Back-Up, Check-Up, and Review: Week 13

I have two favorites from this week's daily announcement posts!

My first one is the growth mindset meme.

Growth mindset cat meme. Image Source: Daily Course Announcements

This picture cracked me up and I really like the quote. Sometimes the setbacks make us stronger and we grow. They truly are cha-chas!

The second one is the free waffles! I'm a college student, so of course I enjoy free food. It's awesome that the writing center does this monthly and I think I'll have to start taking advantage of this.

Famous Last Words: Week 14

My, oh my, am I stuffed.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!



This week has been filled with a lot of love and joy.

Although we had class on Monday and Tuesday, I got to spend more time than usual with my roommates. It was great to just be able to relax and hang out with them without too much stress.
I headed back to my hometown of Flower Mound, Texas on Wednesday to spend some time with my parents. Today we celebrated Thanksgiving at our home with my Grandma!

Another cool thing that happened this week was that the band service sorority that I'm in helped to organize a canned food drive for the Norman Food Bank that serves the families in Norman (headed up by our Vice President of Service and my little, Amelia!). Every year, the Pride gathers canned food for a few weeks and ultimately donates it right before Thanksgiving. This year was special because we donated a total of 5,466 items-the largest donation the food bank has ever had! This will help to serve over 500 families in the Norman area. Not only that, but we also turned the canned food drive into a competition against OSU's band and their donations will help to serve families in the Stillwater area.
The best part? My section (the saxophones) brought the most and won our competition within the band...;)
Just kidding, of course...the best part is that more families will be able to celebrate Thanksgiving and have food to eat.
Lots of love and food for a lot of people this Thanksgiving - that sure is something to be thankful for.

And tomorrow I get to finish it out with my second family. The Pride will rehearse tomorrow evening before our departure on Saturday morning. We'll arrive in Stillwater a few hours before the game and hopefully bring home a win for the final regular season game!

Turkey. Image Source: Pixabay

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone reading...and have a great rest of your year.

Week 15: Reading Evaluation

Week 15 Reading Evaluation

The readings this semester were great. I really liked and appreciated that we had a choice in what we read. That made this class more interesting and made me want to complete the assignments. It allowed me to actually get into what I was doing and to get something out of it. I also liked doing the weekly reading posts. This let me discuss what I liked and maybe disliked and gave me notes to help me with my storytelling each week.

I liked Aesop's Fables the most. The morals at the end always spoke to me and I liked the creative ways the fables told the stories that led up to the morals. Heck, I liked them so much that I decided to base my storybook around one of Aesop's characters!

The overall balance of reading, writing and commenting was decent. I really liked seeing other student's work and how they interpreted the same assignments. It was cool when we picked the same readings for the week.

As far as advice about reading goes, getting it done sooner is better! It's one more thing you don't have to worry about and it is also fun to do, so why not just get it done?

Week 15: Reflections

Week 15 Reflections

I am the most proud of learning to blog in this class. It has definitely been a stress-reliever and it has been enjoyable to learn about the different things you can do with a blog. I truly enjoyed doing the readings and writing each week, as well as doing the extra credit assignments. This has been my favorite online class by far and maybe even my favorite class at OU.

The most valuable take-aways from the class are the things I have learned from the assignments. I really enjoyed being able to challenge myself and know that I can accomplish things outside of my comfort zone. I also enjoyed the extra credit assignments. Being able to look back on the week, learn about blogs and technology, learn about the growth mindset...and the list goes on. It all helped me in areas other than just this class, which has been so valuable to not only my studies, but also my life in general.

Storytelling Week 14: Mother Friday's Revenge

Mother Friday's Revenge

It had been an abnormally long week. Summer was slipping into the past, while Fall was beginning to make an appearance with its cooler temperatures and bright oranges, dull reds and beautiful browns consuming the leaves and covering the town. Each day seemed to be longer than the last, with thoughts of a warm fire and cup of hot chocolate consuming the minds of the working people as it got closer and closer to each day's end.

Thursday was finally coming to a close. Thank goodness it was almost Friday...only one sleep away...

Mother Friday drifted off into a peaceful sleep only to be awaken abruptly at midnight by a startling feeling deep inside of her. If there was one thing that Mother Friday absolutely hated, it was when people took her day to work. It drove her insane and caused an anger to stew in her heart and mind. Furious, she took to the road to find the person who caused her to wake on her day off.

She arrived at a dimly lit cottage and peeked into the window. A woman was sitting inside, calmly spinning her flax and doing work that could wait until next week to do. How dare she! Does this woman know that it is Friday?

Woman spinning flax. Source: Flickr

Mother Friday angrily threw the woman's door open, walked up to her and put dust from the floor into her eyes. She then stomped back to her own cottage, still furious at the woman.

The woman was extremely startled and couldn't see a thing! She ran into town to try to tell others what had happened to her eyes, but couldn't. However, the town-goers knew exactly what had happened.
"You fool, you've brought this upon yourself!" They exclaimed. "Everyone knows not to mess with Mother Friday!"

Aggravated and distressed, the woman ran home. How could she fix this? She begged and begged for forgiveness from Mother Friday, hoping she would eventually hear.
The woman drifted off to sleep that night with the dust still in her eyes.

Luckily, Mother Friday heard her cries and in the night went to clear out the woman's eyes. She knew that the woman would never again dishonor the day that should not be used to complete work, but to relax.

The woman woke, able to see and never again used a Friday to spin her flax. She warned others to do the same and never again heard from Mother Friday.

Author's Note: I've been experimenting with other writing styles and wanted to continue that this week. The original story, Friday, is about Mother Friday and is not told from her perspective. There is a woman who decides to spin and weave flax on Friday instead of resting and Mother Friday does not take to that lightly. Mother Friday punishes the woman until the woman begs for forgiveness. I found inspiration for this story by thinking of ways I could retell this story and ultimately decided that it would be interesting to see this story told from Mother Friday's perspective.

Bibliography: Russia: Friday. This story is part of the Russian Folktales unit. Story source: Russian Fairy Tales by W. R. S. Ralston (1887).

Myth-Folklore Unit: Russian Folktales

Essay: Russian Folktales

Myth-Folklore Unit: Russian Folktales

I loved these stories! I especially liked the second half of the readings. I truly enjoy and appreciate when stories have happy endings and what happy endings these were! I'm glad these were the last stories that I read for this class, because by reading them I definitely went out on a good note.
I also feel as if the writing style closely mimics what I use in my daily writing. This made it almost conversational and easy to read for me. The words flowed nicely together and kept my interest the entire time, making it easy to get caught up and lost in the stories. Although I do appreciate a challenge when reading, it was nice to just sit and enjoy the readings for this week without having to interpret anything or focus too long on the physical aspects of reading the text.

I especially liked the The Fiddler in Hell and The Soldier and the Vampire. Though the middle of the story had some evil tenses, the endings were so happy and wonderful.The stories were all very similar in this way.

The first half of the readings were also great. I liked reading the days of the week stories, especially Wednesday and Friday. Each day being given a different persona and personality was interesting and quite honestly, pretty accurate. I like how Wednesday was wicked and that Mother Friday didn't appreciate when people worked on that day. I wish that all Fridays could be like that! How wonderful and relaxing that would be.

Overall, these stories were probably some of my favorite from the entire class. If not my favorite, they were definitely in the top 5 readings from the semester.

Party. Image Source: Flickr

 

Party time! Done with readings! Though I post this picture, I'm also a little sad. I enjoyed readings, especially this week. I might actually go back and read more in the future!

Reading Diary B: Russian Folktales

Myth-Folklore Unit: Russian Folktales

The Fiddler in Hell 

This story was so great! As I'm sure you've noticed by my other posts, I love stories with happy endings.  The fiddler was incredibly clever with his trickery of the strings and it was great that the bridge could be built and the man sent to Heaven. I'm not so sure how the fiddler just tripped into Hell, though...or why the baby was born. But alas, it was a great story that I truly enjoyed reading. The style was also easy to read, making it even more enjoyable and easy to get caught up in.

 

Fiddler. Source: Wikimedia

The Soldier and the Vampire

I love this story's ending as well. Even though the middle wasn't great and the Warlock was creepy, it turned out well because everything that went wrong was made right in the end. The style was once again easy and wonderful to read.