my final reflection of the class

Being that this is my 3rd class with Dr. Morris, there is always something new, different, and interesting to learn about. Every semester something that I have observed is that classroom environment is vital to learning within her classroom settings. Rhetoric of Literature is a class that escapes the typical “norms” of other classroom environments. It is a class based on discussion and participation; if you do not have that, what do you have then? Luckily, for the third semester, I believe that Dr. Morris lucked out with a good crop of students. I did not necessarily have a specific reading that I liked best as much as an author. Henry David Thoreau struck me as the most fascinating author read about in class. Personally, I think everyone should have to study Thoreau at least once in their school career. To be honest, the sociologists and many theorists read about from the Rhetoric textbook did not interest me much, but if the class did not have those theorists to reflect off of, it would not be able to be relatable to anything. Thoreau was an author that any person could appreciate at any given time. He wrote things such as the book Walden and his infamous essay, Civil Disobedience. He is known for things such as being one of the few and first transcendentalists. Thoreau was essentially an advocate for nature and survival methods needed for hostile conditions and natural happenings. Indifferent from other authors, he did not appear to be a “dreamer” as much as he came across as a man who had objective thoughts in a subjective state of mind. When saying that I mean that he thought of things that could potentially happen, especially if society forgets that we live in a constantly changing environment. I never quite got the “pushing/persuading” vibe from him as an author. Thoreau was a natural writer, just like he was a natural thinker. Rhetoric of Literature was fulfilled with many similar topics day after day. I did not care for the quizzes, though I understand the purpose of having them. If to keep the quizzes idea, I would change the style of the quick to multiple choice or true or false. Short answer does reflect connective ideals, but most people just wrote something to write something. Also, class discussion was constantly filled with the same ideals being presented over and over. Sometimes I wanted to scream “abortion” just so that the subject would have changed. This class never genuinely got “off topic,” which is odd. To narrow it down, class discussions were fulfilled with people saying things such as “people don’t appreciate or respect nature enough,” or “nature is overlooked.” If anything, I would enforce students to choose topics to follow throughout the course of the semester, just as we did in Advanced Composition. This way, future presentations won’t just be about students standing in front of the class presenting what they read and what we think of it. That got old, real quick. I always like the blogs though; they came in handy for a good vent session. I don’t think it matters what class Dr. Morris ever teaches, she is a phenomenal and passionate educator.