Dan Mehryari

As I entered my first year of college, English was a class i was very nervous in taking because I was never very strong at writing, nor was i very passionate about it. Luckily enough I had a professor who truly cared about her students and accepted nothing less than excellence from all of her students. Thanks to her and my fellow classmates, I now consider myself a very strong writer and i very much enjoy doing so.  Instead of dreading to go to class, I very much looked forward to each and every English class as I knew it would be tremendously fun and educational as well. The fishbowl discussions between Professor Brady and our entire class were extremely intellectual and it really showcased the intelligence of all classmates. The one i enjoyed the most was our fishbowl lecture about transcendentalism because we had class outside and the setting of the class beautifully complimented the lesson. The environment deleted all awkwardness when answering questions because whenever so...

Life is poetry. No matter where we live or who we are, we encounter poetry every single day. What makes poetry so extraordinary is, the multitude of themes and tones which are present in any type. One theme which is commonly expressed is love. As we all know, love is an aspect in life which has the potential to be extremely robust. So much so, that we often can not put our feelings of love into words. This is where poetry asserts its importance. Poetry is powerful enough to capture our feelings of love and express them in numerous forms. Two of these forms most commonly depicted are music and written poems. Specifically in the song “Power Trip” by J. Cole and in the poems “Loves Philosophy” by Percy Bysshe Shelley and “The More Loving One” by W.H. Auden.  Poetry about love often tends to be very powerful and sometimes even a little sad because of the heartache and difficulties the authors depict. A poem which proves this, is W.H. Auden’s poem “The More Loving One”. This poem ...

             Finally, one of my other favorite lectures was one earlier on in the semester about egalitarianism. We discussed all of the stories egalitarianism could be paired with and were given a quote from Thomas Jefferson which stated “We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unamiable rights; that among these are LIFE, LIBERTY, and the PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.” We then went on to discuss human equality and pointed out the four main institutions in which we seek for equality. These institutions are Government, Family, Religion, and in Education. We then transitioned into the effects of inequality and how it could lead to terrible aspects such as dehumanization. As well as discussing the different forms of oppression. There were so many valid examples from the short stories that writing the published writing piece, I found the most difficult part deciding ...

             Another lecture that I loved was our latest lecture, the introduction to poetry. We started off this lecture with a quote from the movie stared by Robin Williams called “Dead Poet Society”. This quote was “We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. Poetry, beauty, romance, and love. These are what we stay alive for.” We then learned that reading poetry involves all of the senses and discovered the meaning of a sonnet. As well as all of those fantastic features to the lecture, we then were gifted the privilege to watch 4 short clips from the movie and were really shown how powerful and deep poetry really is. I never looked at poetry so deeply before this lecture and in doing this, a whole new horizon was opened up for me when speaking and thinking about poetry. 

             One lecture throughout the semester that I really enjoyed was our lecture about transcendentalism. Along with the remarkable discussions and lessons we were taught about transcendentalism, the setting in which we had this lecture was beautiful. We all sat outside next to the water fountain located in the center of Farmingdale State College. The beautiful weather and chirping of birds really did fit in orchestra with the idea of transcendentalism. Transcendentalists are content, loving, accepting, and grateful. We also discussed the differences between artificial and natural beauty. This is a lecture I will never forget about as we all learned so much and had the privilege to write about it in a published writing piece shortly after.