Farewell...

Another semester coming to a close…I know that I for one am looking forward to finals being done.  I will be escaping to Big Bear Lake for a week as soon as finals are done to have some “down time” and play with my grandson.  Thoughts of watching Christmas movies, baking and decorating Christmas cookies, and playing in the snow will get me through the next week!

This semester has been an extremely tough one for me in regards to the amount of work.  I had two classes that required a lot of writing and two more that are just harder subjects for me so additional study time was required.  This English course was, of course, one of the ones that required a lot of writing.  With working full-time, I usually take online courses so that I have the flexibility of doing most of my work on the weekends.  With due dates throughout the week for various assignments, it was a challenge to always meet the due dates but somehow I managed.  There were some close calls on getting projects done on time especially the first draft of the research paper.    

At first I thought the amount of writing was ridiculous but it pushed me in ways that I needed to be pushed I now see.  The writing comes much faster and easier for me now after being required to write so much.  I learned a lot about MLA format and developing an effective paper.  My critical thinking skills were definitely sharpened as well.  I learned a lot from not only Jennifer’s and SmartThinking’s comments but also from those comments of my Qom group. I learned about different types of writing that I had never had the opportunity to take a stab at before.    

The reading assignments were also very interesting.  The books we read are ones that I had never read before and probably never would have.  I feel so enlightened about B.S. now!  Seriously, these selections did sharpen my critical thinking skills. The last book, Reading Lolita in Tehran, was very intriguing to me and I chose women’s rights in Iran for my research paper topic.  I understand a lot more about the hardships these women have faced and feel even more compassion toward them then I did before.

I would like to thank each member of the Qom group for taking the time to give me your honest feedback on my writing. I enjoyed the discussions that we all had on the Discussion Board.  It’s always interesting to look at things from someone else’s perspective and I learned a lot from each one of you.  I especially enjoyed reading the blogs.  Each of your personalities really came through when reading them.  This class has been the most interactive so far of any other online classes I have taken and I have enjoyed it.

Jennifer was a delight to have as an instructor.  She was tough but fun at the same time.  I’m sure she motivated each one of us to dig a little deeper.  I truly appreciated her availability and feedback.  I learned a lot from this course but I have to say that I’m glad it’s done…I’m tired and need a break! 

Merry Christmas to all and enjoy some time with family and friends over the holidays but don’t forget to get rested up for next semester!  

What I learned while writing my research paper....

I will start out with what I learned in “book” knowledge while writing my research paper.  I chose the topic of women’s rights in Iran.  Through my research, I learned a ton about the struggles women have had in Iran.  Most surprisingly, I learned about how things were really progressing quite well for women from the 40’s to the 70’s.  Women received the right to vote and to be appointed to Parliament in 1963.  Educational opportunities were good which also meant better jobs for women.  They were also given more rights in family courts regarding divorce and child custody and the legal age of marriage for women at one point had increased to eighteen.  Learning about this made me realize more how difficult things were for the women to accept in Reading Lolita in Tehran.  I didn’t realize that the women had as many rights as they did prior to the Revolution of 1979. 

After the Ayatollah Khomeini came into power, women lost most of the rights that they had fought so long and hard for.  I can’t even imagine the discouragement and frustration they must have felt.  Some of the rights that the Ayatollah immediately took away from women were to remove female judges claiming that they did not have the capacity to interpret Islamic law, he changed the legal age of marriage for women back to 9 years old, women could no longer initiate a divorce, women were prohibited from serving in the army, government-employed women were required to wear the veil to work, and women were banned from participating in sports. 

Things got somewhat better for women from 1997 to 2005 while Mohammad Khatami was the President but have degraded again since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president.  Some of the conditions that women currently live with are that they are not free to choose what they want to study, because of the young age of legal marriage many girls drop out of school to care for their husband and family, women are not allowed to inherit more than a quarter of her husband’s estate, only fathers can pass along citizenship to their children, a woman’s testimony is only worth half that of a man’s, women are not allowed to interact with men who are not family members making it difficult to work outside the home, etc. Even when it comes to stoning, men are buried up to their waist but women are buried up to their shoulders making it next to impossible to unbury themselves if they survive the stoning.  The inequality between men and women is unfathomable to me.

I also learned an incredible amount about writing during the preparation of my research paper as well as during the writing of our other papers.  As I have stated before, I had never heard of MLA format before taking this class so I had everything to learn about it!  I have learned something new about MLA in each one of our papers.  For this paper I learned about block quotes and more about the works cited format. I certainly had my fears about how to use quotes and paraphrasing so as not to plagiarize.  After reading comments from SmartThinking and meeting with Jennifer, I feel more comfortable with that aspect.  I had way too many quotes in my paper and as Jennifer put it “you need to put more Teri in your paper”.   I still have some editing to do before my final submission but I’m getting there.  Overall, this class has helped me to become more comfortable with writing.