Week 8: Famous Last Words

There was no reading for this week, so yayayay! I felt that this week in this class went breezily, which allowed me to focus on my midterms more. I'm quite thankful for that. I didn't do much writing for this week, but I did go over the first story in my portfolio. I don't know if it's just me, but when I first write a story, I tend to hate my work. But as I read and reread them, the better I feel about the stories I write. For the Cupid story, I wasn't too sure where I was going with it, but after looking through all of the comments from my classmates as well as the comments from Prof Laura, I feel like I could add this story to the short list of good stories I have ever written. I've been looking at some other stories my classmates have written and they are so sooo creative. There was one with a love story between a human and a faerie and one that was very impactful in regards to the its underlying message. The more I think about it, the harder it is for me to explain the success to writing stories since I don't know how people manage to spin something so amazing from something so simple. These days, I find it hard to get inspiration for my stories, which is kind of sad because I want to write something that others will enjoy reading. But I will try my best for the storytelling this coming Wednesday.  As for my other classes, I'm still trying to stay afloat on my little boat as I going down the rough river that is school haha. My midterms are over with at this point, so I am a little relieved.. that is, until another wave of exams comes. I'm going to try to enjoy my one stress-free week before more work piles up again as we finish the second half of this semester. 

The higher you climb, the more you can see. 

Source: Growth Mindset Memes.

Week 7: Famous Last Words

My reading for this week. 

The reading went really well. I especially liked reading the Tibetan Folk Tales unit. Out of all of the multi-story fairy tale units I have read, this has to be my favorite just because there is a moral and the stories are more developed. The characters are dynamic as well. Unfortunately, I missed the Monday assignment, so I did the first part of the reading for Tuesday and then I read the rest of it for my extra reading diary assignment. I am okay with my reading diary. I think this time, I will try to keep it nice and short since I noticed that I write a little too much. 

My best writing for this week. 

I did my best writing for this week in this class. All of my writing in my other classes pale in comparison because it is technical writing. I don't have a chance to be as crazy and creative with my imagination. :) I really liked my story for this week because it seemed so... for lack of a better word, crazy. This is just because I don't know where I got the plot for the story from because the original story was about a man faking murder but mine was about a man robbing a bank haha. It was very weird for me to think about after I wrote it, but I do have a sense of accomplishment once I read it over because it's so different for me. 

My Other Classes.

In my other classes, there is SO much going on. In one of them, I have not seen the teacher in 3 weeks. That's mostly because we only meet once a week, but she has been out due to illness. Unfortunately, it was during the time frame of when we had a bunch of assignments due, so we could not reach out to her for tips, advice, or any general questions about the assignments. In another one of my classes this week, I had an exam that I kind of stressed about, mostly because I left it on the back burner for a while. I ended up getting an A on the exam, however (so yay!). Then in two of my hardest classes, I am struggling to catch up with the workload. You would think it would be easy to read 30-40 pages of a chapter a day since reading is my forte, but it's nearly impossible if the material is dry and the writing style of the textbook is too wordy. But I am optimistic about the future of this semester! 

Something that intrigued me this week was that Microsoft announced some new gear that invented! I saw the Surface Book and it blew me away! It's pretty cool, but too expensive for me at the moment. :(

Microsoft Surface Book on display. 

Source: PCAdvisor.

Week 6: Famous Last Words

The reading went really well for me this week! I liked the stories that I read. However, I felt like my writing wasn't that good this week. I'm not sure why, but I will make sure I do better next week! One thing that surprised me the most was the Prof Laura really liked my introduction post for my storybook. To be honest, when I was writing it, I wasn't sure where it was going until I got finished writing. I ended up writing the middle part, the beginning, and then the end in that order. I'm proud that I was able to write something that was enjoyable at least! 

Unfortunately, these past few weeks in my other classes have been a struggle. It's hard keeping up with everything, but I'm trying my best to get back into the groove so that I won't be too stressed out all the time. In the upcoming week, I have one exam and a paper due. Then the week after that, I have two exams. It almost seems like students don't really get a break in between exams. It's a constant grind, but that's okay! It's better than sitting there and playing with your thumbs all day. :)

I do want to emphasize something that I learned this week. One of my friends brought this up to me this weekend that people should not be afraid to speak up on social media. I know that it is hard to motivate yourself to speak up for something you believe in, especially on social media, because it's so easy for one person to attack another. But it is important that you do so because if you feel like someone is posting something offensive, but you don't say anything about it... Then in a way, you are condoning their actions. 

Source: Ontario Ministry of Education

Week 4: Famous Last Words

The reading for this week went really well. There were so many short stories to read for both diary A and B, but I enjoyed the majority of them, so it wasn't a problem. I noticed that the Jakarta stories focused a lot on morals, especially greed.

I think I did some good writing this week. I also cut my writing time down to about an hour to write a story. Before, it took me at least 2 hours to write something decent because I'm very particular and I do my proofreading while I write (which is weird, I know, but I always read and reread while I'm writing, so I can't help it).

As for my other classes... This week was a very hard week. I had two exams on the same day and I really struggled to balance studying for both because they are fairly difficult classes--Introduction to Biochemistry and Cell Biology. Not to mention the biochem professor is known to have very very very hard exams and the cell biology exam is entirely free response (which is bad because you already know I take forever to write). It was hard, but I'm glad that I made it to the weekend with an optimistic outlook for this semester and a desire to make sure I am able to balance work, school, and activities even better.

Meme by me. Made using Imgflip.

Week 3: Famous Last Words

My reading this week: 

This week's reading was interesting. It was a little difficult for my to comprehend it all because the language was different than what I was used to, but I enjoyed deciphering the story. I did have time to do both portions this week as well as do an extra reading! I am happier with my Reading Diary strategy this week because I was recording more of the important part of the story rather than trying to include notes of every little event.

Your best writing for this week: 
This class is the only class that I do writing for at the moment, but I was proud of this week's writing as well! I tried a new style of writing: poetry. It was very different and I enjoyed it. I hope my readers/classmates will find it interesting as well!

Other people's writing:
This week, my favorite storytelling post was written by Justin Robbins. I was looking around for a story to do my feedback practice on and I stumbled on his week 6 retelling. It's an excellent one where Justin wrote the story from a doctor's point of view and the protagonist in the original story was the patient with hallucinations. The way he connected the events of the story to "real life" was great. For my storybook, I had originally planned to do something similar to this! After reading Justin's story, it definitely inspired me to think of more ways to spice up my own stories. 

My other classes:
Things in my other classes are going okay. I have two exams next week on the same day. Eep! They are two of my harder classes as well -- cell biology and introduction to biochemistry. In order to get more study time, I'm going to try to finish week 4 assignments early this upcoming week. 

In celebration of the upcoming midterm week: 

"Just keep studying...studying studying..."

Source: Quickmeme.

Week 2: Famous Last Words

My reading for this week:

The reading for this week went really well. I enjoyed reading Cupid and Psyche's story. I finished both portion of my reading. I also enjoyed the extra reading unit where I read some Brothers Grimm stories. What I remember best about the reading was part where Psyche found out who her husband really was. I thought it was the most exciting part. Regarding my Reading Diary strategy, I did not like how I did it at first. I wrote a lot more than I should have and didn't focus on what I specifically liked and focused instead on summarizing. I think for the upcoming week, I will do it in bullet form so that I can look over it and get a clearer idea of what my thoughts were. 

My best writing for this week:

I thoroughly enjoyed the week 2 storytelling of my story unit. I liked trying to imagine myself as Cupid in order to write his diary entry. This was my first time writing in this point of view and I think it was a great experience!

Other people's writing: I read a story that was written about a nursery rhyme by one of my fellow classmates, Amanda. It was called The Beginning and I liked her storytelling style. It had a very good hook and ending. The story was very open-ended, which left me wanting to read more of it. 

My other classes: 

My other classes are going relatively well. It has been a little difficult keeping up with assigned readings for other classes because I have had a lot of meetings since classes started but I plan on remedying that this Labor Day weekend. I have been on top of the homework so that I don't lose any points, so everything should be a-okay! 

Difficult is not impossible meme.

"Difficult is not impossible" by Laura Gibbs. Source: Growth Mindset Memes

Outside of school:

Here are some upcoming events at OU:

• Vietnamese Student Association 1st General Meeting Thursday, September 10 at 6pm at the Henderson-Tolson Cultural Center. Here is the Facebook event page: Facebook.
• Be the Change 2015: This is a community service event on September 26 held by Delta Phi Omega Sorority, Inc., Delta Epsilon Psi Fraternity, Inc., and Alpha Phi Omega National Service Fraternity. It's a smaller version of The Big Event here at OU. Facebook event page: Facebook.

Famous Last Words Week 1

Since it was just orientation week, I will skip over the My reading for this week and My best writing for this week posts. 

Other people's writing.
Reading through other people's writing opened up my eyes for new ways of writing. I read some stories that were very detailed in terms of character actions and settings. I think I could do that in the future for my own stories since I am currently not very good at setting and character development. I saw some excellent stories that kept me on my toes. I would like to adapt those characteristics into my own writing since I feel like my own can be a little boring at times. 

My other classes. 
Since it's just the first week of classes, I'm not drowning in coursework. Yet. On the very first day of classes, all of my professors jumped right into the lessons and that kind of stressed me out because I have been used to the first day just being syllabus day for the past year or so. But I'm a junior now, so I will get used to it! There haven't been any connections with this class and my other classes yet, but hopefully I can make some connections in the future. Although.. I like that there isn't a way to relate this class to my other ones just because they are all science classes (cell bio, biochem, social psych, etc). This class gives me a break from all of the science so I can just let my creativity have some fun! :)

Outside of school.
There hasn't been much going on outside of school. I've been enjoying the free stuff on campus this past week, like the free food and shirts! It's going to be less exciting next week once it all goes away. On another note, I was worried about parking on campus this year because much of the parking spaces have been taken away in order to do reconstruction, but it seems like it isn't too bad for me since my classes are mostly at 8:30am and that's when there aren't very many cars parked. It's a shame that parking is a huge issue for universities, though. Here's to another good week, self!