The Last Blog

I wish that I had an unlimited amount of time to wax eloquent about how much I enjoyed this class, how much I've learned from it, and how much it will impact my life in the future. Sadly, I don't have more than a few minutes to dedicate to the task of bringing this blogging adventure to a close, but I'll try to do the best I can with the time I have.

I guess the best way to do this is to answer the question I didn't answer in my final paper--What do I know now that I didn't know before, and what difference does it make? My answer might be a somewhat odd one, for many of the things we've learned I already knew. That everything is a retelling of something: when I was younger, I stylized myself as Beth Marsh from Little Women, and later as Lynn from Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata. Now I fancy myself more as Meg O'Keefe from A Swiftly Tilting Planet...but that's beside the point. I did learn, however, that by finding what I'm a retelling of, I can avoid making the same mistakes as my predecessor.

That fantasy was more real than non-fiction I knew as well. In fact, the idea was an integral part of my life. However, in this I have learned that I am not alone, as I once thought, that this is not something that you have to grow out of, and that loving the story more than real life is not bad, as I was told. Perhaps it is ironic, but knowing this has freed me to life a life outside of the story, for now I know that I can return to it at any time that I want, unlike the Pevensie children, who were eventually told that they could not return to Narnia...

I also learned the importance of the phrase how do I know what I think until I see what I say? We can hold all sorts of opinions, and know all sorts of facts, but until we see what we actually find important enough to talk about, we really can't know what we think. A lot of the time it's easier to compose your thoughts, to see what you say, in the context of the written word rather than the spoken. I've always been a literary person. My writing voice is far more eloquent than my speaking voice (I believe my presentation was a great illustration of that). Oftentimes I find it's a lot easier to figure out what I want to say, what I think, if I write it first.

Anyways, those are some of the more significant things that I've learned. This class has been a great adventure, and I'll carry what I've learned for the rest of my life. My time is running short now, so I'd like to close with a quote from Winston Churchill.

"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."