This week was very exciting for me because I got to do my presentation for the class. I think it was okay, but there was certainly room for improvement. One of my biggest issues with presentations is speaking way too quickly and rushing through my slides. When I was practicing my presentation, I had a timer and I could definitely feel the difference during my actual presentation. It made me feel more stressed and I didn’t feel like I had a good perception of how much time had elapsed. In the future I definitely want to have a timer, because it helps me manage how much time I’m spending on each slide.
Overall, I didn’t really enjoy the research project. I felt like I had so many other things going on that I couldn’t focus as much of my attention on the project as I wanted to and I think I could have done better. Obviously that’s not anyone’s fault, midterm season waits for no one, but it certainly didn’t alleviate my stress.
The other thing that we did this week was discuss the epistolary stories we read. I liked hearing everyone present the stories they read and it made me want to read more of them. I thought the style that the stories were written in was very compelling, and I kept wanting to read more.
Something that surprised me about my story, Onward, was that there weren’t actually any letters in it. Letters were only mentioned at the end of the story and in the epilogue. At first I wasn’t even sure I was reading the right thing. But I liked the way that the story unfolded. It didn’t say everything all at once and you had to do some thinking to understand the narrative. I like a book that doesn’t spell everything out and forces you to think about it.
Another thing I liked about Onward was the symbolism in a lot of the objects. For example, flowers are mentioned several times throughout the story. The first visitor of the day brings Caroline a bouquet of lilies. I was curious if there was a reason the author chose to pick lilies, so I googled what the flower is meant to represent when it is gifted to someone. Lilies represent purity and innocence, which I thought to be an interesting twist of irony because what Caroline is doing with these men is far from innocent.
I’m excited to write our own epistolary stories. I’m not sure what I’m going to write about yet, but I like that the stories we read were based on real events and real people. These stories are just adding some imaginary context. I think that if I find an actual series of letters that inspires me, that will make the process of writing my own epistolary story much easier.
