My originally intended study plan for this semester changed almost as soon as I got down to work after leaving the residency in August. This is not too surprising, considering that this was my first semester working with Goddard's program, and as I had no experience with the program, it was difficult to foresee how the semester would actually unfold. My advisor was obviously aware of my slight change in direction, and it was clear from her feedback that she supported me in my decision. 

I focused completely on relating the role of the hero from both ancient and modern mythology to the life of the everyday individual living in our society today. My original study plan indicated that I was going to focus on this subject for only the first two packets of the semester, but I found that there was so much to the subject that I wanted to take the time that was required to understand it as fully as possible. For the first three packets, I used the texts that I originally intended on using, but for the last two I broke completely from my original autobiography in order to continue the specific line of study that I had settled in to. 

I worked strictly from texts this semester, usually analyzing the texts in detailed notes first, and then summing up some or all of the major points I took from the readings with either illustrations, short stories, or free form papers expressing my own views on the subjects. I particularly enjoyed using this system of rigid note taking followed by creative adaptation, finding that I could come to understand the texts fully by taking clear notes first, and then I could really "make the knowledge my own" by involving a creative process to summarize what I had learned. The use of the creative process allowed me to integrate my own inner knowledge and feeling with the exterior knowledge I was taking in, and this made me feel as if the exterior knowledge had really become a part of my own self. 

One of the most major things that I felt I learned this semester, besides how the mythical hero relates to the modern individual in scholastic terms, was to really "wade in" to what I was reading - that is, to really put myself into the subject of study and experience it from the inside. This came about in response to comments made on my second packet by my advisor. She noted that I was thorough in my note taking, but that there was no real "heart" in my writing. I was staying on the perimeter of the subject at hand, and commenting from a removed point of view, instead of really getting my hands dirty by delving whole-heartedly into the issues. To me, learning the difference between immersing myself in a subject and not doing so is one of the most major skills I obtained from working in this program this semester, and this is because I now understand the feeling of putting one's heart into a subject, as opposed to studying it from a distance. I feel that once I began to really put my heart into my studying, the end products I produced easily outshone in every way those products which came as a result of my prior, more removed stance. I can now take this knowledge to any subject which I may choose to study, and that, I feel, is far move valuable than anything I could have learned about the specifics of the mythological hero role. 

In reality, learning to put one's heart into one's path is the ultimate role of the hero, as defined by myself and the authors which I dealt with this semester. But reading about putting heart into the path does little to educate the reader about actualizing this experience in the real world. Even taking in-depth notes based on the subject does little to propel one into the experience of living the path with heart. And yet, I found through my work this semester that I did come to understand this idea to some extent, though it was not from the specific words that I took from the texts I studied, but instead it manifested as a result of how I learned to deal with the studying process itself. Through learning how to put my heart into my work I learned some part of the lesson as to how the hero's way is my own way. It is so interesting to me that only through an indirect route did this understanding come to me. 

I might add that it is because of the fact that Goddard as an institution can acknowledge the various levels of learning, such as I am describing here, that I am so excited about the work that I have done thus far, and the work to come in following semesters. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Campbell, Joseph. Hero with a Thousand Faces, Princeton University Press, 1990 

Easwaran, Eknath. The Bhagavad Gita, Petaluma, CA : Nilgiri Press, c1985. 

Hesse, Hermann. Siddhartha. New York, New Directions [1957, c1951] 

Lawlor, Robert. Sacred Geometry: Philosophy and Practice, Thames and Hudson, 1989 

Neumann, Erich. The origins and history of consciousness; Princeton, N. J. Princeton Univ. Press [1954] 

Pearson, Carol. The female hero in American and British literature , New York : Bowker, 1981. 

Trungpa, Chogyam. Shambala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, Shambala Publications, 1988