college English courses (like or dont like)

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What college English course do you dislike or find the most challenging?
Literature 17%  17%  [ 3 ]
Literature 17%  17%  [ 3 ]
Creative Writing 22%  22%  [ 4 ]
Creative Writing 22%  22%  [ 4 ]
English Theory 11%  11%  [ 2 ]
English Theory 11%  11%  [ 2 ]
Other 0%  0%  [ 0 ]
Other 0%  0%  [ 0 ]
Total votes : 18

toonaspie
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26 Dec 2005, 7:05 pm

I've taking a good batch of writing and literature courses. I hate the upper level literature classes mainly because the papers (which are a big part of the class grade) involve creating an argument out of nothing. I'm not good with making things out of nothing. Arguing doesnt help me unless I am deeply interested in a certain topic and the interesting topics never match up to the reading or the minimum page requirement.

I've never done well in writing classes because my stories were considered too weird and lacking of sense. I always wrote stuff that werent of the norm. My dialogue was always terrible but I guess it's becuase I am never able to interpret how normal people talk word by word. I've learned that normalcy is of great importance as well as plot and character development. If the story idea cannot provide those two thing then it's not worth writing.

I'm glad I am almost done with my English classes.



North
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27 Dec 2005, 2:59 am

I never had to take any creative writing classes, but I have to take quite a few comp/writing classes. I think I'm a pretty good writer though, and I haven't had any trouble in these classes. Creative writing, on the other hand, would be a problem for me.



ghotistix
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27 Dec 2005, 4:19 am

I think I'm your foil, toonaspie. :D

I don't feel too strongly about structured literature/theory classes. I love reading, but generally hate the books that other people tell me to read. Creative writing, on the other hand, is really fun just as long as there are really lax requirements on what the assignments have to be. When it comes to writing, doing stuff completely on my own is the best.

Strangely enough, I've been told that I have an ear for dialogue and an eye for body language. That's probably related to AS, but in a weird way, since I spend a lot of my time around people studying their speech patterns and subtle movements to learn how to read them. With that knowledge, it's easy to translate emotions into dialogue and subtle nonverbal communication when I'm writing; it's going backwards in real life that's tricky!



Larval
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27 Dec 2005, 4:26 pm

Writing classes were always the hardest for me. Creative writing, analystical writing (arguments), professional writing ... ugh.

Literature and such I'm fairly good at actually. (Well, it's a relative term.) I'm better at reading that writing, alas..



CDRhom
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27 Dec 2005, 4:52 pm

I loathe Literature classes because I am expected to regurgitate the Professor's interpretation rather than thinking for myself, or arguing my position by citing other authorities.


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Kiss_my_AS
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27 Dec 2005, 5:51 pm

CDRhom wrote:
I loathe Literature classes because I am expected to regurgitate the Professor's interpretation rather than thinking for myself, or arguing my position by citing other authorities.


Though I had no real problem with literature, in my experience this was often the case with the professors I had.



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29 Dec 2005, 4:18 pm

I was an English major with a focus on Creative Writing for a fair amount of time. And my biggest problem was with the lit classes because I NEVER wanted to ever do that much reading at once. Hence I never did all the reading. Lit classes were one of the main reasons I dropped my English major, because after seeing the heavy duty amounts of reading at the university I transfered to, I knew there was no way I'd be able to keep up.

Lit critiques and English Theory only provide a problem for me if I haven't read the book, hehe. I'm usually fairly good with pulling things outta my ass. :lol:


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