Final Thoughts

Thinking back on this semester, it's hard not to resort to cliche: "I can't believe how fast it went by," for example. You all were a lively bunch, and that was fine by me. It has certainly been a momentous few months from my point of view, both for the significant developments in my personal life (i.e. becoming a father) and for the professional significance of my first semester as an assistant professor. I'll be honest, not everything went as well I had hoped in this class, and I'm certainly going to be rethinking some things when/if I teach Forms of Narrative again. I can say, however, that I always looked forward to this class, and through it all I learned a lot about you all and about myself as a teacher.

As far as learning objectives go, I hope that after this course, you've gained a new appreciation for the complexity and power of narrative as an undercurrent of most, if not all, forms of expression. Narratology, then, becomes another tool in the box for prying apart the layers of meaning in all of the messages and stories we see every day.

It's been encouraging to me to see your final projects, because I can tell that you're taking some things I tried to show you and using them in new contexts -- that's really the whole idea of education, if you think about it. Thanks for all of your hard work and patience this semester.