Cockerham 1

S. Nicole Cockerham
Professor Jizi
UWRT 1102: 029
10 May 2016
Extra Credit Reflection
Submitted is a scanned copy of an English paper I wrote in high
school at Charlotte Latin School. This paper was for an archetype class,
and we were to create our own heroic journey or recall a memory and
incorporate all of the tests, trials, failures, and success appropriately.
This paper was so much fun to write because it was a true story about
my brother and his triumphs and failures at East Carolina University
and Pitt Community College.
This paper holds a lot of sentimental value as well. Not only is it
a personal journey of someone I care deeply about, but it was also the
only A I got in any English writing course I took at Charlotte Latin, in all
thirteen years I attended. I had my teacher at the time, Mrs. Klein,
review this paper and help me plan it every school day for two weeks
until it was absolutely perfect. I brought it to her office every afternoon
to go over what the paper was lacking and what I was doing well with
in the paper. It was not difficult to write because I had picked a story
that basically paralleled the book.
This archetype class that I took senior year of high school
centered on the chivalric romance, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Cockerham 1
We dissected this book as a class word by word, and by the end of that
semester, I could have considered myself an expert on the story. I think
this is why I enjoyed writing my paper so much. We were required to
read a certain number of pages a night, and were instructed to look up
words we didnt know because she tested us on them and gave us a
quiz every day on the reading. At the time, this was the most
miserable class I had ever taken in my life. I am not a quick reader and
my vocabulary was limited at this time, not to mention the whole book
was a translation making it even more difficult to understand.
If I could go back to high school, specifically this particular
archetype class, I would put the use of double entry journals to work.
They would have made my life so much better and easier, and I think I
would have understood what I was reading better at the time too. After
taking this class, I found a liking for old English stories like these. I
never attached to The Odyssey or Romeo and Juliet when we read
them in middle school, probably because I hadnt developed the
understanding for those types of stories yet. I wish I could go back and
reread all of those stories again, including Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight, and see if I better understand the underlying messages and
plot line on my own.