For Goal 3, I took ENGL 210: Frontier Adventures. It was actually my third-time attempting to complete Goal 3. The first was a deeply unpleasant class I dropped my first semester at Longwood and the second was a German literature course I took abroad last summer. The German literature course I passed with flying colors, the issue was that once I declared my second major it no longer counted for my general education requirement (because it was counted for my German major instead).

So, with a little bit of disgruntlement (after learning that the German literature course I had aced didn’t count anymore), I decided to take Frontier Adventures and finally have my Goal 3 requirement fulfilled, for real.

This class was a bit odd. I really didn’t like most of the books, not only were they depressing (because life on the frontier usually was), most were nonfiction and not necessarily written for popular audiences. The writing style was pretty archaic and difficult to parse through in most of the books we read. The professor also had a tendency to go off on tangents and the reading quizzes were super difficult. I had a really hard time figuring out what I should take notes of. The class was so erratic and my midterm grade estimate was so low (C-) that I thought I would need to take ENGL210 again to take a replacement grade. I actually registered for a replacement for the next semester but was able to drop it after my grades came back. After a semester of having no clue what my grade really was, I ended with a B+.

The biggest thing I learned from this class is that I would not have enjoyed living on any of the frontiers we discussed or read about. We read about (and watched movies on) many frontiers: the American east, Florida, Texas, the American west, Alaska, and more. Almost all of them seemed miserable times and places to reside in.

This brings me to my artifact, the second/final paper I wrote for the class. The prompt as to compare the way different characters viewed the frontier. To me, this prompt encompasses the class and a whole and boils it down to the central question of the class.

Paper?