Jacob Harnish
5/22/12
Perspectives
Final Paper
This year in Perspectives, I have learned many things that have helped my work ethic towards school. Even though I haven’t gotten very good final grades in the past, I still feel that I have soaked up a lot of information. There are some things of consequence I have learned this year in class.
The first consequence I have learned is the huge loss of points by not reading a book. In the beginning of the year, I wasn’t too motivated to really read any of the books. I only read about half of Shoeless Joe, still the tests and forums killed me and at a point had me failing the class. The thing I realized the most is that it really is not that hard to sit down for a couple of hours a night, and read at least the minimum pages we were given. The past couple books we read, Slaughterhouse Five and Reservation Blues, I actually read and liked. I found myself sitting in my room for 3-4 hours reading, as soon as I started reading, I could visualize the story in my head and the pages seemed to blow by. When I read a whole book, I feel more confident in class. I also feel like I can participate more in discussion, which seems like I never do. The consequence I learned here is, if you read, everything will be fine. But if you don’t read, you’re in for a big surprise when it’s time to take the test.
The second consequence has got to be up there with the reading. I would say the second biggest would have to be the forum. Starting the year, I consistently did the forum every week, but then I started getting tired of writing every week, so I became lazy and started blowing off the forums. That’s where I went wrong, and it’s something that I would tell incoming Perspective students to really focus on. During the time when I didn’t post, my grade dropped dramatically. I think it fell from a good B to a horrible D-. I never thought something like that would make such a big difference.
The third consequence is also pretty important to the way I look at class. The class discussions has really taught me that if I pay attention to what other people are saying, that I can take in a whole lot of information, especially if I was confused on what is happening in the reading or what the class has been working on lately. The first and part of second term, I didn’t really pay attention to the class discussion. I found myself drawing, or daydreaming about being out of school. This really affected what I had learned, by not listening I left myself out of really deep conversation among my classmates. I didn’t realize how much the discussions could open my mind to different views. There was a class discussion recently that really seemed to blow my mind. It was when we were talking about free will. It really got me thinking, I seem to think about it every day and I still haven’t got a good grasp on the subject.
Who do I think I am? I think I am a really good kid who can do good work if I put my mind to it. There is a part of me that nobody really sees too often. I come off as a shy person to some and to others a really outgoing person. But what few people have ever seen is me actually being myself.