By Titilope Ogundele
ONE of the General Studies courses I teach focuses on Reading and Writing. It has an aspect of literature where students read a novel, a drama text and some poems.
From experience, science students tend to dislike the course at the introductory stage; they feel they should not have anything to do with literature.
I often try my best to make them see reasons why the course will be of benefit to them. Sometimes I cite examples of fiction writers who are in science related fields.
One interesting part is, these students eventually fall in love with the course.
When analysing the texts and poems in class, they often come up with thought-provoking responses.
Sometimes, they point my attention to angles I didn’t consider. They identify literary devices I didn’t see in the texts or poems.
Recently, I had a class where I had to analyse some poems with my students. They are in Microbiology, yet they understood the assignment. They identified literary devices used in the poems and contributed meaningfully.
This got me thinking: when you set your heart on something, you can achieve it.
As a student, there is no course you cannot smash; just open your heart to it and be willing to learn.
If you believe you can, then you can.
