Metacognition: First Semester

Sophomore English has substantially changed my thought process in a few ways:

1) Rhythm - Before this year, I didn't think very much about how words sounded when you combine them.  I thought of them simply as independent beings that need little to no correlation to one another.  As the year has progressed, however, I am starting to see that rhythm matters.  It matters to the style and quality of the writing, not to mention to how well it entraps the reader.  If there is one thing I could take away from this year for the rest of my life, this would be it, because it's something that's used every single time we communicate with another person.  

2) Philosophy - I had heard of some of the philosophers, and was familiar with some of the bigger ones, like Plato and Aristotle, before the year began.  However, post Sophie's World, I have a much better understanding of the course of philosophy.  The time when both History and English were covering the renaissance was particularly useful because we could see renaissance ideas, such as humanism, from two different points of view at once, which is a rather unique opportunity.   This philosophical study, even if it's not complete, is very useful, particularly in debate, because there tend to be lots of philosophical questions we have to debate out various questions that are often rooted in the philosophers we studied.  

3) King Lear performances - I tend not to enjoy reading plays.  There.  I said it.  It's out there.  Reading King Lear, and having to think about it to the point of understanding it, is something I am not used to.  Having to go through and sift through difficult language to get at ideas that shape someone's reality really forced me to use parts of my brain that are usually dormant.  Then memorizing more than 80 lines forced me to really get at what my character was trying to say, what motivated him, and what he stood for.  That was what topped it off.  Pacing around my bedroom, confusedly repeating lines of Shakespeare was the zenith of my lateral thinking.  That, more than anything else this year, reshaped my thinking by forcing to me to see deeper into what I'm reading (or memorizing, in this case).