The First Day of Class...

Being paranoid about time, like I usually am, I got to campus at noon...fully knowing that class didn't start until 12:30. I just sat in my car, waited, and contemplated what this class would be like. By looking at the books assigned sitting in my passenger seat, I knew that we were going to cover great literature...and we weren't going to read these sonnets, essays, and novels just to read them...we were going to read them and understand them, we were going to take reading to the next level! Time ticked by and I finally made my way up to the building...and on my way I started to get nervous...I don't know why I've been going to school for the majority of my life...maybe it was the label of "summer school" I don't know...but as soon as Prof. Sexson came in and started reading Mr. Dickens' Great Expectations I began to feel more comfortable. I'm a big fan of listening to books on tape (or CD whichever the library has) and sitting there in class listening to the descriptions of the tombstones of Pip's family made me feel like I was sitting at home listening to my books on tape, and I want the story to continue. That's where the lesson starts...stories. The first thing we were told to write in our notes was that every story is a retelling of some other story. I think about that and question it for a while. It makes sense for Mr. Dickens' Great Expectations and for Mr. Jones' Mister Pip, but is it true for all other stories? I think of J.K. Rowling and the world she has creating with Harry Potter...I remember being read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone aloud in fourth grade. I was captivated and to this day I still read the books that every time take me on an adventure, out of my house and right into Hogwarts. (I just finished re-reading the 7th book just last week :-) talk about coincidence!) But I think about Mrs. Rowling and her imagination. I believe that she created Harry Potter and all of his cohorts...but she had to have been influenced in some way...maybe by other novels about witches and wizards, or stories she had been told as a child. And then it all makes sense, her stories are original, but there are stories behind the innermost workings of her stories. As is true with other authors and their stories. Prof. Sexson then pointed out that we too are stories...our names...our scars...what we do...they all create our own stories. Hopefully this all sounds as good to those reading it as it does to me in my head...I can't wait to continue on Pip's adventures tomorrow while I nanny (thank goodness for nap time!)     -Whitney