Self-improvement, at least for me, is something that seems very difficult to achieve. To better one’s self and to grow as an individual is something people always strive to achieve. However, this process of growth is more difficult to achieve than people give it credit for. This is because it requires the participant to reflect upon their past mistakes and to create a foundation of wisdom based upon the lessons those experiences taught them. It is only human to conduct an action that was wrong or misguided, yet I always wondered why it is so difficult for me to confront these errors of judgment. I had yet to learn the reason until I had entered college and indulged in a variety of courses that would alter my perception of how I lived my life.
English 203 was one of the courses that made a great impact on my growth as a person and as a writer. The format of this course challenged me to effectively utilize criticism as a practice to elicit questions and to understand what it means to “unpack” a literary work. Since my freshman year, the majority of my courses have been in the fields of either math or science. In either subject, there was not much space to inquire about the information in the scientist’s research. These courses focused on having students understand fundamental concepts and memorize the facts derived from those concepts. For example, in a genetics class I had taken, students were taught to not question Mendel’s Law of Segregation nor attempt to interpret it in ways aside from how the theory was meant to be explained. The practice of literary criticism is something that I am very rusty at since I never really had the chance to exercise it in these other courses. This is why the earlier part of the semester for English 203 had been very challenging for me. The works of literature were complex and challenging. There were no concrete instructions as to how exactly how I was supposed to interpret the text since each work could be interpreted in a multitude of ways. This is evident in all of Percival Everett’s works that were covered throughout the course. The author’s work such as in Re: f(gesture) and I Am Not Sidney Poitier, provided a complicated story while leaving certain aspects of the story to the reader’s interpretation. Trying to understand what Everett was denoting to or the references he was making in his literary work was difficult in and of itself. So, when I was tasked to practice constructive criticism and establish connections with his work, I was at a loss. How was I going to demonstrate any ability to critically analyze text if I had no idea what the author was even talking about? In these moments, I felt very discouraged and I feared that I would not be able to grasp the topics at the same speed as my peers. With the addition of the writing blog posts, I felt like I was in very deep waters. As I previously mentioned in one of my previous blogs posts titled, The Hermit’s Blog, I do not partake in social media unless it is an absolute necessity. Utilizing social media to communicate and share my ideas regarding the themes or topics discussed in the course was an act very foreign to me.
The creation of my first blog post, Miscommunication in “I Am Not Sidney Poitier”, took me forever to post. I was so proud of the connections I had made between the literary work and my grandmother. However, I could not get myself to post it onto the website until weeks later. As the semester went on, I learned why it was hard for me to commit to posting. I did not want to face the mistakes that could be brought up through this assignment because I believed that these blunders would reveal how flawed I am. However, this was not the right way to interpret the purpose of reflection and criticism. By practicing how to interpret literary works in class and constantly receiving feedback from my peers and professor, I discovered the true value of my mistakes. Instead of rejecting failure, I should embrace it because it is through learning from my mistakes that I can improve my skills as a writer. Once I overcame this fear, ideas began to flow through me. I was able to compare the majority of the ideas from the literary works with scientific sources since these sources were what I was exposed to more. In many of my posts, like Thermodynamics Versus Justice and What’s wrong with your eye, I utilized outside fundamental principles in chemistry, physics, and biology to understand the literary works discussed in class. This application allowed me to better grasp the text more clearly since I was able to incorporate a scientific source and correlate it to a specific theme. This process also let me test my current knowledge on the chosen scientific subjects, which was quite exhilarating. Although writing these posts was difficult due to the intensive research involved, I was not as fearful to receive feedback as I was when I wrote my first post. The post, Big Bang and Logic, was another scientific post I had uploaded onto the website, but it was honestly not my best work. I had only scratched the surface in explaining how I believed that the rat and specks of dust in the poem, Logic, symbolized the creation of the Big Bang. As a result, my post failed to reach the potential it could have achieved if I had “unpacked” more. I took this shortcoming and worked harder in my next post to prevent history from repeating itself. By accepting my error, I was able to convert my past mistakes into stepping stones for future success. In that next post, Lorraine and Seven Men, I was able to successfully unravel the theme of death and how it is not the end. To explain this concept, I applied it to personal experience, which is something I would never have publicized in the past.
The poem, “Body“, by Percival Everett was one of my greatest inspirations for some of my blog posts, such as Anatomy or A Maze. I love anatomy and physiology, and, in the future, I wish to pursue a career in it. In the beginning, the body poems were confusing to read through. They were infused with scientific descriptions and ambiguous text left by Everett for the readers to uncover. It was like I was engaged in a limitless puzzle trying to piece together the textual evidence left behind by the author with the anatomic dialogue. However, I had so much fun deciphering the possible questions that were embedded within the literary works. I felt like a literary version of a forensic pathologist, uncovering a mystery left behind by a potential perpetrator. The poem drove me to think outside of the box and consider an alternative way of thinking. By the end of the semester, stress was no longer associated with writing the blog posts. My fear towards the blog assignments and receiving feedback had almost diminished completely. Instead, it became a way for me to destress and to focus on pursuits or ideas that I always wanted to discuss.
Reflecting on mistakes can be terrifying and uncomfortable. If I could choose, I would not make mistakes, but that would be unrealistic. To reflect on the past and accept our faults is part of life. To do so is terrifying and, at times, the easiest course of action would be to avoid it. However, if I were to evade my mistakes, then I would only be halting my advances as a writer and as an individual. Feedback from peers has no other purpose than to aid me in my journey to improve. This assignment, as well as this course, have taught me such an important lesson. For the longest time, I have been blinded to this fact because I let my fears get the better of me. Now that I can see past this façade I placed in front of myself, I will keep trying to work past it. My writing is not perfect, and I still have a lot to learn, but as I think back to the beginning of the semester, I believe I have improved not only as a student but as a writer.