Alfred Romero
2/1/2023
Professor Frank
LIL 420
Journal #3
After brainstorming in the form of reminiscing, I’ve decided on the three factors that I want to discuss in this journal: “The Epic of Gilgamesh”, What is wisdom?, and my second writing assignment in Wisdom Literatures titled “A Conversation With The Unknown”.
A memorable work I encountered within my time in Wisdom Literatures was “The Epic of Gilgamesh” (in fact, all of the three listed above are from this course). We, as a class, reached this text fairly early in the semester, as it was one of (actually may have been) the first texts we encountered. The Brightspace course for this class is inaccessible for some odd reason, so I can’t remember the specifics of the class assignment based on this story. I do know, however, that it wasn’t an essay. I believe that the assignment for this work was a series of questions that drove the individual to think about the text in a deeper setting. I can’t see what I wrote on this so it’s hard for me to say what I’ve noticed currently that’s specific, but one thing I can say is that I don’t remember discussing the concept of dreams within the story (which is actually fairly important). If I revised, I’d want to explore this idea further as I remember being focused more primarily on the concept of legacy when reading the story.
In Wisdom Literatures, a final question closed off the contents of the class, and this was seen in our final writing assignment. The final writing assignment was a reflective writing piece for a part of it, but another section asks the individual to define what wisdom is. Looking back at my answer to this question, I can see that I’ve defined my answer in the form of paths. My first path to wisdom was defined as the ability to overcome and adapt past a certain blocking point in life. My second path was the awareness capability to recognize one’s role in the environment that they’re in. My last path directly relates to one’s ability to understand perspective. Back from this paper, I never truly went in depth on these different paths. Also, when discussing a letter of recommendation, I brought this question up with Professor Anderson and he mentioned the concept of love being defined as wisdom. I’m not sure if adding that extra variable would count as revision, but I could definitely work on progressing an answer to this question with what I’ve already established and with new information I’ve been given.
A writing assignment I’m proud of from Wisdom Literatures would be my second writing assignment titled “A Conversation with The Unknown”. This was a writing assignment based on the “Book of Job”. Looking back at this assignment, I see that I summarized the story while providing my own insight along the way within each body paragraph. But this writing assignment focused on Job’s story and whether what he did throughout his experience was considered wise. I’m not sure if this would address the original prompt as I don’t have access to it, but I’d like to tackle this whole situation towards another question. Why does the innocent suffer? This writing assignment focused on Job’s response to the horror that was happening to him, and we know that this was because of a wager placed between God and the Adversary, but on a general note, why do the innocent suffer? I could definitely explore this part of the story more.
