6/1/15

I am struggling a lot with my paper right now, I feel overwhelmed with information it feels like my brain is going to explode. I have all the pieces to create a great narrative and I know that but somehow it is still not coming together the way I want it too. I think Sam’s suggestions on formatting the paper by generation is a great idea that I plan to pursue, and it will be the main theme while revising my paper but there is still a lot missing. I think I will put more observations in; I have a bunch of little notes on things I observed during the interview but decided they weren’t relevant enough to put in the paper. I am now completely rethinking that idea; perhaps my observations and some context around the interview will give it more of a natural flow.

I am pretty disappointed in myself over all this quarter; my lack of enthusiasm with the subject matter was apparent and invasive. It is so difficult to stay engaged in class when I keep missing random days because of the ridicules amount of germs on this campus. I felt detached and like I wasn’t putting my best effort forward and even when I attempted to turn it around I would get sick again, loose track of what we were doing, and not take the initiative to makeup the work. I think that it has been difficult for me to adjust from being sick for two months and doing nothing, to be in class everyday. But no matter how this quarter turns out for me over all I have still learned so much and thought about things I would never have on my own.

Proust has made such an impression on me, I was not expecting for his writing to speak to me in anyway. But as we got further into the novels I found myself feeling Proust emotions as he felt them and relating to his complex imperfect characters. They are all so human; Proust gives layers to characters, showing them throughout the novel in different lights. I have never read a book with that kind of character development, it is so intricately tied to the themes of the book that an unobservant reader would hardly even notice as this two dimensional character placed before them becomes real and takes on a life of their own. It was somewhat magical and I realized it takes an incredible amount of understanding about the human condition to create characters so unapologetically human.