I am still marginally afraid of Virginia Woolf

I signed on to take Modern British Fiction without really know what "modern" fiction is. Apparently, this genre of fiction includes such authors as James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence and, of course, Virginia Woolf. Over the summer I thought I would try to tackle one of the books for the course to get a little head start. I already owned A Portrait of An Artist As A Young Man by Joyce, so I chose that one. I fell asleep on the second page because I couldn't pay attention to his writing. That's when I knew I was in for trouble. On the first day of class, Teddy frightened me more by telling the class that these novels are written in stream of consciousness style and are sure to challenge. Also, the kid next to me, upon hearing that this was my first 300 level class, told me that I was in for a big surprise with how hard the prof's grade at this level. At the end of my first day of class I thought I was in over my head. The first book we were assigned to read was To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. My only encounter with Woolf was in 11th grade English class. I had to read a selection of her work one evening for homework. I'm not sure if it was an excerpt from a novel or an essay, but whatever it was, I hated it! I couldn't understand what the lady was going on about. Nothing she wrote made sense and was boring! Because of this initial encounter with Virginia Woolf was so painful, I was not thrilled that I would have to read an entire novel by her in a week and a half. I decided it would be best if I read slow and really pay attention to commas and individual words, rather than skimming as I usually do. Also, I took notes and looked up words that were new to me. Around half way through the book, I realized that I was quite enjoying this novel. This was shocking to me! I thought, "Maybe Virginia Woolf was not as crazy as I originally thought." Subsequent reading of this novel has been quite pleasurable. The only reason that I am still a little afraid of Virginia Woolf is that I have to get through another novel of hers and write a paper on one of the two I will have read. Teddy said that of all the works we are reading, this is the most accessible, so it will all get tougher from here. I plan to continue to plow through these works of modern British fiction at least to be able to say I did it. Hopefully, my attitude toward this genre of writing will get more positive as the semester gets on.