Best English Class (Revised)

And I mean it!!!! This is by far the most fun, exciting, and brain stimulating English class that I have taken throughout my college life. I didn’t mean to degrade my previous English classes, but there are lots of points that I like from this class such as writing blogs, online discussions, and most importantly, the teacher. Just like everybody else, I assumed that this class was probably a typical writing class. Pages and pages of essays due every class meeting. And this is the best time to say “Never judge a book by its cover.” Well in this case, never judge a class based on its title. This class turned out to be very stimulating. The professor has taken this class into a whole new level by ‘blogging.’ On my first day of class, the professor had told us that this class was going to be another experimental class and we were going to write blogs instead of an essay. I thought that this might not work because blogs aren’t the same thing as essays. Essays are supposed to be formal and critical, while blogs are just the other way around; informal, casual….and not serious. But after the second day of class, the professor changed my mind. The topics that we discussed are serious and deep. Blogging is just another method of writing; the important thing is the context. And I would like to thank the professor because he explains that this class is supposed to take a ‘keyword’ and then play around with its context, meaning, ambiguities, and other aspects that contribute to the meaning of the ‘keyword.’

Speaking about the professor, he is funny, intelligent, and a chatty person. I remembered that I paused a little bit when he said “FU*&”, or “SH$T.” Because I don’t think I have ever heard any of my previous instructor said it and I wondered “Wow…is that even legal?” But because of that, I noticed that lots of students are braver to comment about each other’s comments in the class discussion and the blog and we became more open about the ‘keyword.’ I also like the professor’s way of dragging the class into discussion by telling stories about his life or experience and then connects them to the ‘keyword’ that we were discussing. It certainly makes a connection with the students that has the same feeling or same experience.

Furthermore, in the class discussion, we talked about stereotypes, mobility, image, history, etc. The class had a very hot discussion about stereotypes. I realized that I haven’t really participated on that subject in the class. But just by hearing people’s thoughts about it, made me think about different aspects of stereotypes that I hadn’t explored yet because each of the students talked about their experiences on stereotypes and in a sense, I think I can imagine the stereotypical images through their eyes. And this is one of the reasons why this class successfully stimulated us for deeper critical thinking.

About the blog itself, I totally recommend using blogs as a source of an exercise of critical thinking for the audience that read this post. For this class, it totally works because instead of writing an essay to the instructor, now, each student can read and comment to each other’s blog because the audience is not only the instructor, but also the students. Certainly, the instructor can also leave comments that could help the students to write more efficiently.

Of course using blogs also have its drawbacks. I think that even though blogging is fun, it kinda slacks us of with the style of writing. I don’t know why but most people refer the style of writing to be casual and not serious. My best bet is because a blog is defined as a journal about personal thoughts, where as an essay is an analytical composition. But doesn’t everything have its drawbacks?

All and all, I really enjoyed this class and I’m kind of disappointed because I didn’t get a chance to speak my opinion out loud. Oh well, what can I say, I’m a very shy person. But for closing, let me remind the audience of this post about the professor’s basic idea that really helped me to write any blog or essay; any topic is boring if we only write about its definition. What really counts is our ability to go through the back door, and check and explore its ambiguity or problems concerning the topic. Because by doing that, we implicitly already cover most of the things that needs to be written about the topic.