As the Covid-19 pandemic has moved many colleges to online learning, something I have failed to think about recently is what high school, middle school, and elementary age students are continuing their education.  For many college students, to adjustment from on campus learning to distance learning is a matter self motivation and having the technology to keep up.  My university was very helpful to students who did not have access to the different programs or technology they needed to complete a course.  They lended out laptops to these student to make sure they were able to complete their semester online.  This has had me wondering about younger students and how they are completing their educational year.

For high school and middle school students, most are capable of completing online assignments from home during this unpredictable time.  But public schools don’t always have the resources that private schools and colleges do, to help students who don’t have the technology or internet at home.  Even if a school did have laptops that they could lend to students, it wouldn’t be helpful for a student who doesn’t have internet access at home.  Discipline is also potentially a problem.  Unless a young student is particularly motivated or a parent is making sure their child is completing their distance learning work, what would motivate a student to do their work?  It is also important to wonder if there are any consequences for not doing their work?

Then too there is elementary school students.  I believe that maybe third, fourth, and fifth grade students could be capable of completing online assignments with the help of a parent.  However, what if there isn’t a supportive parent or guardian around to help this student?  It is also important to consider kindergarten through second grade students who are learning important basic life skills such as reading and writing, and addition and subtraction.  These students are sometimes exposed to using computers but most would be incapable of completing online assignments without a parent’s help.  So my question continues to be, what are these students doing since they are not in school right now?

Though this time in our lives is uncertain and quite trying for many people, I wonder how this break in schooling will effect the generation currently in primary education.  The reality is that education is already inequitable in the United States; but how far behind will students who have essentially had three extra months off of school fall?  History has shown literacy as in (reading and writing ability) was taught and distributed differently to maintain socioeconomic levels (Mills, 57).  And now that digital literacy is in play, it appears the United states is experiencing a similar repeat of division.

For those who can’t afford it, or those who don’t have adequate support at home to continue to learn will surely fall further behind while those in the opposite circumstances will thrive.  To be more specific, those with wealth will thrive while those in poverty will lose another educational opportunity and suffer for it.  Formal education is apart of a larger institution that combines multimodal products such as advertisements, popular culture, social media, family life, etc; that contribute to someone gaining knowledge or becoming educated (Mills, 57).  All of these things are created to serve the larger class based structure the United States has.

In other words, the students that are already attending impoverished schools and have many disadvantages already will suffer a great consequence.  Those with wealth will continue to stride further ahead with their new online educational abilities.  The gap between the rich and the poor will increase without a doubt as many students have missed out on almost a half of a years worth of education.  It won’t just be reading, writing, and math capabilities that suffer; but abilities in technology that have not been learned by those without access.

Mills, Kathy. Literacy Theories for the Digital Age: Social, Critical, Multimodal, Spatial, Material and Sensory Lenses. Multilingual Matters, 2016.

Something I have been struggling with recently, is just how crazy the news is!  This is a topic that I struggle to even talk about.  The media is supposed to tell us what is going on in the world, our country, our states, or our towns.  Now, it would be impossible for news outlets to be completely unbiased, but it would be really nice to just get the facts without the partisan political fluff that suffocates them.  I understand that 2020 is an election year, and that only about half the country likes the current present that is running again for reelection. But the responses from news sources is to either try to get him reelected or to try and bash him.  Thats not news, thats taking sides and right now there is something else going on in the world that is negatively affecting every single person in this country directly; but the media is continuing on in politics.

Everyone is entitled to their own political views, but when I read some news articles, I feel like my opinion is already decided for me.  I want to be able to simply read what is happening and make my own decision on where I stand.  I don’t want to have to sit for hours at a time sifting through numerous articles from different media outlets that are reporting on the same topic.  Some leave things out, others add extra information in, but they all curve the story to go along with whichever political agenda they support.  By the way, there are only two big ones; JUST TWO!  There are 327.2 million people in the United States and numerous problems to be solved, departments to be overseen, security to worry about, and so much more.  How can 327.2 MILLION people take all of the different issues that surround our country and cohesively divide them into two sections?

What if you are pro gun control but also pro life?  One of those stances belongs to the democrats, and the other belongs to the republicans; so which party should this person pick?  I know it’s a lot more complicated than this, much more complicated than just two parties can take on.  Think about this, would this country crash and burn if we didn’t have political parties?  I think about this way too often, but every four years we elect a new leader for this country.  Every four years about half the country is satisfied, and the other half puts up with it until the next election roles around.  The 2016 election was the first election I was able to vote in and it made me never want to vote again.  I watched as this country truly ripped itself apart over the last four years because of one person and because one of the sides won.

Okay, so this president is different to say the least, but like it or not he’s the president right now and you will get a chance to elect someone else in couple of months.  So instead of leaving out information, covering key facts with opinions and fluff, or reporting without all the information; the media should report the news exactly as it is and as it happens.  I don’t particularly care what the news outlet’s political opinions is, I care about my own, and I struggle to form my own opinions when reading articles that shove biased information down my throat.  327.2 million people means 327.2 million opinions on each and ever single thing in this world.  At what point is only having two sides not enough?  Please stop judging, harassing, unfriending, and unfollowing people because you don’t share their opinion on something, because the collective set of opinions you have belong to no one other than you.  So when will we stop pretending that there are only two answers to how this country should be run and when will we start listening and respecting each person’s ideas and opinions regardless of our own?

Today, I read two articles from NBC that terrified me but in very different ways.  The first was titled, The Corona Virus Drove Life Online. It May Never Return. This title alone was enough to make me panic, but after reading the whole article, there really is not any indication that life will remain online after the pandemic ends.  Life as we know it has moved online almost entirely in recent weeks.  Colleges across the country are conducting classes online, people are working from home online if they can, and when things get boring there is always social media, news outlets, and streaming sites to visit.

That being said, this article brought up a really interesting point about about how this internet extravaganza could contribute to more inequality.  Which is of course just was this country needs more of (I say sarcastically).  For many of us, we take for granted our uninterrupted internet access but the fact of the matter is that about 44% of the United States doesn’t have in home internet (Abbruzzese, 2020).  This is in the United States, a first world country, and yet nearly half our population does’t have access to the internet at home. What does that mean for the college students who were utilizing on campus resources such as computers, printers, and the internet; or Americans who can no longer go to work but can’t work from their homes because they don’t have internet?

Everyone seems to be caught up in their online, internet wold; but 44% of this country alone does not have an internet world right now.  This made me step back and look at my situation a little differently.  I am very lucky to have what I have, and to live where I live but I have struggled tremendously when things began to close down.  I couldn’t imagine where I would be if I didn’t have the access that I have to technology.  However, technology shouldn’t be what is getting us through the pandemic.  Pennsylvania is under a stay at home order until April 30, which isn’t the greatest, but this order does permit outdoor exercise!  This is great for people to go for a walk and get some fresh air while also getting away from the internet… well kind of.

The second article from NBC was called, Google Tracked His Bike Ride Past a Burglarized Home.  That Made Him A Suspect (Schuppe, 2020).Just like Zackary McCoy, I use an app on my phone to help track how far I run and bike, but unfortunately poor McCoy biked passed the scene of a crime.  Again, after reading the title of the article I became slightly panicked but after reading the whole article, I became rather impressed.  Many people worry about conspiracy’s like, “the government has all of our online data” but I really don’t think they do.  Big internet cooperations like Google and Facebook definitely do, and this article from NBC details how law enforcement can acquire some of this data to help with their investigation, while not entirely violating everyone’s privacy.

While it’s a little eery that there is all of this data out there that never goes away, I think it’s good for technology to be used in this way.  The police had to get a war-rent from google so they could track what cell phone activity was happening near by.  Only when they found activity near by did google release the name of account holder.  Essentially, nobody’s privacy is breeched except for the person who is now considered a suspect.  It’s a great way for technology to become an addition in law enforcement.  If this is a way for more crimes to be solved, then how can you not be for it?

So I guess even when we take a break from quarantine to get some fresh air, we still take our technology with us.  This might be something to think about while we are stuck alone together on the internet during this quarantine.

 

The topic of our class the last few days has been the five cannons of rhetoric given to us by Aristotle.  The five cannons are: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery.  These cannons are considered to be the foundation of argumentation (haha a rhyme).  As we discuss each one and why they are important in speech and writing, I have begun to think about how I write.  In truth, I have always struggled to focus my mind; especially when the topic of my writing is something that I am genuinely interested in.  My desire, is to present all possible information out there from every side.  I have trouble pulling my focus in and only arguing or presenting one or two specific ideas.  My hope and my goal is to use these five cannons in my next writing assignment to see if they help me focus my writing more than it has been in the past.

Recently, we have been assigned a five page paper on where Aristotle’s Rhetorical Theory shows up in our writing on social media.  When I first received this prompt, I had no idea where I would start.  Originally, what went through my mind was all of these questions that I wanted to answer through my research on this topic.  Unfortunately, this is what I meant when I said I have trouble focusing my mind.  My solution for this, was to try focusing on the five cannons of rhetoric to help shape and organize my paper.

The first cannon is invention.  Luckily, I don’t have to invent my topic but I do have to invent the argument I am going to use.  I started to ask the simple yet important questions of who is my audience, what do they already know, and what do I want them to know after reading my paper.  Through these questions, it allowed me to find my end goal before I haven started writing.  This is something I had never done, or at least had never done well in the past.  I let the other various questions that I personally wanted to answer get in the way of the one specific thing I wanted my readers to walk away with.

The second cannon is arrangement.  This is something else I have struggle with during the writing process.  Truthfully, I believe it is simply something I overlook sometimes.  Once I know what I’m arguing and the examples I’m going to use; I don’t give much thought to the order in which they go.  With arrangement, I learned to put a strong but not my best example first and my absolute strongest example last.  This implores me to be more thoughtful in what I write.  It makes me question which example is my strongest and will help my reader get to what I want them to know by the end.  Then there is the matter of what goes in the middle, which is probably one of my strongest attributes; seeing the other side of the argument.  I am a very understanding person because I am usually very able to see why someone feels the way they do or why something is the way it is.  What I lack in, is how to dispute it.  I realized though, that disputing doesn’t mean discrediting, because every argument has a valid other side, but what I need to do instead is simply recognize that there is another side.  Once I have done this, I can continue to support my own argument.

These first two cannons alone have contributed what I hope to positive changes in how I write in the future.  The struggles I have with focusing and organizing my writing I am all too aware of, but did not have the tools to fix these problems.  Moving forward, I will continue to uses these first two cannons of rhetoric to help me focus and organize my writing, and I will continue to analyze the last three: style, memory, and delivery; to further improve my writing.

 

Back in October of 2019, I wrote a blog about technology in classrooms.  When I was in high school, my school district was lucky to receive a government grant that provided all students in grades six through twelve with a Google Chrome Book.  I have always felt that technology can be a useful tool to both students and teachers.  With this resource at our fingertips it gave all students a technological advantage that many other schools and students didn’t have.  It also allowed teachers to become more creative with their lessons; incorporating digital learning and online student collaboration.  While I didn’t realize the gift that my school had been given at the time, or even back in October, I am now beginning to understand what a tremendous opportunity this was for the students and teachers at my high school.

What Big Spring School District and now many other schools had begun was “new literacies.”  Formerly, literacy was simply a question of if you can read and write; however, today new literacies involve far more.  In the digital age we live in today, there is no longer just paper books and writing with a pencil.  We have all of these new technologies and applications that each come with their own standard of literacy, or usage proficiency.  I am also, not simply discussing computers and cell phones, but instead the many platforms available to read, write, create, and share content that these devices provide.  Social applications such as Twitter, Tik Tok, Facebook, and Instagram all have specific ways in which they are socially acceptable to be used.  Online news outlets and blogs have a specific ways in which they should be read and understood.

The problem becomes, with so much information and technology out there, how is one expected to learn these new standards of literacy?  William Kist elaborates on this topic in his book, New Literacies in Action: Teaching and Learning Multiple Media.  Kist seeks out teachers who are actively incorporating multiple media into ever day learning.  He specifically would eliminate teachers for his research that only did one or two projects throughout the year using multiple media.  He instead wanted to find teachers who are using multiple media in the classroom EVERY DAY!  This is incredibly important because schools are supposed to educate you and help to prepare you for the outside world, but the world is changing and changing quickly.  Employers who are hiring my generation now EXPECT their employees to be digitally literate.  Though everyone born from about 1995 and onward is considered a digital native, most are not technologically savvy.

Essentially, literacy needs to be redefined and taught differently in today’s world.  In Literacy Theories for the Digital Age: Social, Critical, Multimodal, Spacial, Material, and Sensory Lenses; Kathy Mills presents her research on the importances of digital literacy.  “Our research highlights the need for a reordering of time, space, and text to embed multimodal design into conventional literacy curricula.”  She introduces a reoccurring pedagogy cycle of linking, co-creating, challenging, and sharing (Mills, 11).   These four parts are used to develop a model for practice in how to teach multimodal literacy.

Unfortunately, obstacles such as standardized testing makes it difficult to embark on such a transformation of curricula.  However, if there ever was a time for it, the time is certainly now.  “In the age of the ‘global home’ literacy practices of the past are reduced in their power to determine the practices of the future” (Mills, 1).  In my opinion, the future practices are already here.  As I said previously, employers of today EXPECT a high level of digital literacy.  Unfortunately there are very few teachers who are open minded enough to teach new literacies.  There is also an unfortunate assumption from older generations that everyone in Generation Z comes preprogramed with digital literacy but that simply is not the case.  There needs to be a change that occurs in our education curricula; without it, students of today will not meet the high standards expected of them in digital literacy.

On Tuesday, I began my eighth semester at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania.  This should be my last semester, but some bumps in the road and a few instances of changing my major led me to one extra semester.  Though I will be here a little longer than I would have liked to be, all of the struggles I have faced and overcome are apart of my journey; and I believe I am better and stronger for them.  Without them, I would most likely be finishing a major that I was uninterested in and heading toward a job that I would be miserable doing.  In December of 2020, I am excited to say I will be graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in English with a concentration in digital rhetoric and professional writing, as well as a minor in graphic design.  Since I started my journey toward an English degree I have loved my classes, enjoyed the reading, writing, and creating I have done, and for the first time in my life I have enjoyed learning.

This semester I am taking a class titled Rhetoric and Professional Writing.  After my first day in this class, I became nervous.  My professor introduced the idea that rhetoric involves politics and religion; two things I was told to never talk about.  Everyone possesses different beliefs and opinions but my professor wants us to be able to not only discuss our beliefs and opinions, but own them.  He wants us to be okay with what out beliefs and opinions are, and be able to openly and respectfully communicate with one another despite our differences.

I am specifically nervous to discuss politics.  I have never been one to enjoy watching the news though I will sometimes read it.  I find that I feel like I’m never really given the truth from the media or our government.  I also feel as though I am one person, so how can I make any kind of effective change.  That being said, I struggle to have opinions about our government and the way certain things are handled or carried out.  Biased media outlets make it hard to find out what is actually truthful because so much is swept under the rug or goes unconsidered due to party and political interest.

Our first assignment for this class is to read as much as we can about the current impeachment trial of the president of the United States.  I have begun my research by finding the official Articles of Impeachment drafted by the House of Representatives so I could know exactly what the president is being charged with.  With each charge I then decided to look directly into legal documents in order to see if the charges actually hold merit.  This presents a variety of problems.  The first is that the president isn’t a regular citizen so most of my research has come from other investigations and trials of impeachments of other presidents. The second is that there is no clear definition of what an impeachable offense actually is.

Our constitution defines impeachable offenses to be the conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes or misdemeanors.  All of these offenses remain rather vague and are further blurred by Gerald Ford when he said, “an impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.”  Our constitution also gives the House of Representatives the sole power of impeachment.  For me, as I am reading through all of this I feel like congress and the executive branch must spend a lot of time fighting one another rather than trying to work together to do what is best for not themselves, or their parties, but the American people as a whole.

My opinion is still not made up on whether the president should be impeached or not, and I have quite a bit more research and learning to do on this matter.  In class we will be holding our own impeachment trial, and through our research, we will have to choose a side and defend our thoughts and beliefs on this trial.  It is truly important to me that I know as much as I possibly can about this matter before I make my decision.  Though as I said before, bias media outlets and articles that promote party interests make it difficult to decipher the truth.

As a college student, I have access to a wide variety of technological resources.  I have my own personal laptop and cell phone and my apartment has wifi.  The school provides me access to a graphic design lab with the use of Adobe creative cloud, a library with several research databases, and professional development tools such as Linked in Learning and Handshake.  Not only do I have all of this technology at my fingertips here at my college, but I also grew up with a computer at home, computers in my school, and when I got to high school, every student received a Chromebook.  I cannot remember a time in my life when technology was not a part of my education.  Yet, for many students across the country, the technology in their schools is out of date or nonexistent.  Many students also do not have technology or access to the internet at home.  As I begin the process of applying to Teach for America I have realized that the technology I grew up using in the classroom might not exist for the students I will be teaching.  This is problematic on many levels because technology is important to have and learn throughout primary and secondary school because technology is no longer the future it is the present.

It is unfortunate how expensive the most current technology is now days.  Many schools are stuck with old out of date computers and when it comes time to buy something new, they can almost never afford the most current models.  In a world where technology is constantly advancing, what good is it doing our students to learn outdated computers and programs.  As I mentioned, my high school received a grant to purchase every student from sixth to twelfth grade Chromebooks.  While this provided students with access to a personal computer and every google application out there, they did not allow students to learn industry standard programs or even have access to the internet at home.  While google apps are simple and very helpful, most companies utilize Microsoft programs and for specific industries, Adobe programs.  Microsoft and Google programs have many similarities and it is usually simple to adjust to one after learning the other, but Adobe has no such similarities.

As a student of Graphic design, I did not encounter Adobe programs until I was in college.  My family didn’t have access to them due to expense, and my high school simply didn’t offer digital design courses.  Some students have more luck with this than others depending on their school, but for an industry as large as graphic design, why aren’t we introducing students to this at a younger age?  The reason is expense, yet we are putting our students at a disadvantage by not providing and utilizing modern technology in the classroom.  Beyond just graphic design, many industries utilize technology in a verity of different forms.  In almost every professional and entry level job now days, basic computer skills are required.  Also, if students want to continue to higher education or technical school they need to know how to use basic technology.  Yet many schools are struggling to incorporate this into the classroom.

An obstacle for many schools and students is that everything is so expensive, especially educational tools, but also education itself.  It is easy to say that people who come from money have more opportunities than those who don’t, and maybe this is true.  The reality however is that our public education system is so unbalanced across the United States that students aren’t getting equal education.  Is this fair? Should this be changed?  I would certainly like to see this change so all students no matter what socioeconomic background they come from have the same opportunities in education.

 

Currently I am working on two proposals for two different classes in what seems like two completely different careers.  The first proposal is to research a company that I would want to work for some day in the professional writing or graphic design field, and the second is to research lesson plans and create a portfolio of teaching materials that I design.  I am not an education major but I have determined that I am interested in doing Teach for America after I graduate.  After performing research in both areas I have determined that I have absolutely no idea what I want to do when I graduate.  This has directed me to asses many of the why’s for each interest.  Why professional writing?  Why graphic design?  Why teaching?  It is through these questions that I was able to determine one area that I should focus my research on for both of my classes.

The first question is why professional writing.  I was asked this question on my first day of my writing in the professions class.  My answer then was that writing is a form of creating and creativity is what I’m good at.  The only problem is that I’m not truly fond of writing.  I enjoy journaling, creative writing and critical analysis, but research writing is something I actually hate doing.  So then I decided to ask, what is professional writing?  There is really no clear answer to this question but I think professional writing includes anything that is published.  These might include books, magazines, websites, and academic journals.  Following this, it was time for me to really think about if sitting at a desk all day and writing for various outlets is what I want to do.  My answer was no, so it was time to move onto the next question.

The second question is why graphic design?  I really enjoy structured things, and one of my favorite things to do in graphic design is to design layouts for a verity of media.  This includes poster design, magazine layouts, and web design.  Recently, I have learned basic html and CSS code and it has quickly become something I genuinely enjoy doing.  I have to admit, graphic web design is something I could see myself doing in the future, but there is something that this career is missing for me.  My passion lies in helping people and with graphic design I am providing a service but I am not working with people and I am not really helping people.

My last question is why teaching?  From where I am as a twenty-one-year-old college senior to where I was as an eighteen-year-old high school senior; I have changed tremendously.  Looking back, one thing that I wish I had in high school was a mentor.  Someone in the professional world, outside of my parents that I could go to for advice about college and a career.  This along with my experience working with middle and high school students over the summer has led me to considering a career in education.  Why teaching?  Because I am passionate about helping students find the right path for them; because I want to be a mentor for students.

In conclusion, the non-profit I have decided to research for both of my classes is Teach for America.  Writing in the professions will help me create essays and application materials while my special topics graphic design portfolio will contain lesson plans, work sheets, and projects that will help me during my interview process.  My preferences for teach for America would be to teach middle school English in the Nashville/Chattanooga region.  During the summer of 2019 I had the opportunity to work with middle and high school students that traveled to Nashville for an urban mission trip.  I know the city well, and know a lot about the problems Nashville’s public school system faces.  I also volunteered at a summer program in a low income neighborhood in Nashville that worked with first through fourth grade students.  I would love to go back to Nashville and continue to work in and help the city.

Writing is always such a daunting task.  Your professor or teacher assigns a paper and sometimes it feels like you stair at that little black line, blinking on your blank document for hours before you can come up with a single thing to write.  Though this kind of paper is just a school assignment, so it’s just another thing to get done, right?  Maybe if you want to just drift through your life.  What I mean by this is, there is difference between letting life happen to you and actually being involved in what is happening in your life.

Over the past weekend my professor had my class read a document called “Claiming an Education” which talks about how going to college doesn’t guarantee your education, but instead the effort and work you put into learning will determine your education.  I also attended church on Sunday and the sermon was, in very shortened terms, about actively pursuing a relationship with God.  These two very separate things for some reason connected in my head.

Every day I work on my relationship with God, whether that is going to church on Sunday morning, taking time to journal or pray, or reading scripture.  Every day I do not work on my relationship with my education.  Monday through Friday are school days but weekends are for fun.  Often for me, a paper is just something I have to get done, another grade to help me pass another class, that brings me one step closer to graduating.  Half the time though, I finish a paper and as soon as its done I forget everything I was writing about.  After a test, I rarely retain most of the information because it was just another grade, to pass another class, to bring me one step closer to graduation.  If I go on like this and graduate, what will I have actually learned in college?  Or an even bigger question might be, will I actually be prepared for the professional world?  The answer is definitely no.

What I am getting at, is that I haven’t exactly been claiming my education.  With three semesters left of school, I realize I have been letting my education happen to me, rather than being involved in my education.  In this class and a few others I am taking this semester, I have the opportunity to develop professional documents and designs to present to future employers.  I also have the opportunity to learn something new that will help me somewhere in my life but I have to be the one who chooses to work hard at my education because no one else is going to do it for me.

What does working hard on my education mean for my last few semesters?  Setting goals is always a good place to start.  I don’t know exactly where I am headed in the professional world but I know the journey I am on will give me a wide verity of skills and options once I leave Bloomsburg.  My goals for this semester in my writing in the professions class is to get a better idea of the kind of work I want to do when I graduate.  I want to research topics that genuinely interest me and actually learn about these topics rather than just writing another paper.

With graduation in sight,  I not only have the goal of claiming my education but claiming my life.  I don’t want my life to just happen, I want to make things happen and this begins with my education here at Bloomsburg.  This is the place where it will all start, developing skills needed in the professional world but also developing good relationships, good decision making skills, and hard working habits.  Deciding on a career and doing the work to make it possible.  Living every day to the fullest, learning something new each day and poring into others because sharing knowledge, life, and love is something we all need and desire. Claiming my life begins with claiming my education.

 

For my final blog while in my class, The Bible as Literature class, I wanted to reflect on some of the unexpected things that I have learned in this class.  I’ve learned a lot about the bible; how it was written, when it was written, the different categories of the bible, and so much more, but the unexpected was how much I learned about myself and about life.  From day one my professor stressed that we needed to take control of our education, think critically and be thoughtful about what we write.  As I went through the class I truly kept all of these things in mind and as time went by, I was so surprised not only at how much I was learning and retaining, but at how much more I was enjoying learning.  School always used to be a chore for me, but taking control of my education has been the best thing I’ve ever done for myself.

There are always days where my mind seems to just shut off, and thinking critically, or even trying to do a reading assignment seemed undoable, but every day sitting in class motivated me, because it made me think.  This wasn’t the kind of class I could just slide through, and take notes on the PowerPoint up on the board.  Every day in class I had to actively pay attention and be engaged, not only so I could learn but because I was interested.  It was the kind of class that I left every day with so many more questions than I had answers.  It was the type of class I was scared to miss because of how much information I would miss, but also the type of class I didn’t want to miss, because I wanted to know that information.

It was also one of the hardest and most demanding classes I have ever take.  We were asked to do quite a few writing assignments, keep up with reading, watch movies, and write reviews on those movies.  I will not complain about a single assignment though, because through each one I learned something new.  As I said previously I learned a lot about the Bible, but I also learned things that helped me grow my faith, and discovered how much I enjoy writing (maybe not writing big research essays, but movie reviews and blogs are fun).

I think one of my favorite assignments that were required of us was watching different movies about the life of Jesus; some based on the bible, and some based on other literature.  At first, I thought my professor was just telling us to watch movies and write a review, but after the second one I realized there was an underlying objective.  We were watching movies mad at different times throughout history and in our reviews, it was the hope that we would understand how art reflects the culture in which it was made.  It was like taking a journey through the Christian history in America from 1960 to 2000.  This was one of my favorite assignments because I didn’t know how America viewed Christianity in the past.

Overall this is the best class I’ve ever taken in my college career, and the things I learned I will keep with me for the rest of my life.  I’m so grateful that I discovered this class because it has been one of the best things for me.