Memoir Book Club Reflection

Due: Sunday, March 20th by 10PM

15 points
Instructions:
After spending a month in your reading groups discussing your respective memoir
novel, take some time to reflect on the overall quality of your book club experience, including the
process of
reading your novel
,d
iscussing your novel
, and
completing the final project
. Consider
what worked well, what may have been challenging, and what you learned throughout this process.
Please provide
honest, thoughtful, and detailed
responses for each question to receive credit.
The Book
1. What book did you read? M
y group read Its Kind of a Funny Story.
2. What are your overall impressions of this book?
a. What did you enjoy most about it? O
verall, I very much enjoyed the book. I really
liked how the book got into some heavy topics. Not many books that I have read
before go into topics such as depression, suicide, or mental challenges in general, so
I enjoyed that aspect of the book the most. I also really enjoyed reading about Craig
and Noelles interactions because they were really cute and hilarious, but also
emotional.
b. What parts were challenging to understand or get into?
Trying to understand what
was going on with some of the other patients was a little confusing for me since it
was not explicitly stated which mental challenges they were facing.
3. In what ways did your book explore the themes of
identity and belonging
that we discussed
in class?
Overall, the main character in my book, Craig, discusses a lot about how he
doesnt know who he is or what he wants to do. He also talks about how he doesnt fit in
with or have a sense of belonging at his school because he does not feel as if he is good
enough for it.
Book Club Meetings
4. What are the names of your book club group members?
My book club members were Lily
Rivera, Lilly Roman, and Antonio Derock.
5. Using a scale of 1-10 (1 being super unpleasant and 10 being super awesome), rate the
overall experience of your 8 book club meetings. Please explain why by answering:
I give
the experience a 10.
a. What did you enjoy most about your small group discussions? O
verall, I really just
enjoyed the size of our group and how small our discussions were. For some reason,
I often find myself scared to participant in large discussions for fear of being wrong
or saying something stupid, so I usually say very little or nothing at all. When I am
in a small group however, all of that anxiety goes away for some reason. I really felt
safe with everyone in the group and shared a lot. I really enjoyed just not feeling
anxious and saying my opinions and having them heard. It was also nice to be able
to easily follow the conversation.

b. What challenges did you face in organizing and executing your discussions?
One
thing that my group sometimes struggled with was keeping the conversation going.
We tried to not just read off of our job sheets and often succeeded by incorporating
our jobs into the conversation rather than having them start it. However, there were
some times where we would run out of things to say.
c. Describe your favorite book club discussion. What was the topic and why was it
meaningful?
My favorite book club discussion was when we all decided to talk
about Craig and Noelles relationship. This was before we knew that they were
officially together. It was really cool to hear everyones opinions on where they
thought the relationship would go and why. I guess it was meaningful because the
conversation was really enjoyable. Everyone got to talk and give their opinions, and
we all laughed and joked around too. It was just a really fun discussion.
6. Using a scale of 1-10 (1 being super unpleasant and 10 being super awesome), rate the
overall experience of working with your groupmates.
Please be honest and detailed in
commenting on the work ethic and contributions of each group member.
I give the whole
experience a 10.
a. What worked well?
What worked really well was everyones dedication to the book
club. We had one less member than every other group, so there were times where
each of us were doing two jobs. Also, most times if a member was absent, they were
willing to video chat so that they wouldnt miss the conversation.
b. What was challenging?
One thing that was challenging was that a lot of my
members were absent for meetings. That, on top of having one less person than
usual in general made it hard sometimes to have a discussion.
c. How did your group members contributions affect the quality of your discussions?
I feel that since each of my group members were able to contribute so well to our
book club, the quality of our discussions was greatly improved. Everyones opinions
allowed each of us to gain different views than what we had ourselves.
The Final Project
7. What did your group choose to do for the final project? A trailer or scene reenactment?
My
group chose to do a trailer.
8. Describe the process of creating your video.
a. What worked well?
The editing of the video worked out very well for our project.
Lily Rivera and I were able to do much of the editing using iMovie, which made the
whole process really easy (though it was time consuming).
b. What was challenging?
The challenging part for us was trying to film. Since she
wasnt planned to be in it, Lily Rivera was supposed to do the filming for our trailer,
but got sick and had to be absent for every day that we had filmed. Also, it was
hard for us to get our scenes to be the right way we had imagined them to be.
However, we were able to get through that and still finish everything.
c. Overall, to what extent are you satisfied with the final product? Please explain.
I am
very satisfied with the final product because each of my members did a very good
job on this assignment. Lily Romans portrayal of Noelle was perfect. The same
could be said for Antonios portrayal of Aaron. Lily Rivera did such a good job with

the editing too. One thing that bothers me is my role in the trailer. Im a horrible
actor, so seeing me as the main character is very cringe-worthy for me. Im super
awkward in most of the scenes and wish I had done a better job.
9. The expectation for this assignment was that each group member made significant and
equal contributions to the final product. P
lease be honest and detailed in commenting on
the work ethic and contributions of each group member.
Overall, each of my group
members were able to contribute to the project. One thing that did get a little bit
frustrating was that Lilly Roman and I wound up typing basically the entire script and Lily
Rivera and I had to do all of the editing. Im not too upset about it though because there
were circumstances that happened that made some of my members unable to contribute.
Ill list what each person did below:
Me: Typed script, played Craig, helped edit, filmed a small amount.
Lilly Roman: Typed Script, played Noelle, filmed, gave some input into some aspects of editing
Lily Rivera: Filmed a little bit, edited a lot, played Dr. Minerva, gave small input into what should
be in the script.
Antonio: filmed, played Aaron, gave some small input into what should be in the script.