Over this past year, I have seen the strange resemblance of my life with the novels that I have read in English class. I have learned a great deal from the class activities and assignments. The ones that I enjoyed the most are the blogs, poetry, characters from novels as well as the analysis of paintings.
Out of class, I enjoyed working on blogs for assignments. Blogs creates more flexibility in my time schedule. I am in the wrestling team of Malden High School and being part of the team takes up a lot of my personal time. Everyday after school there is wrestling practice and blogs are the types of assignment that allows me to complete it on time. I also like working on blogs where we have to observe an image and get the message it is trying to depict. It is also entertaining to view different videos of English literature. The blog assignments helped me out a lot during the winter season when I was too preoccupied with wrestling.
There is also poetry that the class read from. I appreciate the poetry since it gives me a higher attention span to listen to the class. The poetry is like music to the ears. The way the words are written and placed into sentences gives rhythm and rhyme. It is different from reading from novels or from a math book since all those things are very bland. Poetry packs a larger punch for me since it keeps me awake, and interested, and it is not very easy to get me to be interested in anything in class.
Throughout this year, I enjoyed reading the tragedy Hamlet most by William Shakespeare. I feel that I share many similarities with the character Hamlet. Our personalities resemble greatly and reading the play allowed me to learn more with how to deal with life. I wrestle for wrestling team against other competitors like Hamlet wrestles with his depression and his obsession to avenge for his dead father. Hamlet’s mind was always occupied with trying to take revenge that it causes him to act impulsively. There are many times when wrestling adds pressure to me causing me to act abruptly. Hamlet often struggles with questions of life that cannot be answered with certainty and that applies to me as well. In the tragic play, Hamlet died avenging his father. From this moment on, I came to a conclusion for myself that life should be lived fully. I have thought that Hamlet and I are alike, but I am not living to avenge, I am living to achieve my future goals and succeed in life.
The analysis of the paintings, especially the Landscape with the Fall of Icarus which I enjoyed the most, was very exiting. The reason I enjoy these assignment is because there is no right or wrong answer. It allows me to be creative and play around with the colors, symbols, and figures in the artwork or literature. The paintings are viability more appealing than a paper with just questions and tasks that I must do, the assignments in school are basically bland, paper with words. However, looking at paper with color and images help me to focus better on the task, since it is more eye appealing my eyes will set my mind to finish the assignments. Out of all the assignments in class I enjoyed those with paintings the most.
Overall, I have learned a lot from being in Mr. Gallagher's class. I have improved my writing skills which will be invaluable to me in the future. I have also learned to see works of arts which includes paintings and literature in a different light. Before, I would just stare blankly at works of art but now I have gain some insight into how to see them as more than just images but as thoughts and ideas expressed through colors, shadings, images, and symbols that all add into the theme of the work. The abilities that I have learned in the class will carry forward into my college life. I enjoyed being in Mr. Gallagher's class even though I do not show much excitement during class, but I did enjoy it and I will miss the class when I am gone on internship.
