Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2013

Publication Title

International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

DOI

10.20429/ijsotl.2013.070202

ISSN

1931-4744

Abstract

Excerpt: "To be, or not to be, that is the question" is one of the most famous lines from Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. As a soliloquy, Hamlet's speech represents a monologue of his thoughts and feelings and addresses existential questions. It is generally accepted that in his speech Hamlet is wondering whether he should choose between life and death. Life seems to be full of hardships, yet there is uncertainty at what lies beyond life, what happens after death? It is assumed that the audience (if there is one) would not hear the speaker, however, Hamlet-the character of the play often turns towards the audience and looks the audience in the eye (Vera, 2012).

We engage in soliloquy daily, whether to ourselves or to an audience. When I was asked to do an invited essay, I felt that I too, like Hamlet, needed to collect some of my thoughts, feelings and experiences with SoTL. Engaging in SoTL posed some existential questions for me personally, though luckily I was not talking about life or death. My soliloquy is written in hopes that it would be heard by an international audience and will hopefully help others in their quest to BE.

Comments

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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