Final Cultural Reference Blog Assignment

Dear Professor Sweet,
Throughout this course we have done many blog entries about the films we viewed and short stories we read in class. Like you, I also think that it is interesting how all of the students in the class were given the same assignment, but all of the students went in a different direction with their research in the blogs. Some people focused strictly on cultural things, while others, like myself, blogged about more non-specific things.
I personally blogged a lot about animals, such as parakeets in the story The Parakeet, as well as elephants which were in the story The Elephant Vanishes, as well as in the MFA assignment I chose an artwork that featured a bird. I chose to blog about animals because I like them, and it is something I am interested in.
Also, my blogs featured some background information about authors we have read stories from. I blogged about Henry David Thoreau, Can Xue who is the author of The Child Who Raised Poisonous Snakes, as well as Haruki Murakami who is the author of The Elephant Vanishes, just to name a few. I chose to blog about the authors of stories we have read in class because I think that it is interesting to know a little information about the author before reading a story. Knowing a little bit about the author gives me and idea of why the may write in the style they do, as well as why they chose to write about the things they write about.
Lastly, I chose to blog about random things that interested me, or that I wasn’t sure of the meaning in specific stories. For example, in the story The Girl Who Left Her Sock on the Floor by Deborah Eisenberg, I chose to blog about a slicker. I discovered that it was just another word for a raincoat, but before researching it I had no idea what a slicker was. Another example is from the story Evermore written by Julian Barnes. In this story I chose to blog about Thiepval. I had never heard of that before and from my research I discovered that it is a major war memorial to British and South African men who died in World War I Battle of the Somme and have no known grave. I think that it is interesting to blog about and research things that I do not know much about.
In this course I have learned a lot about my blogs and the blogs of my classmates. I think that it is interesting how everyone in the class was given the same assignment and everyone went in a different direction with their blog research. I generally chose to blog about animals featured in the stories we read, background information about authors of stories we read, as well as random things that I wasn’t sure the meaning of. Overall, this course has taught me a lot through the blog entries that I and my classmates have completed.
Sincerely,
Randi Eggleston