Being in this FIQWS class was a journey. I had never taken such a diverse class. Not only were the books we were reading different than what I read in AP English and my other English classes but the topics that we talked about was things that I never thought I would have learned in school. From Beyonce lemonade interpretation to the Park Hong discussion of being a Korean immigrant in the US the topics never fail to educate me.
Writing in this class was definitely a struggle at first. The SBE essay was a game changer for me. I was really proud in the first draft essay I had wrote because I was using the methods that I learned in high school. I had believed that the SBE essay was another basic topic, opinion, and sources essay. I was completely wrong. I had completely overlooked the rhetoric part of the assignment and it took me a while and a couple revisions to realize that it’s not about my opinion or completely detail based. It’s about the authors purpose of writing, the audience they are trying to pursue and details that support their rhetorical analysis. It took me a while to adapt my writing skills to a more advanced level in such a short amount of time, but emailing professor Kelly McIntosh and attending some writing center classes helped me to start writing in a more professional and analytical way versus the answer and detail way I was taught in primary and secondary school.
Usually, to relax and unwind I read books on my phone and put myself in whatever world the book is in. But taking this course has opened my eyes without me even realizing. I was reading Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison which is a story about the main character who is seen as a nobody and is almost invisible in the society he lives in. The narrator is a young black man, and he deals with racial and identity stereotypes. While reading I was not only enjoying the book, but I was using the techniques that I learned in this class to not only analyze the writing, but the emotions and reasons for the author using certain words or putting in certain plots. I often found myself question the rhetoric of the book and the diction that the author used to get the narrators story across. Before taking this class I usually just read a book to enjoy and talk about it afterwards, but now I find myself digging deeper into the story and I love it.
Taking this class has been an interesting and enjoyable experience. I love the fact that the Sophie Davis program makes their undergraduate class take this course because it helps to improve the way we think and analyze not just literature but life when we are given different perspectives and narratives. This course allows us to be an empath and really understand the feeling and emotions that the author of a book is trying to portray which will definitely help us in the long run.
