that done to me for instrumental things, and in past AP's and it has worked every single time, so in its absence I'm getting kind of twitchy.

I also have a hugely bad habit in my essay writing that I am finding it impossible to shake. I tend to write a thesis, barf up my evidence, and then warrant it all in the second to last paragraph. In theory I understand the basic structural needs of an essay, but I don't think I have ever managed to fulfill them naturally on a first draft. Even with this closed prompt, when I was actively thinking about it, I got peer-scored a 5, which was a bit of a blow to my pride. Hopefully the edit will be better, although I can honestly make no promises. I think I just assume my train of thought should be clear by the evidence I provide. Or something.

It's just very hard to fix something in a timed scenario that you can't possibly notice yourself doing until you've edited it about 3 days later.

On a happier note, I'm enjoying Ceremony thus far. Truth be told I could sit and listen to Native American (or any kind of) legends all day and be perfectly content, so the context for this book was awesome to hear about, and being able to catch it immediately afterward was pretty satisfying, even if we were kind of led into it by the nose. Again, though, I suffered the problem of being-read-aloud-to and not being able to stop and think and digest in my own time.

Maybe one day I'll get tired of circling circles in the novel and the colors will wear me out, but for now I'm excited to read more of Ceremony- although good grief it's a fast turnaround to read an entire book in less than a week when 2 other huge assignments were also due in the same class.

Cough.