Event Analysis

     For my event, I attended a showing of the film, Julie and Julia, which was preceded by a talk about chef Julia Child's life. In the movie, a young woman attempts to complete every recipe in Julia Child's cookbook in a single year, maintaining a blog about each recipe she cooks. She encounters many difficulties in completing this self-assigned task, but eventually accomplishes it. This reminds me of the persistence each of the characters in William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night possess. Persistence is a common theme in Twelfth Night, as the characters perservere endlessly until gaining the love they seek. I observed while reading the play that while perseverance is typically a positive thing, it can it can sometimes have adverse effects on people when practiced in excess. For example, in the movie, Julie becomes very distressed and often emotional in pursuit of achieving her goal, just as Olivia and Antonio experience moments of distress and instability in their pursuits of Cesario and Sebastian, respectively. I also couldn't help but be reminded of our weekly blog entries during the film, as the character Julie's maintaining a blog was a major plot line.
     The most interesting thing about this class was our class discussions. I loved the dynamic of the professor asking thought provoking questions, and then our contributing incredibly interesting thoughts and responses. I learned a lot about my classmates, and I appreciated that the questions and discussions were not simply related to the text but also were concerned with our Jesuit education and other valuable life concepts and lessons. I liked how comfortable the class became as the semester progressed, and definitely feel as though I learned alot from this class.