Week 13 Reading Diary: Russian Folktales, Extra Credit

(Leshy, via Wikipedia)

I really enjoyed the tales from this unit--I was looking for something written in a more colloquial style (see: I have reached exceeded my thinking capacity for this week, apparently, so stuff written in a higher style was out) and these stories all had really awesome characters--and so many twists! A lot of them deal with a sense of poetic justice, too, which is really satisfying to read when you're just done with everything! But anyway, here were some of the stories that I especially enjoyed:

The Water Snake: this one was actually really sad, but I thought it was interesting that, unlike so many other stories where the daughter is tricked into marriage, she actually ended up happier married than she was at home--I'm sure there's some kind of socioeconomic-situational stuff that I just didn't catch here, but that kind of ending to that particular kind of marriage isn't very common in fairy tales in general (at least not any that I've read, and especially not when the girl is tricked into marriage, as opposed to being sold/traded into it by a well-meaning but rather thick father). Anyway, the storytelling period for this week is over, but if I were to write a story about this one I would probably focus a bit on the snake's background--a legion of snake-people sounds really cool, actually--there might be more mythology out there that I could find...

The Leshy: I'm a sucker for stories that include "Green Men"--wild woodland spirits--although I find it really interesting that, in this case, the woodland spirit is related to the Devil (the spirit is the Devil's grandfather) as opposed to being a beneficiary of any of the characters in the story. If I were to write a story focusing on this one--although I suppose it would be possible to write a story that focused on a combination of some of these stories--I would focus on the priest's daughter's life after she goes to live with the huntsman as his wife. The story says that she was "given" in marriage to him, but I might change the story so that she ended up choosing him, or write one that focuses on the fact that she didn't agree to marry him. Or a story that focuses on the transition back to normal life from living with the man in the woods. That turned dark fast...I'll stop now...

Source: Russian Fairy Tales by W. R. S. Ralston (1887). Untextbook.

Week 13 Review

(Dante's Inferno: Academia Version, via the Announcements. Source: PhD Webcomics)

I believe that this is from Wednesday's announcements--the link is in the caption for the photo. I feel like this is very accurate. I especially like the "Teachery" part...

As for potential announcements from this week--I really don't know about any group events going on for next week, but I do know one for tomorrow--OU Improv is doing their last show of the semester tomorrow (it starts at 5 or 6, I think??) and I know their director and it's going to be awesome! And I know that there's a bunch of anthropology lectures coming up next week, but I can't remember any off the top of my head...I'll post one of these next week, and see what I can find...

Week 13 Famous Last Words

(my life in a nutshell, via http://quotesgram.com/the-end-funny-quotes-semester/)

I should be more excited about the end of the semester than I am right now, because I'm actually almost all caught up on everything that I fell behind on during the first few weeks! As wonderful and informative and mind-stretching as Visual Anthropology was, it was also very intense, and it didn't leave a lot of room for doing anything else, so I was forced to triage and fell way behind in everything. And then it didn't actually end when it was supposed to, so that put me further behind. And it was really discouraging for a while, because I thought I was never going to catch up. But here I am--I'm back on track for points in this class, and I have a plan for finishing, and I have plenty of time to write papers from other classes.

But I am very, very tired. So I don't always get things done in the least amount of time they could get done in. See: I didn't do a Storytelling post this week because yesterday afternoon I had no brain for creative stuff, and this morning I didn't have a brain for creative stuff, so I decided to do two extra credit posts instead. And I'm having a hard time writing in Arabic, because that's like creativity in a completely different vein and requires me to use way more imagination than I have at the moment. So everything I end up writing in Arabic is very so-so, but I keep trying. Which is fine, because I'm learning how to balance things like what homework has to get done with what kind of shape my brain is in. But at the same time it's kind of discouraging that I have all of this time but I'm using all of it getting a small amount of stuff done. It's just the curse of wearing yourself out in the beginning of the semester, I guess: note to self for the next time...

So, yes...we'll keep on keeping on...I think everybody is exhausted at this point. I don't know what it is about spring semester, but it seems to fly by and be about ten times as intense as fall semester...

Week 13 Growth Mindset: The Power of Belief

(Josh Waitzkin, via Wikipedia)

For this week's growth mindset post, I watched this TEDxManhattan talk by Eduardo Briceno. In the talk, he recaps what we've already heard Carol Dweck say in her other videos towards the beginning of the semester, and elaborates on the effects of growth mindset--not only in children, but also in adults such as Josh Waitzkin, who has won many national chess championships and many national championship awards in Tai Chi Chuan. Waitzkin attributes his success to having developed a growth mindset after losing his first chess championship--he says that this loss proved to him that he wasn't a prodigy, or inherently more intelligent that anyone else, and inspired him to put more effort into improving.

I found Waitzkin's story pretty inspiring; being a martial artist who came late to my sport myself, I'm always interested in the stories of people who start various martial arts in their twenties and go on to become national champions. It's not just martial arts that growth mindset is useful for, of course, but their philosophies play really well together as a whole, I think--one of the goals of the World Taekwondo Federation is to instill a philosophy of constant improvement and integration of the mind, body, and spirit, for example--so it's interesting to think of growth mindset in that context....

Week 13 Tech Tip: Weather Widget

So I've finally gotten around to adding a weather widget to the sidebar of my blog--better late than never, I suppose! Anyway, if you want to add one to your blog as well (it's a seriously easy process, and you can get extra credit from it) the info for doing so is here.

Week 13 Learning Challenges: Time Management Advice from Maggie Stiefvater

(Stiefvater herself, via Wikimedia Commons)

This week I thought I would sort of add on to the time management stuff I posted a couple of weeks ago and give you some other awesome time management stuff that I've collected over the years. All of it is by--you guessed it!--Maggie Stiefvater, who is a huge believer in setting (manageable; more on that later) goals and then putting your butt in a chair and achieving those goals (or I guess you don't have to put it in a chair if you don't have goals to achieve that require sitting down, but all of my struggles with time management tend to center around my inability to sit still for more than 20 minutes at a time, so that's a helpful saying for me).

Anyway, from her early stuff there's this article that describes some of the things that keep her from achieving her goals in a timely manner, and there's this sequel explaining what exactly she does to combat these things.

From her later stuff, there's this one, but basically it says a lot of the same things, it's just an updated version and not nearly as comprehensive. And this one, which is somewhat about timers but mostly just about Space Penguin.

And I think that's all? I hope it's helpful for someone, because it's sure been helpful for me...as of now Maggie Stiefvater has almost 15 books published (her next one is due to come out in seven days, and I can't wait), and is a serious artist and musician as well as everything else she does, so it's advice coming from a good source!

Week 13 Reading Diary: Czech Folktales, Part 2

(Mortar and pestle, via Flickr)

Once again, so many cool stories in this unit! The narrator in these is really droll at times--like in one of the stories he tells us that the protagonist's name is Francis, but that it doesn't really matter if we know that or not--which might also be a cool angle to take for a Storytelling. I haven't really tried to do third person narration at all this semester except for one story, so I might want to try to do that this time around. There aren't that many weeks left, after all!

The Soldier and the Devil: this story was hilarious. The fact that the Soldier put the Devil and then Death in his knapsack, but had to let them go because he was causing too much trouble, was just too much for me, as is the part where he throws his cloak in the gates of Heaven when St. Peter refuses him entry, and sits down on the cloak and says it's his real-estate now...I could just imagine how everybody who dealt with the Soldier was probably simultaneously amazed and irritated by him. This might actually be a good story to do from another person's point of view--or maybe Death/The Devil's point of view, since they're actually both characters in this story?

A Clever Lass: I think it will come as no surprise to anyone at this point when I say that I'm a huge fan of stories with girls who are Tricksters, especially since there are so few of them. This was probably my favorite story in the unit, if only because of the King's fussiness and the Queen's awesomeness and the fact that he basically teases her with impossible tasks all the time and she bests all of them with her intelligence. This story might actually be a cool one to write a sequel to--because I bet the King isn't going to stop being a pill, even though at the end of this story he finally admits that the Queen can advise anyone she wants. In fact, it would probably be really interesting to see what their children got up to...I bet there were some hair-raising situations there...

Source: The Key of Gold by Josef Baudis (1922). Untextbook.