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I really appreciate the two-tiered structure of the class. The large number of students in this course makes it difficult for me to feel comfortable participating in discussions when we're tall together, so it's great to have the smaller writing groups to bounce ideas around. I also really like when we, in our writing groups, discuss and build off of one another's paper ideas; I thought that was really helpful when writing our first paper. However, I agree with ckosarek that our webpapers sometimes seem to be entirely separated from our class discussions. One of our most fruitful classes came from discussing those papers, and I'm wondering whether we could do something like that again.

I also agree with ckosarek that our online forum leaves a little to be desired. While I love the idea of posting online, it feels like the posts are more of an assignment, and there's not much of a discussion going on. Of course, I haven't really been helping to facilitate discussion, so I guess I shouldn't really be talking.

On a personal level, I too wish we had learned a little more about social Darwinism, or at least about the different ways Darwin's theory had been manipulated before we read Dennett. I'm also still a little uncomfortable with writing webpapers, if only because I'm experimenting with a different writing style to correspond with the new medium. Hopefully my experiments pay off, and don't come off as too flippant or strident. 

I am so glad to be starting the literary aspect of this course. Reading "Origin of Species" and "Dennett's Dangerous Idea" was fun and pushed my boundaries and all, but anyone who's read my paper knows that I found Darwin a slog. I'm excited to be looking towards fiction, and to explore the concepts of evolution as they apply to literature and the development of literary archetypes.