learning by heart: happiness challenge

This week I decided to do a happiness challenge. I read an article titled "The 9 Principles That People Who Feel Successful Say They Live By." This caught my eye because of the word "feel" in the title. In today's age, we are taught that success is many things, but rarely are the person's feelings about their live included in the definition. 

The article starts out with exactly the reason that I clicked on the article in the first place. They explain that success is an abstract concept that is extremely difficult to truly define AND achieve. 

I did not think about the fact that companies and such still base their thoughts and rewards on the traditional standard of what success is. This de-values the personal journey it takes for the individual to actually feel successful. 

There were many ways to live in order to feel successful, but the 2 that stood out to me the most were to suspend judgments and to develop resilience. I like the bit about suspending judgements because it is so very true. Spending time judging yourself or others for mistakes drains valuable energy that you can be using to push beyond in your life. Also, I loved that they said you must develop resilience. I loved this because a lot of people this this is a set that you must adopt when you fail at something. Instead, this is key to feeling successful in the final steps as well. You must surround yourself with a great support system so you know you can get through those rough patches and still feel successful. 

(Photo from Fickr.)

growth mindset: cats

(cheezburger)

I chose this meme to use as I feel like I constantly need to remind myself of this in college. It's hard to think in this way when you are just starting out college, but now, as a senior, I am always trying to get the most out of my classes. It takes time to really realize just how much money is being put into each minute you have with a professor and it's so important to really learn from them so you don't just waste your money and time.

(cheezburger.)

I chose this meme because I think it reigns true for all of us and is sometimes hard to remember. Although we all come from different backgrounds and are going through different things in our lives, we must think positively. We must always remember that we are moving forward from the lowest of lows and that the worst things are just the beginning of something better. 

more reading notes: friday

I decided to do some extra reading in the units that we will cover during the final weeks of the class since I am on track to finish early and don't want to miss out. For this week, I am reading a story from the European Unit. It is a part of the Russian Folktales unit and is called Friday.

The story starts out by introducing you to a woman that did not pay her due reverence to Mother Friday. It says that instead she set to work on a distaff-ful of flax. I am not sure exactly what that means and tried to look it up but found nothing. I am hoping it will fall into place as I read on. 

The woman worked until dinner-time when she fell into a deep sleep. When she fell asleep, Mother Friday paid her a visit. She was clothed in a white dress and was angry. She went straight up to the woman who had been working, picked up a handful of the dust that had fallen out of the flax, and began stuffing the woman's eyes full of it. 

I found that to be quite harsh. I was expecting her to just throw the dust at her, but it quickly escalated past that as she stuffed it into the woman's eyeballs. Somehow, as she did this, the woman did not wake up. I found that to be quite strange as well.

When the woman woke up, she began to yell at the top of her lungs as she did not know what was wrong with her eyes. Finally, someone in the room that was watching told her that she brought this upon herself for upsetting Mother Friday. They filled her in on all that happened while the woman was off in her dreams taking a little nap. 

Once she found out what happened to her, she cried out apologies to Mother Friday and promises to never dishonor her again. So, during the night, Mother Friday came back and was able to remove the dust from the woman's eyes.

(Photo from WikiMedia.)

Russian Folktales unit. Russian Fairy Tales by W. R. S Ralston: Friday.

famous last words: coming to a close

This week has been like my previous few weeks. I had to take two trips to the doctor's office and still no complete answers as to why my body is giving me issues. But, I am overall feeling a lot better. I don't have fever and can eat and all that jazz, so it's a start!

I am really proud of myself for staying on top of this class and my other classes this past week. I tried to picture all of my due dates being a few days earlier than they really are just to make some wiggle-room in case I end up getting sick. With that in my mind, I think I may complete this course by next week which is pretty exciting! 

On the bright side, there were lots of exciting moments that happened over the last week. I got to dress up as a grandpa while TAing Human Anatomy lab which was very entertaining. Our whole team made up members from The Princess Bride, but I actually have never seen the movie. Regardless, it was fun getting to dress up for Halloween at work. Most importantly, the Houston Astros WON the World Series for the first time ever which is freaking AMAZING! It still has not sunk in for me. My family got to go to the parade on Friday and the picture were unreal. I am so happy for my city! Also, OU beat OSU (even though it was a very stressful game)! 

Here is a photo of the anatomy lab crew dressed up as The Princess Bride for Halloween. 

tech tip: online typing test

I used KeyHero.com to test my typing skills for this week's tech tip. I did not like that some paragraphs were exponentially longer than others. I also did not like that many of the paragraphs I tried had grammar mistakes in them. It made it harder for me to type with ease. I did, however, realize that I need to practice my typing accuracy. I typed fast, but I never realized how many times I have to backspace. I actually had to work on typing through a program for every student in my elementary school that went all the way through middle school. But, even with that training, I know that I don't use proper typing technique. I am going to work on it as it is crucial in this day and age. If you are a poor typer, homework can be much more difficult and frustrating that it needs to be.

reading notes: coyote and the dragon, part b

This story takes place in Willamette Valley long ago. I looked up the location of the Willamette Valley and it is in the Pacific Northwest which makes sense as this story is from the Northwest Pacific unit.

In the Willamette Valley in a monster in a cave that scares all of the people. He scared them because at night he would go and hunt people until the morning when he would return to his cave. 

Coyote heard about the issues the people were having with this monster and wanted to help out. He is much more skilled for the task than the people are and was hoping his skills could save them from some agony. 

It turns out that the monster only came out of his cave to hunt the people during the night because he could not endure daylight. The coyote waited for a sunny day to put his plan to take the monster down into action. 

On a bright day, the coyote got his bows and arrows and went to a mountain top and shot an arrow into the sun. Just like the previous story, this one happens to include shooting an arrow into the sky to make a chain of arrows.

Once the chain of arrows was created, the coyote pulled the sun until it came down so he could hide it in the Willamette River. So, unlike the first story I read, he did not climb the chain of arrows and used them as a rope instead.

When night came around, the monster came back out to attack the people. At that time, the coyote broke the chain of arrows which made the sun fly back up into the sky. This blinded the monster giving the coyote the opportunity to kill him.

The story ends by the Indians warning the people that something evil would come of it.

(Photo by WikiMedia.)

I will definitely add the arrow element in my story as that is a recurring theme in the Pacific Northwest unit stories.

 Pacific Northwest unit. Myths and Legends of the Pacific Northwest: Coyote and the Dragon by New Perce.

reading notes: why there are no snakes on takhoma, part a

This week our readings are from the Native American Unit again. I chose to do a story from the Pacific Northwest category titled Why There Are No Snakes on Takhoma.

This story starts out with Tyhee Sahale getting angry. He then ordered a medicine man to take his bow and arrow and shoot into the cloud that hung low over Takhoma. At first, I did not understand why Sahale didn't shoot the could himself. After doing some research I realize that it's because the medicine men are thought of as having magical healing powers. This makes sense as you later read that the arrow stuck in the cloud. He kept shooting arrows until he made a chain of arrows that went all the way down to the earth.

Then, the medicine man told his klootchman and children to climb up the arrow trail. I looked up what klootchman means and it's his wife. He also had the good animals to climb up and then he climbed up. 

After they were all up the chain of arrows, the medicine man broke the chain of arrows so no bad animals could come up. Once the chain broke, it began to rain until the land flooded. Once all of the bad animals were drowned, it stopped raining. 

Once the waters drained, they medicine man and his family went out of the cloud and back to the earth. Now there are no snakes or bad animals on Takhoma.

I am a little confused as to why they got rid of all of the bad animal just because someone was mad as the people. I am sure I am missing a piece of something that relates to the culture, but I could not find anything online. 

I think this would be a good thing to do my story over because I really like the flow of the story.

(Photo from WikiMedia.)

Native American Unit: Pacific Northwest. Why There Are No Snakes on Takhoma by Cowlitz.