Reading Response

In Response to Look at Your Fish:

                In this essay the author reflects back on his time he spent studying fish under a professor whom he admired. The professor instructs him observe a dead fish over and over again until he had noticed everything there is to see about the fish. He is to compare different fish of the same species and to keep them wet in their solution that he is also to keep caped. I am surprised that he remembered to put the cap back on the bottle like he was instructed to.

                Throughout the essay, Scudder uses humor to recount his tale. He details how boring it is to look at one fish all day and how in his exhaustion of boredom he rushed out for his lunch break and forgot to put away his fish! I thought that he would get in trouble for sure, but instead he just wet it back down and continued his observations.

I can relate to what he must have been feeling when the professor simply told his to observe and then left. I have felt this way many times with a lot of different things as teachers explain a little of what they expect or desire from their students without the students knowing what to expect back from the teacher. In these experiences it is best to guess at what the teacher wants on the first thing to be turned in and by the third assignment the students know how they will be graded and a way in which things are best performed, just like the author did not know how to start off on his study. 

I thought it was a smart idea that he chose to draw the fish instead of simply boring himself by staring at fish after fish with only slight differences.  Drawing the thing you are observing is a very good way to look closely and see small intricate lines and features that one normally wouldn’t notice. By noticing the small things and little details the author noticed things and remembered things that he would have if he had only superficially glanced at them instead of observing them as the professor taught him to.

Overall, this was an excellent essay. I was glad that he learned what he came there to and that he walked away from such an odd experience with knowledge he could apply to his future studies. I am sure that by learning to really observe just this one type of fish it went on to aid him in his observations of bugs. By learning to noticing the small details on a larger object such as a fish would help to tune needed skills to notice even smaller details on smaller objects like the bugs to be studied.