January 25th

So I'm sitting in class, as usual, listening to Professor Sexson talk about the difference between taking to people who are interesting and people who are boring (obviously listening to boring people makes time seem infinite) and it suddenly hit me like a bolt of lightning: I'm one of those boring people! I can't tell a good story, I really can't. In fact, whenever I try to tell my friends stories about occurrences in my life, they tend to give me the eye roll and the sarcastic "wow, great story, Michelle". It's quite frustrating, but I would like to think I'm slowly improving on my "non-interesting qualities" and I'm hoping this class will help. Being exposed to good literature in this class is forcing me to ask deeper questions about the stories I read: who are the characters, really? Like I said in my previous post, characters in stories are very similar to everyday people. Not everyone is who they appear on the surface and there are many layers to every individual (ya know, like onions... or parfaits). It's just a matter of taking a closer look, and dissecting every aspect of the character's personality; that is when you can see the character for what he or she really is.

The topic of "pick-up" lines was also discussed today in class. Personally, I think they're pretty cheesy but I know several girls who would be completely smitten if a teenage boy recited Shakespeare's "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" It really makes you think back to Connie and Arnold Friend. Arnold consistently "kept his cool" while he was speaking to Connie even when he was saying very crude things. However, the novel Lolita is written about a pedophile yet the language is so eloquent, we almost forget that he is talking about a very young girl. It's very easy to see why young, naive girls would fall for the sort of smooth talk that Arnold Friend demonstrates.