As a transfer student, especially coming out of Covid-induced online learning, I missed a lot of opportunities to meet people and interact with professors in classes. When I first came to SDSU, I thought most classes were going to be interactive the way this class has been. I was a bit disappointed when this was not the case, but I feel lucky that I took this class despite it not tying into my major directly. This class taught me to question what I would never think to question, as nothing is as it seems. In other english classes, I’ve learned to take an authors message and analyze it, but never have I learned to truly “close read” by considering every word, literary device, and grammar/punctuation as intentional. It was a fairly new concept to me but I believe it is an extremely useful analytical skill. On top of learning to close read, I have also learned to consider how different tellings of folklore and fairy tale can use the same story to teach things differently.

Overall, my favorite aspect of the class was my interactions with the class. When doing small group discussions, I felt like I was given completely new perspectives that I didn’t consider during my initial reading of the assigned reading for the week. Small group discussions also gave me the opportunity to see if people could build off of my ideas and help me further my understanding of the text. I have never been one to enjoy reading fiction, as I feel like I gravitate towards memoirs and non-fiction reading, but this class has taught me that I can learn a lot about the world through reading fiction. I like non-fiction because it is a clear indicator of history, but I never considered how fiction can also teach history. This is the last english class I ever have to take, and while it was challenging at some points, I am extremely happy that I got to end with this class, as I feel like it gave me an extremely important skill that is overlooked in a lot of other english classes.