Semester 2 Unit Reflection

  1. Which of your pieces most helped you identify or explore and develop your God-given abilities? Discuss.
    • After reading the Merchant of Venice, we had to write an analytical piece about the three caskets in Act 3. This helped me develop my analytical skills after reading literature. Especially in Shakespeare, since he writes with so much nuance, analysis is really important so we can fully understand all the layers of meaning that are written in. I think that with this piece especially, we had to think about what the caskets symbolize and I tried to show that through my writing.
  2. Which of your pieces best demonstrates your ability to communicate effectively? Give three reasons and explain.
    • The movie based on the play Much Ado About Nothing was a fun film to watch and write about as well. I had to properly communicate my understanding of the themes in the film through my writing. Firstly, I had to show that I knew what was going on in the play by talking about it in my analysis piece. Then, I had to use the correct word choice to convey my messages eloquently. And I also had to make sure my whole mini essay was written well enough for others to understand what I meant, so I asked for peer editing for many of my writing pieces, including this one.
  3. Which piece either demonstrates striving for excellence, or discusses striving for excellence and its importance in another area besides writing? Explain.
    • Writing the research paper about getting enough sleep helped me further understand the importance of sleep. Although I already knew I needed to get more sleep, I didn’t always realize the consequences of bad sleep habits. I gradually learned that in order to strive for excellence in any area, I need to strive for excellence in time management and sleep. By learning how to manage my time in the day better, I can get to bed at a regular time and sleep the appropriate amount. In my paper, I discuss how sleep is connected with every aspect of our lives, so I firmly believe that by changing sleep habits, different pieces of your life will fall into place following that.
  4. Which of your pieces explores why it is important to act as a responsible member of the global community? Explain.
    • The Kite Runner was a coming of age story about a kid who made a big mistake and has been haunted by it. It deals with many important themes that relate to human life, but the most important is truth. In order to be a responsible member of society, I believe we should tell the truth to build trust with one another. In my essay about truth in the Kite Runner, I claimed that truth is required to keep relationships healthy. Since humans are such social creatures, having trust between people can make us responsible and accountable to one another in the global community.
  5. How did this course help you to know, understand, and apply biblical principles? Explain, giving specific examples.
    • Throughout the whole course, we’ve been reading lots of literary pieces and all of them have to do with human nature and there’s always someone who makes a mistake in the story, so others must forgive them. There are also lots of different worldviews and mindsets that we analyzed in writing. By looking at the mistakes of characters in these stories, we can see the impact that forgiveness has on a relationship. In both Much Ado About Nothing and The Kite Runner, someone makes a mistake and need to be forgiven by the people around them. To me, this shows how prove people are to failure and how often we need to be shown mercy. In the Bible, this is most prominently shown with Jesus’ death on the cross because he was allowing us to be forgiven of our sins for all time, and on a much grander scale. It reminded me that since we have to be images of God and reflect his nature that we should also forgive others when they wrong us.
  6. How did this course help you to think independently, creatively, and analytically? Explain.
    • This whole semester was very independent with the new situation we were thrown into, so I had to write independently most of the time. This meant I had to do all three of these things: think independently, creatively and analytically. Without the help of a traditional classroom setting, I couldn’t easily turn to my classmates if I was stuck on what I could write about, so I had to depend on myself. This also forced me to be more creative because I didn’t want to write in a bland or uninspired way, so I had to think of creative ways to phrase different things across my writing pieces. Lastly, since we did so much literary analysis this semester, I did much more analytic work that I’m not always used to.