Learning Challenge: Health and Happiness Memes!

(Image found via Learning Challenge website)

Forget these as steps to happiness (although no doubt they're awesome if you use them that way too)--this is such a cool way to remember how to deal with things. Once things get to the end of the semester--particularly with papers; I'm trying to learn how to love papers because theoretically they're things you can learn so much from but really in practice currently they're just a way I torture myself with procrastination and perfectionism and anxiety--I really do have to remind myself that there are steps towards success, and the first step involves controlling myself (and my negative thoughts). Often times this is as easy as taking a deep breath, sometimes it involves using this method, and sometimes I have to resort to Maggie Stiefvater tactics. But eventually I can control my thoughts enough to look forward to the second step. Alternative solutions are hard, but in a lot of cases I can calm myself down even further due to the step back I have to take to see the whole picture and make new plans. And then comes the third step: I choose the situation that's going to make me the happiest in the long run. Which I guess is sometimes the situation that leads to the least tension and negative energy, but sometimes it's unavoidable, and I have to keep taking deep breaths and just Do The Thing...

But anyway. This is a great picture, with a great mental device, and I'm glad I found it on the blog!

Reading Evaluations: At the End

Oh my goodness, I don't think there weren't any readings that I didn't enjoy this semester. Some of my favorites were the Czech Folk Tales and the Spenser (if you have any more of the Spenser written in that prose-retold style that would be a wonderful addition, I think, because Britomart was amazing and I immediately wanted to read more of The Faerie Queen the next week but obviously didn't really have the time to do it outside of class). One thing that I, as a neurotic and obsessed anthropology student, would like is more info about the various ethnographic collections that you included in the Untextbook as a whole--if there's one thing this semester has taught me, it's to be eternally suspicious about ethnography from the early twentieth century, and my brain won't rest until I know how the tales were collected--but I thought that the collections here were in general very wonderful, and I really appreciated that you used some told in folk-style, because besides the fact that I think that's very cool it's also very ethical when the tales are being presented as primary source material (you probably already know all of this! But I'm reiterating that I appreciate that you did it this way...).

As for Reading Diary strategies, I usually ended up focusing on two or three tales and going into depth on how I could expand or contract or fudge with them to make my own Storytelling for that week--sometimes just rambling on for a paragraph about ideas was very helpful when I was feeling unoriginal later on in the week! I'd also talk about some similarities that I saw as a whole for all of the tales, if it was a collection, and try to come up with some way to put that similarity into the Storytelling as well...

As for tips for reading strategies: finish the readings early!! Even if you don't have time to read and write the reading diary post all in one sitting, it's so helpful to have done all the reading and only have to synthesize your thoughts if you're having to turn an assignment in last-minute. Just something that I found really helpful! Oh, and also jotting down random notes into a word file/on a piece of paper while I was reading, because a lot of times I would read and then not work on the Diary for a few days...whoops...but it all worked out, in the end!

Tech Tip: Automotivator Poster

(made using random image from Automotivator)

(Info on how to do this tech tip here)

Usually around this point in the semester I wish I was doing anything but paddling, and the urge to give up and just watch the sunset is very, very strong. It's a trick to be able to keep an eye on the boat and the sunset and keep paddling, but someday I'll learn it...

Reflections on Storytelling

I think that the thing this class has forced me to do, and that I've been most proud of accomplishing, this semester, is writing (like, for real, starting, finishing, and revising) all of the stories that I have. Normally I have such a problem opening up Word and just starting a story, but I learned that if I have a prompt--or even several prompts combined into one--that gives me enough of a starting point that an opening line usually pops into my head and I can just get going! Finishing stories the stories that I did end up starting has also historically never been one of my strong points, so the fact that I did manage to finish as many as I did--even if it wasn't one every week--was awesome, because that's something I've never done before! Also, all of the editing challenges were really helpful, as they pushed me to look at some problematic aspects of my writing that I've never looked at as problematic before (*ahem* looking at you, commas and semicolons) and push to make them better (or at least more grammatically correct and less superfluous) (I don't think I'll ever loses the parentheses and dashes, though--would it even be me writing at that point? I'd be suspicious...).

Anyway, this class has really been a catalyst for my creativity, and now I'm inspired to go out and write more stories! Even if they're not as good as I'd like them to be the first time around...because there's always revising to fix that problem...

Week 14 Reading Diary: Italian Popular Tales, Extra Credit

(The cover of the book via the Untextbook)

I decided to finish the unit that I started earlier this week instead of starting a new one, because I really enjoyed the stories in the last half! This half actually had a lot more stories with animals in them, and they all (or most of them, at least) seemed to be stories about little things that get passed from person to person and then at the end they've become a huge thing and gotten out of hand--until the narrator makes a wry comment, and makes the whole thing seem absurd! This actually occurred to me to be a really good metaphor for the perils of gossip, and that's probably what I would write about if I were writing any more stories this week...but instead I'll just talk about some of the other stories that weren't like the ones I described, because those were pretty good too...

The Language of Animals: I can actually sympathize a lot with the main character from this one, because he goes through 10 years of school far away (although at the end of it his teachers say they don't have any more to teach him, and I doubt that would ever happen for me!) only to go back to his family and find out that the stuff he's learned isn't, in a lot of cases, appreciated. Most people don't appreciate me yammering at them about what I've learned during the semester, or whatever, so a lot of the time what I've learned goes unsaid until someone needs an answer for things, and then I can't help myself and I shout out the answer! So basically what I'm saying is that I would make this story into a modern-day college/grad student story, because I think that would both be very amusing, in a slightly terrifying and true way.

An Incident in Rome: this is what happens when you go underground in Rome! Just kidding, kind of...actually, what I would probably do is set this story in an underground in Rome. Why do I like modern retellings so much? I guess I'll never know...anyway, this story had some potential for both the comic (I read somewhere that having two people who are both really set on their dialectically-opposed goals is one of the best recipes for comedy, and I agree) and the tragic (reading forever is probably hard on your eyes, and being the person that sentenced Jesus to be crucified probably is not the easiest thing, especially when you're being eternally punished for it)....

Source: Italian Popular Tales by Thomas Frederick Crane (1885). Untextbook.

Growth Mindset: Memes!

(Meme is from the Growth Mindset blog)

As Professor Gibbs says, this saying is actually part of a larger quote that's worth reading (sourced from here):

The good life is lived best by those with gardens — a truth that was already a gnarled old vine in ancient Rome, but a sturdy one that still bears fruit. I don’t mean one must garden qua garden… I mean rather the moral equivalent of a garden — the virtual garden. I posit that life is better when you possess a sustaining practice that holds your desire, demands your attention, and requires effort; a plot of ground that gratifies the wish to labor and create — and, by so doing, to rule over an imagined world of your own.

It hasn't been an easy past week at all for me, and this weekend has been just as challenging. This quote reminded me that it's entirely up to me what I choose to focus on and where I put my time and energy--you really do have to "live in your own little world" sometimes in order to not let life get to you...remembering this isn't the easiest, though!

Tech Tip: Soundcloud Embedded

Here's the link to learn how to embed Soundcloud in a blog post...it's fun, if you need some extra credit points...