Not My Utopia

I'm taking British Lit. It's an online course -- a pre-req for the pre-req's I need to take to apply to the Creative Writing program at BYU. Marty reminded me that I don't need to enroll in school to write. But in the words of 5-year-old Courtney when I tried to teach her how to sound out words, "Mom, I want the professionals to teach me."

The English professor I spoke with said I could probably ask to waive these pre-req classes, but I'm not really sure how I would do in upper level British Lit classes when I've never taken lower level classes. And I really don't know the difference between Early British Lit and Late British Lit.

So I've spent the last few months reading Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe and other Early British Lit classics. I got a B on my last unit test which really ticked me off. Sigh... that's a post for another day. But suffice to say it gave me empathy for my kids who are also working hard in school.

The first book of the new unit is Utopia. And I pretty much hate it. Dan says it sounds like I'm reading an economic text book. Imagine someone telling you all about every custom and rule and regulation in a particular society. And it takes 100 pages of fine print for them to get through the story. And the teller tells it like he thinks its awesome, but not only does it actually sound quite miserable, you also know this society is PRETEND. Like someone telling you all the details of a really long and boring dream and you just want to say, "Do you have any interesting real-life stuff to tell me about?"

(Side-note: I'm also supposed to be dream-tracking for something else I'm doing so it's ironic that I'm not a fan of hearing long drawn out stories of other people's dreams! (Clarifying... night dreams. Day dreams of future ambitions and goals--especially from my kids--I do love!))