Reading Diary A: The Beginning of Mahabharata or The Beginning of Utter Confusion. I don't Know yet.

Oh goodness another love story… here we go *covers eyes*.

A free-spirited woman… I can dig it.

Or maybe not… Drowning your kids in the river? Uh…

Ohh. She’s the river Ganga.

He gets his son back only to fall in love with another woman who’s children might ruin the dynasty.

Devavratha is so nice. He gives up his lineage to please his father and now new mother’s father.

A half god here, a half god there- these sons are going to be a force to reckon with.

This story so far has been…. Weird. Each sentence is like a completely different thought and idea and it’s just not quite coming together for me. I am so intrigued to keep reading to see if this all makes sense.

Wives, kings, dynasties—it’s all pretty difficult to keep track of. I can begin to see how it is all coming to the story of Mahabharata, but I’m just not sure yet.

Ganga Drowning Her Child
Provided by Wikipedia

Week 8 Famous Last Words: Maybe, just MAYBE...

Dare I say it? But I think I’ve finally gotten my life together. 

Now that I’ve cursed myself…..

This week has been so refreshing. Having simpler assignments in this class this week gave me the time I’ve so desperately needed to finally catch up in all my other classes. I had time to crank out all of the work for this class relatively quickly giving me time to study for my two midterms this week. Having classes cancelled Wednesday was really nice as well. While it did force me to have two mid terms on the same day, it gave me so much more time than I would have normally had to study.

Looking back on past assignments is such an interesting idea. I really did not realize just how much I have accomplished this semester, just in one class alone. I actually wouldn’t mind doing this in every other class. It is so easy to get discouraged as students. Our expectations are set so high we often forget that even failure is so much farther than we began. I actually sort of wish all of our evaluation was like that… But that’s a completely different discussion.

This weekend was definitely interesting. With all the snow storms I was starting to go a little crazy. I just imagine my metaphorical body standing at the door screaming “Let me out!” so I did! One of my best friends and I finally decided to get a life and go out, for once. We went to The Mont (which may or may not have been a poor choice to begin with) but it all went downhill from there. We quickly remembered why we were home bodies in the first place ha ha.

But it wasn’t all bad! After an uneventful night, we woke up with one mission in mind…. PANCAKES! Anyone who knows us would be well acquainted with our obsession with IHOP, mainly out of tradition not of taste, and it had simply been too long since we had gone. It was a perfect ending to a really strange weekend.

Here are a couple of SnapChats of my beautiful life choices.

Images of IHOP
Taken bymyself

Commenting Review Week

Comments are a wonky thing. To have someone look at your work with a critical eye is always a scary but rewarding process. Criticism is SO useful in this setting. We do not have the ability to walk over to a classmate and ask “what do you think about this.” That alone puts us in this cliff hanger of whether or not our work is going to be perceived the way we intended it to be. Each time I see that I have a new comment I get excited and curious to see what someone else thinks of my work. It’s truly a strange process, but it is so wonderful. Other students have pointed out mistakes I've made that I would have never realized otherwise.

I struggle a little with commenting because I always want to sort of chat. I’m always intrigued by the inspiration of other’s work and want to talk about it, not necessarily evaluate it. Another struggle is with the fact that my knowledge of technical grammatical and punctuation rules is sort of pathetic. I can easily identify an error but I don’t always know how to fix it, or why it is wrong. That has proven to be especially difficult in the longer comments. How do you say “that’s wrong but I don’t know why,” In a constructive comment? It’s a little difficult to get your opinion out when you aren't sure how to say it. I am always worried that I will sound mean.

The aspect I like the most about commenting is the exposure. I would have little motivation or reason to explore other student’s blog posts without the assignment and would have missed so many cool and intriguing stories otherwise. The introductions are always the most fun for me to comment on. It’s so cool to see common interest within a random group of students, and be able to make note of it. 

www.cheezburger.com

Writing Review Week

          After re-reading my stories I’m amazed at the creativity I have been able to unleash. I came into college with my English credits done and have not really written since then. That’s been a couple years now. Writing was SUCH a struggle for me growing up. In elementary school I always had a very difficult time with not only sentence structure but also the ability to harness my thought into meaningful text. I hated writing. I loved to read, but I could never understand how to write something for myself. That all changed in 5^th grade when I had the most wonderful English and reading teacher that realized this struggle and knew exactly what to do about it. It may seem like a stupidly obviously statement, but she told to just write. There is no wrong or right, no points to be given or taken away; she simply wanted me to write and worry about the technical aspects later. In that year alone, with the encouragement of one single teacher, I soon prevailed far beyond my classmates and found joy in writing like never before. I was always excited to get a writing assignment. When most would cringe, I would giggle with glee because this was the one thing I knew that I could do, and could do well.

          I say all that to say that it is so wonderful to be able to simply write for a class again. My thoughts on the readings are never verbalized, but they become something so much more important: stories. Each storytelling assignment, I literally sit down with my laptop and babble until a story is formed. Half the time I don’t know what I’m writing until it’s done. When else do I get the opportunity to babble for class credit?! I really am lucky. I still can’t spell anything to save my life (thank god for Microsoft word) and I have no idea what to do with commas or semi colons or quotation marks other than just sticking them in somewhere that looks right, but that’s what my peers are for right? (ha ha)

          Storytelling has become such a unique way to let thoughts out. I somehow found significance in a little bird that was mentioned once in the beginning of Buck’s Ramayana and make it my own. This creativity thing is really a light that can easily be extinguished, and so often is. The openness of the storytelling assignments lets that creativity light (and apparently my metaphors) grow beyond expectation. It truly is a wonderful, rare, thing.

This image provided by Wikipedia was also a contender for the image I would
use in my story "The Songbird's Fate"
I'm glad I now have an excuse to show this pretty little image. 

Reading Review Week

          It is sort of crazy to take a few minutes to look back on the things I did not even realize I was learning.  I decided to take this class on a whim and I am so glad I did. I have always been a reader, a slow reader, but a reader. I can just remember the summer days where my mom would come make sure I was still breathing because she hadn’t heard a peep from me in hours, only to find me curled up in bed with a book that was the size of my head.

          Upon seeing the reading and realizing what this class was all about, I soon became worried. I always wondered how I was going to manage to do 50 pages of reading in one night on top of my other obligations. Most normal people probably would have thought “Oh, I should do that reading ahead of the assignment day” but that is beside the point. I always found a way to manage. While at times stressful, it has been so rewarding to trek through these stories and read stories I have never read before.

          Ramayana is something I would have never encountered, probably in my whole life, if I had not taken this class. It is such a strange story, but it explains so much about current Indian culture as well as society as a whole. It is sort of funny how our stories can be so similar throughout cultures, yet we still want to argue about religion. (A man born of the gods to come to earth to save the world? That sounds a little too familiar but heck, what do I know?)

          The folk stories I have explored have also been equally if not more rewarding. Again, it is surprising just how much overlap there is within cultures. It may be a different name or situation or place but the root and morals of the stories are always so similar to stories I have heard throughout my life.

          The only problem I have encountered throughout this semester with this class is just the sheer bulk. “Out of sight out of mind” is more than a saying in my life. While rather rhythmic after a couple weeks, it is still easy to forget to do an assignment here and there. Being a slow reader, that has been a struggle for me. I feel as if I want to understand too much when I read. I am constantly looking up words and backgrounds in order to further understand the story and that can sometimes hinder my progress.

          Regardless, I have survived! I hope to get ahead this week and continue another book by Narayan!

Quotation by Mark Twain
Provided by Flikr

Week 7 Famous Last Words: When Does the Crazy Stop?

          This semester has been weirdly…… problematic. I’m starting to realize that I may have bit off a little more than I can chew. It seems as if each week is somehow crazier than the last. Each Friday I am sitting here thinking “thank god that’s over” only to be shocked at the craziness of the following week. My dad would call this phenomenon “life”. I don’t like to think that this is my life- one insanely crazy day after another- but maybe it is. Whatever the case, I hope I get a handle on it soon, because it’s too late to do anything about it.  As a friend once told me on a particularly adventurous night “There just ain’t enough coffee in the world for all this crazy.” There has never been a statement truer than that.

          Madness aside, this week has been alright otherwise. The snow has given me an excuse to sit down and have a little time to do nothing and catch up on some reading. I really enjoyed the reading I chose for this week. The stories were so well written and so well explained for someone who is quite ignorant of Indian culture and definitions. I would highly recommend it for anyone who is looking for something to read. I've come to really enjoy these past couple weeks with the un-textbook option. I get to explore topics I would never otherwise as well as learn through other student’s writing whether it be based on another story or story in Ramayana. I particularly enjoy reading other student’s stories about Ramayana because I still get to “read” the book through other people’s eyes. It is quite a fun experience.

Well, let’s get on to goals for the upcoming week. I have two exams and a paper due, so at the minimum I am hoping that I can make it through this week with my sanity. Other than that, I like to think I have reasonable expectations (ha ha).

An Image of Motivation Provided by Pixbay
Because Obviously I need A lot of That.

          

Typing Test Tech Tip

For this week's Tech Tip I tested my typing skills with TypingTest.com since the RankMyTyping.com website was not working on my computer. 

I averaged at 54 word per minute, which is SAD considering just how much time I spend typing. I have noticed that the majority of my slowness is due to my dependence on auto-correct and spell-check. I don't bother to add apostrophes or correct spelling if I hit a wrong letter because I know my computer (or phone) will fix it for me. Blessing or curse? I still haven't decided.

I am tempted to try to amp up my speed through "typing exercises".

Its interesting. I really enjoy tests like this. It sort of puts things in perspective.