Walter Kerr's The Decline Of Pleasure

For all four years of my high school career, my dad doubled as my English teacher. When I was a junior, we completed a project that he created and titled our "Carpe Diem Journal." In this journal, we had to include: written advice from our family members and friends, a bucket list, five of our favorite memories written in detail, five tributes to people who have influenced us, a letter to one of these people, and our tentative plans for the future. I can remember spending hours in his classroom looking at the older students' journals, usually decorated creatively and full of sweet advice and funny bucket list objectives. So, when I finally got the chance to make my own, I embraced it and thought about my sources of happiness, both in the past,

While I could usually get the gist of the chapters and identify his main objective, I felt like I got a little lost trying to stay focused in the midst of his tangents and various, long examples. Yet, I would still say that my experience reading Kerr's work was a positive challenge for me because it got me outside of my comfort zone. Both content and the writing style allowed me to practice critical thinking and analysis, which lead me to make connections between the novel itself, my other courses, and my own life in general. Some skills that I learned were to be an active reader, read and analyze objectively, and think about the text in the bigger picture. I practiced the skill of active reading by highlighting quotes that stuck out to me, writing my own questions and thoughts in the margin, and relating examples and statements together throughout the text. To read and analyze objectively, I took a step back from my own opinions, reading Kerr's writing thoroughly and completely before making my own stance. While I disagreed with some of what he wrote, looking at it from an objective perspective helped me to see his whole point before I turned away from it. Finally, I related it to the bigger picture by looking at certain moments in my life, especially by connecting it to my faith and religion. This skill also was developed through the many discussions, among my classmates and professor, that we held each