Reflections

Forrest's Reflection

For our “Book Group” project, my group chose to read The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini. The book is about an Afghani boy who grows up and is deeply affected by his own perceived cowardice and his betrayal of his friend. I thought The Kite Runner was a deep and gripping novel, and I feel I chose my book well.

I normally don’t like group work, but this assignment seemed to be an exception to the general trend. My partners were hard working and we completed our assignments on time and with good quality. I think that I should, instead of resigning myself to a dislike of teamwork, be more optimistic—as I was when working with this group. Another factor that helped our teamwork is that we all chose to work on this project together, and thus there was little friction between group members.

As for the book, I loved it. The book was a page-turner; it sucked me in and I couldn’t escape until I had read it all. I think that the entire group felt like this, because even the members who don’t normally read finished the book in record time. Khaled Hosseini paints an impassioned picture of pre- and post-war Afghanistan, and his depiction causes the reader to sympathize and feel for the main and side characters.

The different assignments were my main and only complaint about the overall project. Some of them lead to either an argument or a stark division of labor that violated the spirit of the task. For instance, after our initial presentation, my group had to re-write most of the rationales because we had written them separately, as individuals. If we had worked together on everything from the start, we could have saved time and effort. Also, I personally disliked some of the assignments. For instance, making montages has no point. Sure, they’re pretty and the class enjoys them, but they serve no purpose in furthering our or the audience’s understanding of the book. Another assignment that I disliked was the graph. I don’t think that the graph assignment makes any sense at all. A timeline would have been much more effective. I think that If I were to redo the assignment, I would remove the montage entirely and make a game mandatory while replacing the graph with a timeline to go with the plot summary.