According to plan

When reviewing my learning plan and how well I followed it, this is how I feel: a shoulder shrug with a "Meh..."

I've had a lot of fun with this intense look at Julius Caesar. But at the same time I was kind of frustrated with it. First off, I finished reading the play two days later than I was supposed to. And I started reading it the day it was due. And I watched a movie version before reading the play, which wasn't what I had in mind.

But, let's look at how closely I met the goals outlined in my original learning plan for Julius Caesar:

1) I did in fact post on the blog immediately after reading each act. Yes, it eneded up being all five acts within two days, but I did follow through on that.

2) I definitely focused on writing more on connections between Julius Caesar and politics. Instead of just writing about the first thing that came to mind, which was usually pop culture (does that mean I watch too much TV?), I specifically looked for themes in the play that had real-life parallels. And although it was some extra work, it was a lot of fun. I was able to relate Julius Caesar to the Lincoln assassination, Chris Christie, the war in Iraq, the Bush Doctrine, Gerald Ford and his pardoning of Richard Nixon, George Washington, Newt Gingrich and Rahm Emanuel, to name a few. Cool, huh?

3) I did comment on Averill's blog, but not as much as I would have liked to. I'll be sure to keep up the communication and discussion with her as she and I both delve into Julius Caesar more to meet all the requirements of this assignment. (I think part of it is that Averill posted three times about Julius Caesar, and I posted 20 times. So, definitely one-sided. But more on that later.)

4) I didn't quite meet the objectives on this one, because I had hoped to watch at least two Hollywood versions of Julius Caesar, and I only saw one. Again, I ran out of time. But I think I'll still try to see the two Charlton Heston versions, if nothing else I'll do it just for fun.

Some additional comments:

- I thought it might be a cool idea to "live blog" the movie. But it was a lot of work. And it meant I missed a lot of the movie. At first, I was pausing the movie while I blogged, but I was on a tight deadline so I ended up letting the movie continue while I typed. So that was one downside. Also, I don't know if anyone's really going to read all 13 posts, and they're certainly not all equal in interest. If I were to do it again, I might just do what Averill did and do one post to talk about how cool the movie was.

- Probably the main reason why some of this process was frustrating was simply because I had so much schoolwork in general. I definitely enjoyed reading, watching and blogging about Julius Caesar. But because I enjoyed it so much, I think I was overachieving, which only added to the general stress over other homework I had to work on. That's one of my faults (though sometimes it's a strength) - if I say I'm going to blog after each act of the play and live blog the movie, then, by golly, I'm gonna do it! Even if it kills me. Or, at least makes me stay up until 2 a.m. multiple times. : /

In general, I very much enjoyed this assignment and enjoyed Julius Caesar. I just maybe would have handled it a little differently if I could do it over again.