1984 Socratic Seminar Reflection 3

1984 Socratic Seminar Reflection

           This socratic seminar influenced my way of thinking on the issue of love. I thought that it was interesting to talk about Winston and Julia's relationship and whether we thought that they were actually in love. I thought that Julia's perception of love had been skewed because she had randomly sent Winston a note saying that she loved him and she had been having sex with other men. However, something that made me think more in depth was the whole notion of love. Who's to say that Julia's perception of love is wrong? Maybe people in our society do not have the "right" perception of love. I realized that there might not be a "right" or "wrong" way to love. I came to the conclusion that love is what you make it, and the individual should decide what love means to them.

           I most agreed with a statement made by my classmate that they thought it was strange of Julia to randomly slip Winston a note saying "I love you". Julia had not said a word to Winston before but out of the blue, she told him that she loved him. The statement that I agreed with the least was when someone said that all things come to an end. I do not necessarily think all things come to an end. I think a lot of things in our world have been around for a long time. I think that some things in the world will always last. If I had the chance to say one more thing, I would asked about the singing prole woman in 1984 and what she symbolized. I would have asked about the singing prole woman because I was really curious about her symbolic significance in the story. 

           One thing that worked really well for the socratic seminar was the fact that we started the seminar early, when we did not have a teacher to supervise us. I thought that it was really responsible and mature of us to take the initiative to start the seminar on our own. As usual, it was nice how everyone was respectful to one another and each of us listened to each other. Lastly, I thought the discussion leader did a good job of incorporating different people into the discussion.

           Overall this socratic seminar went very well. One thing that could use improvement in the future would be if we are ever in the situation where we need to start the seminar by ourselves again, everyone needs to be cooperative and help start the seminar. The people on the inside did a good job of starting the discussion and keeping it going. However, some people on the outside were disrespectful because they would not stop talking while we were trying to have our discussion. Other than that, our seminar went well.