When I signed up for this course, I didn’t quite know what to expect. I registered because the course fulfilled multiple general education requirements and the fact that it’s not often I get to take an English course with my majors. After I had finished registering for all of my classes and the stress died down, I turned back to the ENGL 111 course description and learned that it is actually self-graded, and then I really didn’t know what to expect. I will admit that I assumed this class would be much more similar to my INTD 105 class I took during the fall of my freshman year. Meaning, I thought it would be a bit more lecture heavy and nit-picky on our individual writing. I was both excited and nervous when I realized this course was going to focus a lot more on our personal growth and working to connect multiple different texts revolving around the 2008 housing crisis. I have learned so much about how fluid language can be and how using the same words in multiple different contexts can totally change the meaning. Introducing our course concepts in the beginning of the semester and working to incorporate them with each piece of literature we read truly helped me to improve my critical thinking skills and I am grateful for challenging myself in this class.
We took the time to read four pieces of literature throughout the semester. First, Shakespeare’s King Lear, then The Big Short by Michael Lewis, A Mercy by Toni Morrison, and finally Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. We looked at all of these novels through the lens of the 2008 housing crisis and made connections between the texts that I never would think to make on my own. Three out of four of those texts were written years before the crisis, yet we were still able to use our course concepts and the reality of what happened in 2008 to find connections between all four. In 2008, there were greedy companies who wanted to continue making risky financial decisions and almost treated it like gambling. For example, page 256 of The Big Short says, “The line between gambling and investing is artificial and thin.” The risk of credit default swaps, which Investopedia defines as “… a financial derivative that allows an investor to swap or offset their credit risk with that of another investor. To swap the risk of default, the lender buys a CDS from another investor who agrees to reimburse them if the borrower defaults” was greatly underestimated and was a big cause for the crisis. The banks were giving out easy loans which inflated the prices of houses and created a housing bubble. When the bubble burst, prices dropped again and people were not able to pay back their loans. Credit default swaps greatly amplified the 2008 financial crisis and essentially led to foreclosures, expelling people from their homes. It didn’t matter how they made money, all that mattered was that they were getting rich. For example, page 257 of The Big Short states, “What are the odds that people will make smart decisions about money if they don’t need to make smart decisions–if they can get rich making dumb decisions?” If the mortgageg companies were making good money, they didn’t care how or who got expelled from their homes. When reading all four texts, I was able to keep the idea of expulsion in the back of my mind and look for examples of that, as well as other course concepts, in each book.
Most recently, we read Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. This novel is about a post-apocalyptic world where no one, except the absolute elites, can afford to live safely and healthily. It follows a teenage girl named Lauren who is the daughter of a preacher and is lucky enough to live in a nice, gated community. However, there is a ton of crime and mass poverty outside of her community’s walls. The intense crime gets so bad outside those walls that thieves and drug addicts eventually break in and start setting the community on fire and robbing everyone’s homes. Families get killed or separated from each other and the survivors finally realize that they need to get out. I have actually read this book before for my INTD 105 course last fall, but we read it with the focus of addiction and the drugs used throughout the book, so I was interested to read it with a different focus and think about how important expulsion is in the novel. Of course, the first time I read this book, I understood how prominent expulsion was as mass amounts of people were forced out of their homes. Since the setting of this book is a sort of dystopian society, there is barely any enforcement from the government or landlords, so there isn’t a direct person/company forcing people out, but rather the horrible living conditions in Southern California. While there is a difference in what directly caused these expulsions, there is still the same result of people tragically being forced to move because of the lack of money. As I read Parable of the Sower for the second time, I realized how much more related it is to the 2008 financial and housing crisis than I originally thought.
I believe that it is very important to not only educate ourselves about the past to make sure history does not repeat itself, but to also read novels like Parable of the Sower that explore what our world could look like. Like I said before, I read this novel just last year, but reading it for a second time in 2024, after the recent election, made it feel more real than I’d like to admit. Before this course, I didn’t know much at all about the 2008 housing crisis. I knew that it happened, but I never truly understood how or why it was able to get so bad. Reading Parable of the Sower amplifies issues that we currently face in our world and I think that the reader should feel a little scared while reading it. During the 2008 crisis, people had to leave their homes because of financial factors, and while poverty is still a huge issue in Parable, climate change is also very prominent and something I would say is more relatable to our world right now. For Lauren’s family specifically, both of her parents have respected jobs as her father is a preacher and her stepmom teaches people to read and write, which many don’t know how to do anymore. As unfair as it is, socioeconomic status is different for everyone, and especially in the setting of Parable, there is a clear divide between the rich and the poor. The rich are still able to hold on to a somewhat sustainable life as they can afford electricity and clean water, but the poor won’t have access to these things unless they steal. However, I believe that climate change is an issue that affects everyone equally. Something everyone on Earth has in common is the fact that we simply all live on Earth, and if our climate becomes so polluted that we can’t breathe healthily, or go outside because it’s too hot, everyone’s health is equally impacted. At the very beginning of chapter five of Parable of the Sower, there is finally a rainfall and Lauren writes in her journal, “That’s all there has been for six years”. I can’t even imagine what a six year drought would feel like, and I don’t think we should ever have to worry about that happening. Parable of the Sower should almost cause readers to “wake up” and do what they can to keep our Earth from ever getting to this extreme of a state. We must do everything we can so people aren’t expelled from their homes because of extreme heat, rising sea levels and floods, or any other climate related issue.
With Geneseo’s Learning Outcomes for Baccalaureate Education (GLOBE) it is important that students are able to “reflect upon changes in learning and outlook over time”. I believe that this is important in both the context of Parable of the Sower and as a student in general. As I said before, we should read Parable with an open mind rather than thinking there’s no way this could be our reality. While I do agree that the lives people live in the novel are a bit extreme, I don’t think they are completely out of touch with what could happen in years to come. We must reflect on and learn from history and the struggles we have had in the past, such as the 2008 crisis, and do what we can to keep settings like Parable of the Sower from occurring in the future. No one should be without a comfortable place to live. No matter their financial circumstances or what’s going on outside, every human deserves to have a place they can call home. As for reflecting on changes in learning as a college student in general, I believe that not only Parable of the Sower but this class as a whole has allowed me to grow as a learner. As I said above, I expected this English class to be more similar to classes I have taken in the past where the teacher is much more critical about our writing. Where a lot of our ideas are either right or wrong and we are docked points for grammar. I was very pleased to realize how that wasn’t the true focus in this class and we instead were encouraged to think and make connections anyway we could. Of course, we were still expected to be able to back up our claims with evidence to show we were acting in good faith and truly responsible for our own ideas. I have never taken a self graded course, and I honestly really enjoyed this class structure. I feel it forced me to really hold myself accountable and prove that I am a student who truly cares about my own learning. Instead of getting the satisfaction of a good number grade after each assignment or putting more care into only the assignments worth the most of my grade, I had to work hard and show up to each class with the same preparation and care. I did my best over the course to improve my learning and I really hope that showed. I worked hard in group discussions, but especially small groups, and I think I made adjustments throughout the semester to really step up my game. For example, after our first care check ins I realized I wasn’t taking advantage of the class notes like I should have been, so from that point on I made a big effort to read every single class note and I think it helped me to be even better prepared. Over the semester, I was able to get away from my idea of a “typical” English class and worked hard to adjust my learning style just like GLOBE encourages. I am grateful for taking this course!