My Reflection On Trying To Find Joy In Reading

The title of my first reading response was “Trying to Find Joy in Reading.” I believe this was an appropriate title to describe how I walked into this class, and still in some ways how I’m walking out of it. My attitudes have changed slightly after taking this class, but I’m still not someone who would probably sit down and read a book in my free time. However, there were glimmers of hope for me throughout the semester that might indicate I’m heading in the right direction as far as being able to find joy in the reading process. I’m more of an active and outdoors type of person, than someone who enjoys reading. I didn’t try to hide it in my first response, writing, “I generally have a bad feeling towards reading.” This feeling never really …show more content…
I frequently spoke up in class, and offered whatever I had to say in the discussion. In the moments where it felt like no one wanted to say anything, I tried to offer something that would break the ice. Overall, I thought I was one of the top five contributors to class discussion. I believe my reading response log deserves an A-. Most of my responses were well thought out, unless I didn’t know much about the topic to be written on. My responses might have been a little shorter than other students, but I think they had a lot of quality thought within them even if they were short. I believe my book club grade should be an A-. I made every effort to keep up on my reading. I really enjoyed The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, but not The Road as much. I got really busy at the end of this semester, so I didn’t finish the last couple chapters of The Road, but I still contributed to conversation within the group afterwards. I believe all my papers – the reading process report, the two interpretations, and my literary analysis – deserve A’s. I really take the time to put together a quality paper in all of my classes, and this class was no different. I read over my piece of literature I was writing on multiple times, and developed my own ideas with support from the …show more content…
I don’t think there’s any question that most people would feel uncomfortable at some point reading this story, but the interesting part is why we feel uncomfortable. You would think that part A would be the easiest to read, but in some ways it wasn’t. The title of the story was “Happy Endings,” but you got the sense in part A that this title might be a little sarcastic. Everything in part A was so bland that it made you feel like these people might have a “perfect” life by the world’s standards, but they still felt like something was missing. I think what made me uncomfortable from this first section was that even if I might have everything that everyone wants some day, I’ll still feel like something’s missing. Part B was where I really started to feel uncomfortable. It’s hard to read about this type of relationship. These are the type of relationships that people don’t like to talk about, even when we’re aware of them. We often hold out the same hope that Mary does in the story. We don’t believe that someone would actually use another person like that, and we hold out hope that deep inside they really do care. Beyond this, after reading the first story, I started picturing myself in each of the scenarios in the rest of the story. You don’t want to think about the fact that your life might not end up with a textbook “happy