s e m i n a r

I didn't know what to expect for this seminar. To be honest I thought we were doing it on Monday so I had not given it much thought. 

It started off slow, awkward, and quiet. Granted half of us (unless the AICE English Language kids never had a seminar before) didn't really know how it was supposed to go. It eventually started to flow better and the pace picked up as the conversation intensified. I was so nervous. I hate talking in front of everyone and I was kind of winging it which only made me more nervous. When I get nervous I struggle even more with words; my voice gets all shaky and quiet; and my thoughts become alphabet soup so it made things difficult for me. Later as the seminar really picked up speed, it was a little hard for me to take down all the necessary notes while listening to others and thinking of where I stand on their opinion so I could respond to them. Sometimes I’d be listening too much and forget to  finish what I had been writing down. 

The good was the fact that we were all professional both in participating and listening to others. It was nice to hear everyone else’s thoughts and ideas. I will admit I was a little torn when deciding between Allie and Phoebe as the second most important character. However, I still stand with Phoebe. I was surprised how everyone thought Allie or Phoebe were only ones picked as a response. (unless you were Josh and thought Mr. Antonelli was the second most important character) I guess all the work Scalia assigned wasn’t actually given just to stress us out but it did help as previous class discussions were nowhere near that much work. I think it will only help us as thinkers and speakers, though it makes me really nervous. Plus the speaking twice rule only allowed for the discussion to be just that, a discussion. It resulted in a lot of ideas being shared that maybe in a different classroom would not have been shared. 

I don't think there was anything wrong with it. I am also not really sure what seminars are normally like so I don't have much base it off. I think overall we did really well for it being our first one. I will definitely be more prepared and hopefully less nervous.

In my other class discussions (mostly if not all were in my English classes) we didn't have to take as many, if any, notes on what others specifically said. There weren’t any stringent rules that would impact our grade as much as Scalia enforced. (eye roll, thx) So, normally I wasn’t very vocal in these discussions and let others completely dominate the discussion. A major difference was that it was us who were in charge of the direction of the discussion. In my previous classes there a few questions the teacher wanted to ask and the teacher was normally fairly involved in the discussion. This time though, Scalia only piped in to tell us there were six minutes left and that five or six people had still had not spoken, that kind of stuff. Overall, it was a good way to end the Catcher in the Rye.