Motivation is like a jawbreaker: eventually you just have to bite

Motivation, in my humble opinion is mostly governed by what you want to do, rather than what you need to do. By making an english course that is both contemporary and very early in the morning, I'm not ever sure what to expect. As such, I find it harder to become bogged down by the monotony of the course, and fall into my common state of working to finish.

Selecting readings that are written in and for our times makes me want to take a stand, which forces me to write and think critically. Thinking critically about writing also alerts me to things I never think about, as I am more and more finding myself as someone who completely misses the subtext of a few things. Point in case, the treatment and opinion of women in Star Wars. I call this the Emerson-was-gay effect, which is named for the first time I noticed that I'd completely missed something. In that case, the credidation Ralph Ellison had given the minor character Mr. Emerson's son in Invisible Man in sympathizing with the title character.

Class discussions fall much along the same lines as do the readings. They are never what I expect, and always something I can take a real stake in. Most indearing to my inner nerd are the semi-frequent allusions to popular culture, in the form of "Entoruage" references, or the computer game, Spore. The references form sort of a non-linear literacy that directly relates what I do in my free time to what I focus on during school hours.

The story behind project one for me was absoloutely true, which made the analysis afterwords slightly more difficult. One of the only downsides of the class struture is the lack of time in a week to get questions out during class where feedback can be given by classmates and teacher alike. Than again, I can't make a statement like the preceding one without having gone to office hours or posted questions on the discussion board, so I suppose I'm being lazy.