Reading Plan

My reading plan for the second half of the semester goes as follows: 

Week 9: American Indian Tales

Week 10: Inuit (Eskimo)

Week 11: More English Tales

Week 12: Faerie Queen

Week 13: Inferno (very excited for this one)

Dante and Vergil, by Delacroix. 

Source: UN-Textbook.

Week 14: Russian

Reflections: Looking Forward

For the second half of the semester, I would like to work ahead more often. I would also like to delve into more writing styles. I feel like I am mostly writing stories that are from another character's perspective or stories with lots of dialogue. I want to make my stories more enjoyable rather than stories that people would rather skim over. I would also like to be able to give more critiques regarding other peoples' stories. This is because sometimes I feel as if I were to give critiques, they wouldn't be credible since I am not a good writer. But I realize that anyone can give critiques as long as they are relevant and can help build up another person's skills or talent. 

At this point in time, I have 267/450 points available in the class (and that is without me finishing the last 2 assignments I have from week 7 since I will be doing them tomorrow!). I should have 191 at this point in time, according to the chart. It seems that I am doing pretty well with my point accumulation (yay extra credit assignments!!). I am on track! I would love to finish early because that gives me more time to study for my other finals! Hopefully I can get finished by mid-November; that will be my new goal. :) 

Puppies racing to the finish line. 

Source: PoundingtheRock.

Reflections: Looking Back

Writing:

I would say that one of my favorite stories that I have written this year has to be from Week 3. I retold the story of Adam and Eve in the form of a poem for this one and I feel like it's something to be proud of because I hardly write poems. Even in high school, poetry was a challenge. My project is going okay, I suppose. However, I am trying to think if I want to switch it to a portfolio just because I feel like there are some works in my weekly storytellings that I am already rather proud of.

Reading:
My favorite reading so far had to have been from the previous week: Tibetan Folk Tales. This is because I felt like the stories were more developed than the other ones I have read and there are so many short stories within the unit. There wasn't really a character that stood out to me, but the theme that stood out to me the most was the moral lesson about greed and how it will bring about your own misfortune in the end. I found that I like to read the short stories a lot more than the longer ones. I also like stories that are easier to read. For example, I had a hard time reading the Adam and Eve story because of the language and I had to look up a lot of words to make sure I was making sense of what I was reading.

Interactions:
I am doing fine with this class being fully online. Interaction is alright in this class through the comments and such, but because we don't meet face-to-face, I don't get to connect with my classmates as much. However, I like that I can just go to a classmate's blog and glean some inspiration for my own work. I like that I don't have to ask to see it because I'm not good at asking for help, so the examples help. In a way, I suppose that I do get to know more about my classmates through their writing styles. Like, if someone writes a fun and playful story, I can assume that they are also fun and playful!

Time:
I normally try to do the reading and storytelling during the week it's due or the weekend before, depending on how busy I am that weekend. Then I leave the Fri/Sat/Sun work to be done on the weekend. In the beginning, I wanted to get ahead as much as possible, but over time, my schedule was so packed that I just follow the current week's work. If I have a test the next week though, I do try to finish up beforehand so that I have more time to study.

Location:
I do my work for this class at home normally. That way, I can focus on reading and writing without having to worry about distractions. It's also easier that way because I like to keep everything on my own computer just in case.

Growth Mindset: 
Yes, I have been doing almost all of the growth mindset challenges. I think this class has been an excellent opportunity for me to practice the growth mindset just because I am thinking about it each week and that helps me exercise it even more. It's helped me academically because I am pushing myself harder, especially since I am in one of THE HARDEST classes I have ever taken at OU.

Curation:

I have been doing curation posts for extra credit. I do try to save the most interesting things I see that pertains to this class when I am surfing the web, but sometimes I do forget haha. With the avid use of bookmarks, I am able to find things a lot easier. I used to just bookmark things that I thought I couldn't find again. But now, I bookmark the sites that I use frequently so that access is much faster. For this class, I learned how to keep up with a blog, which is something I never thought I would do. 

This is me right now: 

Meme. 

Source: FindMemes.

Week 7: Curation

My TOP THREE favorite items from this week are:

Image of Jorōgumo

Source: Pinterest.

This is a Japanese demonic spider that can take the form of a human woman! 

The Greek Mythology Family Tree

Look how big the family tree is!! WOW!

Anatomically Correct Mythological Creatures

This is so cool to look at!! 

Week 7: Growth Mindset

LEARN MORE ABOUT MINDSETS

A resource that I found on the growthmindsetmemes blog was: 

If parents want to give their children a gift, the best thing they can do is to teach their children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning. That way, their children don't have to be slaves of praise. They will have a lifelong way to build and repair their own confidence.

- Carol Dweck

Image taken from Growth Mindset memes blog.

I found that this is really important. When I was a kid growing up, I loved to hear praise from my parents and teachers. So much so that once I didn't get the praise that I wanted to hear, I ended up feeling unsure of myself and wanting to give up on what I was working on. Thinking back, I wish that I was taught to accept more challenges as a kid rather than having to learn on my own how to challenge myself. I feel like when I have my own children, I would like to instill this into them!

Tech Tip: Blog Profile

For this tech tip, the only change I made was that I removed my name from posts. I wanted to try it out since my fellow students will be able to see my name on the main blog page anyways. I have not thought too much about my online identity. I try to keep myself from posting too many things online because I feel like it's a little unsafe to post so much about yourself on the Internet where everyone can access your information.


I may think about it a little more as I graduate and look for jobs, but there is so little of my information out there at the moment that I don't really have to worry. The key ingredients of my online identity shall just be my name, birthday, and maybe some social networking sites like Facebook or LinkedIn that will help me look for jobs!

A screenshot of my blog layout.

Week 7 Storytelling: The Two Lessons

Lesson number one: Don't trust entrust any girl you date with all of your secrets until you are married. 

Lesson number two: Never choose a friend with light eyes. The inner corner of the eye has to be red, the sclera has to that the inner corner of the eye is red and that the white of the eye is pure white and not brownish or yellow, and the colored part has to be black.

~~

Alex woke up abruptly from his dream.  It had been a long time since he last dreamt of his father, but it was always the same dream. Perhaps his father was trying to tell him something all the way from the afterlife? 

He rolled over in bed and saw that the other side was empty. His girlfriend, Jane, wasn't there, which was a first. She was always the one that would sleep in as late as possible. He hoisted himself off the bed and got ready for work. 

As he made his way down the stairs, he heard some rustling. He stopped at the foot of the stairs to see his girlfriend going through his safe. What was she doing going through his safe? He hadn't told her the passcode. No one knew his passcode. He thought back to his dream and felt his palms become a little sweaty. He couldn't just ignore what he found her doing today, but he couldn't just let it go. He slowly and quietly walked back up the stairs and tried to make his way back down as loudly as possible.

He came down to find her casually lounging on the couch and asked her what she was doing up so early, and she responded "I just wanted to get in some morning exercise!" But he knew that wasn't what she was doing.

He dropped by his friend's apartment to tell them about what his girlfriend was doing this morning, but just as he was about to tell them, he realized something. Jason had green eyes. Mark had yellow eyes. Adam had brown eyes. And Josh... he had black eyes. His revelation stopped him mid-sentence and he suddenly got up to leave, to the bewilderment of his friends.

On his way to work, he heard that a bank was robbed just last night and he concocted a plan to test the integrity of his friends and girlfriend. After he got off work, he went to the store to buy a ski mask and some suspicious looking black clothing.

Once he came home, he tried to act nervous and shaken up. Jane ask him what was wrong and he told her that he had robbed a bank across town that morning and that the people who helped him do it were after him because he took all of the money. He saw her expression change quickly--almost indiscernibly--from concern to something that looked oddly like... contempt... and then back to concern. She smiled sweetly at him and told him not to worry and that she would help him. They decided to sleep at a hotel that night. The next morning, he found himself waking to the sound of "POLICE. OPEN THE DOOR."

The police arrested him and said they had witnesses testifying that he was the robber of the bank the other day. He found out that the witnesses were Jane, Jason, Mark, and Adam. Josh was the only one who barged into the police station adamantly claiming he would do no such thing. At that point, Alex knew it was time to reveal the truth. He told the police officers that he had proof he wasn't the robber. In fact, it was his girlfriend and his three traitorous friends who were the robbers. Jane had made the mistake of using his car as the escape vehicle and it turned out that he had a surveillance system installed. He had a recording of their faces and their plan on a flash drive in his pocket. The police saw the evidence and immediately put the four traitors in jail. 

From then on, Alex always thought twice about who would be his friends and who he would trust with his secret.

Rainbow iris.

Source: HudsonAlpha.

Author's Note: For this week, I retold the story of The Man with Five Friends from the Tibetan Folk Tales Unit. I felt like I could write a good story from it and make it slightly dramatic, so I did! I like that there were two lessons that I could go off of. 

In the original story, there was a man whose father told him before he died that there were two things he should always remember. "The two things were these: first, when you are married never trust your wife with your secrets until you have ten children; second: choose your friends by their eyes. "Never choose for a friend a man with a light colored eye," he said; "see that the inner corner of the eye is red and that the white of the eye is pure white and not brownish or yellow, and that the colored part is black." He grew up and ended up having friends with eyes that were the colors that his father told him avoid. He wanted to test his wife and his friends by buying a hog and killing it and pretending as if he killed a man. It turns out his wife reported him to the authorities and he was put in prison. The only friend who came and tried to help him was the friend with black irises. After that revelation, he told the truth and got out of jail. 

My story differs in that the first lesson was to not trust your girlfriend because I felt like having ten children in this day and age is kind of ridiculous. I also changed the eye colors of his friends and gave them a name. I changed his "crime" to robbery instead of murder as well. Overall, I wanted to give this story a modern touch. 

Bibliography: 
"The Man with Five Friends" by by A.L. Shelton from Tibetan Folk Tales (1925). Web Source: UN-Textbook.