With A Child's Heart

No, my title is not a a cruel joke (its a title from a Michael Jackson song). There have been many things that I have learned this semester and climactic book, "Diary of a Whimpy Kid" was a great way to reflect for the final blog entry.

Kinney takes the main character to an extreme. Even though he is fictional you can't help but feel bad for him. He goes through more than the average middle schooler in the worst year ( and we have all had those, maybe even more than one). By making Greg's situations so psychologically damaging, he is in a way sympathizing with the reader (since his audience is seven years old to preteens). He knows that they are all going through those awkward times of leaving childhood behind to enter the days of real homework, first slow dances, and crushes.

In doing the more than average traumatic situations he is giving the reader a way of saying, "I had a similar situation when I was..." Or even people our age, that can reflect back on the days of not getting a seat on the bus, bullying, and the crush that rejects you. Greg is a sort of preteen shrink that everyone can relate to. I have a friend that is majoring in Child psychology and she read one of the books for a grad course. She called me and kept me away from Amy Sedaris land for four hours reminiscing when we had to run to the bud to get seats before they were all taken by the sixth graders because the eighth graders had the very back, and NO WAY couls you sit there.

What I have learned about humor this semester through our class is that humor is even more fun when you see what is really behind it. You tell a joke it is funny, but there is more too it than that. There are different ways of classifying humor that can be useful in life situations, not just academic affairs. The different fathers of humor that we have looked at gave good insight to where these classifications came from and how they are used, even today.

Being an English major, I love reading. I think this is the first college English course where I have read the books and liked and/or identified with all of them. Some of them will even come in handy if a sick friend comes over, as I noe know how to make them a foot rest. I found something relatable in all the books we read. I also saw some life lessons in the journeys that all the main characters went on, even if they were completely rediculous like in Tikongs. I found a way to classify humor so that I now know where it is derived from in any given situation and that id very interesting to me because truthfully no knowledge is wasted.