Reading Review Week 8

                                             

"Arabian Nights", by Good Reads

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I chose this image from the Arabian Nights unit, specifically from my retelling of the Greek King and Physician Douban (in Week 4). This unit and this story really got me to think about the culture of the Middle-East at the time of the telling of this story, and I truly felt transported to a different time and place! The retelling of this story is the one I feel most proud of.

The readings that I enjoyed the most have to be the Middle-East and Asian units: they both forced me to consider cultural and aged values that were unknown to me. In order to write Storytelling assignments, I had to immerse myself into the worlds of the stories, and that experience was really eye opening.

When I read through the stories, I found that the method that worked best for me was to read each story earlier in the day (before the assignment was due). I found this effective, because when it came time to do the assignment I had already used my time to sort of daydream about what I wanted to write about.

And as far as note-taking: I made sure to first outline the stories in the most rudimentary terms possible so that I could see the entire scope of the plot. I then read the story a second time, but this time I tried to identify as many culturally and social references the stories drew upon. This way, I was able to get a hold of the values that each story was trying to portray.

I do happen to use my Reading Diary in connection with my Storytelling assignment, because the stories the I mention in my Reading Diaries tend to be the stories that I have paid the most attention to and given the most effort to thoroughly research.

When I look back at my old Reading Diaries, it helps me remember the readings and my thoughts on them very well. However, this is mostly by virtue of the effort that I initially put into the assignments.

I honestly don’t do a lot of reading for pleasure: 19 credit hours of mostly upper division sciences, as well as studying for the new MCAT, will do that to a student. But I do like studying for the MCAT actually, because it allows me to put all the concepts I have learned in my pre-medical requisite classes together in a big picture. I would have to say that the reading in this class and the things that I like to read do not really overlap. However, I do like understanding cultures from countries that I have never been to before, so this class introduced a lot of new material that I could definitely see myself investing time in the future to.

I would have to say that the suggestions for future students regarding the readings would be to outline each reading (and each story) in the most basic terms possible. This way, it’s much easier to keep track of the plot while you analyze different aspects of the stories.