Last week of class

This week has been crazy. It was the last week of classes. On Monday I gave a presentation in my Lit Crit class. Oddly enough, my presentation was on a painting. The assignment was to take a piece of literature and critique it using three literary theories. Many people did fairy tales, serious classical works, or poems. Boring. I asked my teacher if I could do something a little different. In an earlier post, I showed a picture of The Kiss by Klimt. This is the painting I did my presentation on. Using biographical criticism, feminist criticism, and deconstructionism, I critiqued the painting for the class. While my fellow students seemed a bit confused, Dr. Cheney seemed to like it. In the History of Christianity, I found out that I got a good score on my last paper (47 out of 50). Considering how hard of a grader Dr. Francis is, I felt pretty good about myself. The week ground on with school and work. On Thursday I didn't have school or work. This was a very good thing since I had three papers due on Friday. I worked most of the day and night on them. (Yes, I procrastinate) My view of pre and post-Victorian class structures in England using literary examples ended up being 9 pages. It was supposed to be 10 but I just couldn't squeeze another page out of my head. The dissection of Song by Rossetti was the perfect five pages long and the write up of my Lit Crit presentation was finished by Wednesday so I didn't have to worry about it.
For my History of Christianity class, I wrote a paper about Christianity in the 19th and 20th centuries with an emphasis on Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. The poor man was a good writer but was fighting an uphill battle. He was fighting the war of faith in Europe. After World War I, most Europeans went through a crisis of faith that they have yet to rebound from. According to a 2000 Gallop poll, while 88% of Europeans said they belonged to a religion, only 20% said they went to church for something other than weddings, funerals, or Christmas. In contrast, 91% of Americans said they belonged to a religion and 47% of Americans attend church regularly. It's an interesting statistic. C.S. Lewis was trying to bring people back to faith and Christianity. Currently, religious scholars seem to feel that Christianity and faith is dying. What a sad statement.
Anyway, back to the main topic of this blog entry. I felt much better after turning in all my papers. I have a final on Monday and another on Thursday of this coming week. I am so excited to be done with this semester. I only wish it was my last. Oh well, wishing won't make it so. Tomorrow the family is meeting for a dinner to celebrate my birthday and the birthdays of my two younger brothers. Yeh, I love family bonding! (Not to mention that I will get to see my cute nieces and nephews :) I can't imagine belonging to a family that doesn't basically like each other and get along.