When 2020 first started, I was very excited for the summer. My 30th birthday and college graduation would both be in June, and the rest of my summer would be spent enjoying my freedom from school and spending time with my family. I was also looking forward to finding a summer internship in the hopes of turning it into a long-term job in my career field. But when I reflect on this summer now that it’s pretty much over, I realize just how different it turned out to be than what I was expecting and hoping for. I lost a very close family member in February of this year, and quarantine started not long after that, so I wasn’t even able to see the family I still have with me for a long time. But when my birthday came around, my mother surprised me with a quarantined version of the party we were planning before Covid. There obviously weren’t any guests but my family got together on Zoom to sing “Happy Birthday” to me while I blew out my candles. So even though it wasn’t the huge birthday bash I wanted, I turned out to be a really nice celebration full of love. That is my favorite memory of my summer.

As far as the stories we’ve read so far, it is hard for me to pick a favorite. Both “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” are stories I’ve read many times in and out of school and I really do enjoy both. They’re similar in that they both feature mentally distressed and unreliable narrators who refuse or are unable to see the depth of their illnesses even though they are very clear to the reader. If I absolutely had to choose a favorite, I would choose “The Tell-Tale Heart”, only because the lack of detail about the characters limits how much I could feel for either of them. I pity the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” because she didn’t get proper care and what happened to her could’ve been avoided.