fall semester final exam essay prompt

Please respond to the following in a post on your blog (title: MY LEARNING FALL AND RISE).  Be sure to include all of the elements.  It will help you to do a pre-write; it will most certainly help you to proofread, and to ask people who care about you to proofread.  (You can also ask people to read it when you feel it's complete, and to make comments-- this is the one post I will also comment on.)

Many people have described this semester as a "roller coaster."  I love the imagery.  Life certainly presents ups and downs, challenges and triumphs.  We met four months ago yesterday.  In that time, we all have experienced moments that made us feel like failures and moments that made us feel successful.  Please describe your experience as a learner in this course, using the following structure:

•  Build your story of your learning journey according to the plot structure we learned
• Exposition (describe yourself as you entered the class on August 12)
• Inciting Incident (how you met me that first day when I described our options, asked you to decide how the course would run, and walked out of the room)
• Rising Action (your initial experiences with the journals, blogs, memorizing poetry and posting videos, whatever else you remember as a new challenge in your learning life)
• Climax (The point when you felt the most tension, when you wondered if you would be able to persevere-- and when you turned the corner.  Describe how you dealt with this and what you learned.)
• Falling Action (How you built routines and/or made up and completed the work that contributed to your success)
• Resolution (How you are different now as a learner than when you started the class in August.) 
• Your story must include the following elements:
• A description of you as a learner when you entered the class
• A description of you as a learner now, and how your experiences in this course helped you change over the last four months
• References to and/or quotes from at least three things we've read (please feel free to consult the tabs on the course blog to refresh your memory on the poems, the stories, and the essays we read together)
• How you wrote your favorite blog post and your favorite journal entry (what was your thought process, and how did doing things differently enable you to write more effectively/successfully?)
• Something in your experience of this course that made you smile (I like Alfred Mercier's idea that, "What we learn with pleasure we never forget," and I have to read a lot of these on Monday, so tell me about a memorable moment when you learned something while having fun.)
• Please post the "ready to read, Dr. Preston" version of this on your blog no later than 3:00 P.M. Pacific Standard Time on Monday, December 16.  Mahalo.