The Final Countdown, Part Two
This semester, for the first time since I’ve been at the University of Florida, I had final exams in all my classes. The middle two, which I took on Tuesday and Thursday, were relatively painless. The last, which I took Friday, I’ve already told you about. The first, which I took last Monday, was extraordinarily challenging for me.
“Donne to Milton” was the title given to the course I took this semester on seventeenth century English poetry. It wasn’t easy. The exam was in two sections. The first involved identifying passages from works we’d read, and going into some detail about what the passages meant. This was challenging because, a) I have a terrible memory, and, b) because, stripped from the larger work, short passages often lack any context at all. The second half of the entailed writing an extended essay on Milton’s Samson Agonistes. Ouch. The long and short of it is that I regret taking the class due to the difficulty, and my distaste for much of the material. I discovered I do not care for John Donne, and I hate John Wilmot. On the upside, I did learn to like Andrew Marvell; “Upon Appleton House” is an amazing poem.
Filed under: School on May 2nd, 2009 | No Comments »