This has been a very odd semester for me. In all of my time here at IUP I cannot compare this, my last semester cannot really be compared with any other that I have been through. This class is one of the big reasons for that feeling.
The whole time I have been here I have felt like all of my classes were watered down and were being taught for no other reason than just to be taught. I have never brought much away from my studies here as nothing really struck my interest or the professor that was teaching the class was either totally out of touch with what students needed to learn or just plain didn’t care because he/she has been teaching that way for 30 years and it worked then so it should work now even though it clearly doesn’t.
This class has changed that. It has been a great relief to finally have a class that is not geared for the slowest student in the class but is rather set up that everyone must work harder than they are used to in order to succeed. The fact that every student no matter at what learning level they are at have an equal opportunity to get an A in this class, all they have to do is do the work that is assigned to them.
When the first scary emails went out over summer I thought about dropping the class but didn’t for two reasons. Firstly because I needed this class to graduate and this was the only one that fit into my crazy schedule. The biggest reason that I stayed though was because of the course content. Learning about the heroic journey interested me from day one and I was very excited to study it more. Growing up I read a lot of fiction novels with the hero always going off on some grand adventure and like every other kid I wanted to be that hero and set off on a grand adventure. This class helped show that we are those heroes, each and every person is a hero in his/her own way on their own journey. While my journey may not be particularly interesting at times it is still my journey and I am still the hero in it.
I felt that the movies we watched helped with the learning a lot. It was nice taking a break from the books and just listening for awhile. Into the Woods was the one that I enjoyed the most because the characters were not so cut and dry, each character seemed to be rather complex which made analyzing them fun and interesting. I also enjoyed The Color Purple but I was a little stunned by how different the book was from the movie.
The reading for the class was a little heavy at the beginning but there are very few ways that it can be changed and still get the same learning out of the class. Awakening the Hero Within was interesting but it seemed to drone on and on at some points making reading parts of it seem like a waste of time as we had already read what it was saying. Power of Myth was also a good book and it seemed even if I picked up the book and began reading without any clear idea of what I was looking for, I would almost always come away with a new knowledge or perspective on some subject.
All in all I really enjoyed the class. It has been interesting and fun, for the most part and I do not regret taking the class at all. I really appreciate that you have talked with the class on how to better use the texts that are required for the course. I hope that you have gained some new ideas on how to better structure the class to fit your liking and benefit the student, and I can not think of many other college professors that concern themselves with matters like this and even fewer who take the time and initiative to ask the people who have experienced it, the students.
