On Dec.7, we started our last tutorial class in front of Burling library, and walked to A&M Café together. That day was cold; the lawn on campus was covered by a layer of hoarfrost. When we crossed street, there’s a certain slant of light which projected our shadows on the road.
I felt kind of shame that I still could not order food adeptly after I arrived America for nearly four months. Prof. Rodrigues gave us our breakfast data of the whole semester, which she began to collect at the beginning of our class. To some degree, this sheet of data is a souvenir of our first semester in Grinnell.
We divided into two groups to find two different words to sum up our study about American autobiographies. One group came up with the word “father,” and another group raised “epiphany.” Almost all of autobiographies have a figure of father in their narratives, and the “father” also alludes to the “founding father” of America. This “father” which came up with by our classmates doesn’t only refer to the real father of the author, but the roles who act as a father role or give the author supports. The “epiphany group” emphasized that every authors have their epiphanies in their stories, and the establishment of America might also be a kind of epiphany of freedom. Epiphany gives people a chance to obtain prominent improvement and it’s the change points of a lot of stories.
Finally, “epiphany group” persuaded “father group,” and decided to choose epiphany as the final word of our class. I consider our class is also a kind of epiphany, which gives us a method to get into the study of college.
