Reflective Essay

It is amazing that my journey as an English: Literature major has almost come to a close so quickly. My path has been a smooth and enjoyable one, and it is with great sadness that I begin to gather up the ends of my literary education. I know that I will continue to grow and develop as a critical reader/thinker throughout my lifetime, but I will sorrowfully miss the educational structure that has shaped my literary understanding for the last three years. I consider my greatest strengths as a literature major to be my insightfulness and creative slant with which I approach a piece of work. I have a love for all genres of literature and enthusiastically grasp the text with an eagerness to understand it and relate
I have carefully constructed my essays so a reader can see my thought processes and witness the care and attention I pay to detail. By combining research with my own thoughts, my essays have come together as well thought out pieces of analysis. I believe I have presented my findings in a clear, organized fashion that allows the reader to smoothly move through my essays, hopefully gaining a different perspective on two wonderful pieces of literature. The pieces in my portfolio demonstrate my development and maturation as a critical reader because I am now able to employ strategies to understand a work that only upper level students are capable of mastering. I have also gone from being content with reading a piece once or twice to not being satisfied until I have read the piece multiple times in fear that I may have missed some crucial element. Looking for fundamentals other than just theme, development of characters, etc. shows my maturation. I am now also interested in undertones and hidden statements. I have learned so much throughout this process of writing and revising these essays. It has become very clear to me that a piece of writing is never perfect; something can always be reworded or reorganized to make for a more clear presentation. I have also learned how biased a writer has become. After working with these pieces for so long, I have seen how a writer can