Literature is not simply a classroom endeavor full of nerds reading sophisticated books to look better than the others who are not book-worms. What a universal misconception! For those people who believe in this misconception, you all are mistaken and misinformed! Literature, when read, actually reflects timeless human issues. When I mean timeless, I mean either in 4000 BC or in 32345 AD in the 44th century, as long as we, the human race, Homo sapiens, still exist. Yes, maybe you recieved a ‘C’ grade on that report or essay in English class in high school by your English teacher. Shame on you! That book you read is actually you and your life! As a highs school student, how would you know, you naive person you? But, hopefully, as you get older, you get more wiser, with 20/20 hindsight reflecting back as a sensible person, saying to yourself: ‘Hmmm, Mrs. McNally that English teacher really was teaching us human nature in that English class in 12th grade high school.’ Then you smack yourself over the head for getting a C for that class because of senioritis, especially when you are in your 30s, and you are:

1. going through jeolousy over your best friend and experiencing the intricate consequences (Othello by William Shakespeare),
2. as a professional lawyer, you have to defend a client teaching evolution in school (Inherit the Wind byby Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee)
3. on a retreat to whatever during during the weekend from work, you and your hikers tell stories (The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer)
4. dare to marry someone outside your race and culture (Romeo and Juliet William Shakespeare)
5. as a medical doctor and scientist, you are involved in a debate between your ethical duties as a medical doctor to your patient to cure them of a rare disease that needs stem cells as a cure, and the political opposition to use of stem cells because of pro-rights activists against abortion (Brave New World by Aldous Huxley)
6. faithful to your friend through adversity, though adversity gains the upper hand when your friend is mentally retarded (Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck)
7. are in a town full of people suddenly turning greedy over inheritance of a fortune, thus testing the integrity of each person in that town (The Pearl by John Steinbeck)
8. being double crossed all your life due to corrupt scheming government officials, and hiding in seclusion or on the run, but on the way, defending justice vigilante style (The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle)
9. are the type who is so ideal, you find yourself in awkward blunders in your life? (Candide by Voltaire; Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes)
10. a soldier in a war, waiting to get home, but the war changes you for the best or the worse? (The Odyssey by Homer; All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque) 
11. a victim of an abusive relationship? (The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison)

Are you, the 30-something year old man or woman, involved in any similar personal circumstance in your own life today as the ones mentioned in the list? The authors of these works of literature understood the timelessness of human nature, indeed, even behind the idioscyncrasies and peccadilloes of human behavior! We today are like the characters in these works of literature in our own personal lives, whether dark or happy moments. These authors were writing about each and every one of us, but, in the safe haven of fiction.

Each of us should get an ‘A’ in the report card of life by appreciating how many timeless classics of world literature actually apply and reflect our own everyday personal lives.