Finals have ended and spring quarter has now come to a close. It feels good to have a few days off before summer quarter...three days. But now it's time to catch up with friends who are back in town from other colleges. : )

I felt a bit overwhelmed with the final essay for this class because there seemed to be so much to cover (all the books, some of our essays, and things we learned - had to be incorporated some how). But as I started writing things came along and I was pretty pleased with the final result. It was based on a quote I forgot to include in my essay from a book I had read in Ewrit 1B by Arundhati Roy, A God of Small Things:

Perhaps it's true that things can change in a day. That a few dozen hours can affect the outcome of whole lifetimes. And that when they do, those few dozen hours, like the salvaged remains of a burned house -- the charred clock, the singed photograph, the scorched furniture -- must be resurrected fromt he ruins and examined. Preserved. Accounted for. Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Imbued with new meaning. Suddenly the become the bleached bones of a story. (32)

Working on the paper and talking to the other students around me in class made me realize how much we all got to know each other and how great spring quarter English class was. The other English literature and writing classes I've taken here didn't really open up the class enough to make friendships and really know who's actually sharing the classroom with you for twelve weeks. I really hope to see you guys around and maybe even in some other classes in the future. (Anyone planning on taking any ELIT courses, by the way?) So anyway, I posted up my final essay as well as all the other three expressive papers as well as the sentence collection from this quarter. I figured I'd post up my Magnum Opus after we receive the actual publication. Not only did I fix and add some stuff right onto the publication version (that I would need to look at to update the version I have on my computer right now) but by holding the posting of my magnum opus, I think I'll anticipate the publication even more. I'm not sure if I'll be able to make it yet next Friday afternoon, but I'm hoping plans I have will be able to change.

I saw the actual printed pages of the publication yesterday too. I'm glad all the headers showed up even though I went slightly above the margins while laying them out. I'm really really hoping that I didn't cut off any ones essay in-between. After making each person's layout I had to put them onto on whole master layout and in-between it would often change the indents, leaving some text behind. Hard to describe, but sincere apologies if anything is missing on your paper. It was already 3am and I didn't have time to read through everyones. It should be good though. You guys should be proud of the essays you wrote, they all seemed really good when I glanced over them. I'm looking forward to the distribution of the publications next week.

As for the writing aspect, this class definitely helped me identify the areas in my writing that I need to keep working on and developing. For once in my English class I'm confronted with the dilemma of how I'm going to keep my readers interested and happy after theyre done. Happy to know they didn't waste fifteen minutes of their time reading some general, obvious, boring paper. And on a rare occasion, I've gotten a B on an essay for doing just that. (That last time and only(?) time I got a B on an English paper was during my senior year English class where I didn't do enough analysis of the works of a certain poet. In the case, one of the papers I did, not only did I stick to boring general analysis, I failed to include myself in my writing -- didn't make the writing my own. It wasn't my paper, expressing my experiences, perspectives and views. Just a reiteration of what was developed in the book.) Aside from that, most of essays in this class helped me to open up my writing style in terms of the use of words and structure. I'm glad that through the writing process of this class I was able to identify the areas of writing I need to work on to become a better writer. I'm really hoping to keep myself motivated to continue to do some creative writing on my own even after this class.

And finally, I'm going to miss sitting outside of class every Tuesday and Thursday talking to you guys while waiting for Mr. Lovas to arrive. I think those few minutes of chatting was what really got all of us to get to know each other better. I felt this class was more of a community of writers rather than just the same ol' students you'd find in any other English class.

Good luck to all of you~ : )