This is New

I'm having a really strange experience in my English class. By which I mean I actually like about 90% of what we've been reading.

A portion of it is things I read in high school-- Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants," Frankenstein-- but otherwise it's pretty new to me. We've read  a lot of works by authors that I'd either heard of but never really got around to reading, or hadn't heard of at all-- Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Amy Tan, and David Foster Wallace all fall into the first category, while Jamaica Kincaid  belongs to the latter.

I love it. After we read Kincaid's "Girl," I even checked out one of her books from the library, Annie John. That's honestly a new experience for me-- I've rarely read something in school that compelled me to read the author's other works.

We're also learning about different critical theories-- also something I did in high school, but now in greater depth. I think we only skimmed the topics of feminist, Marxist, and psychoanalytic theory in my high school, and now I'm learning about post-colonial theory and some others as well. And all of it interests me! With the exception of psychoanalytical theory, I guess, but that's mainly because I hate Freud.

Which is an entirely different story.

Let's not get into that.

My point is, I've never felt like a GE class was totally made for me. I mean, obviously it isn't made for me, but it's really nice to learn about things that directly apply to my own interests. Especially after my disastrous experience in the English class I withdrew from last semester.

Stay classy,

Caitlin.