Famous Last Words: A Week of Much Needed Laziness

I guess I'll actually cover two weeks of review, since the week for this class actually spanned 2 weeks.

This week I went really hard on the assignments and extra credit because I wanted to put myself in a good position to finish out the semester a week early. Well, I did that during the week leading up to Thanksgiving break. This week, I planned on doing all of my assignments + extra credit before the break but that didn't happen.

It also didn't happen anytime during the break even though I stayed away from my family. Instead, I spent a lot of time playing video games with my friends and just relaxing. By the time Sunday rolled around, I was a little upset that I didn't do any homework, but then I realized that just doing nothing productive for a few days actually was really nice.

I should be able to finish out this semester pretty strongly. I don't have any major projects, just three midterm exams to finish up. Oh! And the final story for this class, which should be challenging but fun to write. Which, to be completely honest, is probably going to haunt me all week. I have NO idea how I'm going to finish the story... and I upped the ante majorly in story 2 by bringing a more sinister element into Miles' adventures. I honestly don't think it was the right decision from a story perspective because it completely changed the tone of the blog and was pretty difficult to write. Anything with a more darker, complex narrative takes a lot more time and pages to turn into a good piece of writing, so I'm not exactly optimistic about my ability to turn this one around (and still be satisfied with the result).

For the rest of this class, I'm going to try to finish up the extra credit assignments for the week (minus the reading) and hit tomorrow pretty hard. The goal is to finish everything except for the Project story by Friday, which should leave me plenty of time to mull over how I'm going to decide Miles' fate.

Image from GoodFreePhotos

Wikipedia Trail: From San Jose Sharks to George W. Bush

To start this Wikipedia Trail off, I decided to read about the NHL (National Hockey League) team the San Jose Sharks.

San Jose Sharks

The Sharks are a relatively new team to the league, starting in 1991.

They struggled a bunch early on in their franchise career, and they still hold the record for most losses in a season with 71.

However, they outsold every other NHL team in merchandise sales in 1992.

They actually made the playoffs and put up a pretty good fight in their next year, which is pretty good for such a new team.

From the Sharks article, I found a link to Seek & Destroy, a song by Metallica.

San Jose Sharks logo

ti's fvia Flickr user PMell2293

Seek & Destroy

Wow! I've listened to Metallica a bit in my day, but I had no idea that this song was such a historic one for them. It was the first song that they EVER recorded in studio, and to date it's their third most played song of all time. That's pretty cool!

From here, I decided to read about Clear Channel, which later turned into iHeartMedia.

iHeartMedia

I haven't heard of this before, but Clear Channel actually was a public company for a long time (35 years!), but in 2006 it actually sold its investors shares (with their permission, of course) and became private. I guess $26.7 billion really talks.

This article actually wasn't as interesting as I was hoping it would be. It just goes into detail about the different types of programming that the station has done over the years and some of the typical controversies that every major company seems to face at one time or another.

To end this Wikipedia Trail, I will read about the former US President George W. Bush.

George W. Bush

It's funny how opinions change about someone, particularly public figures. Bush was beloved when he first took first office, but it seems that it was only because of the 9/11 attacks. I've heard the same thing said about Rudy Giuliani, specifically because of his fervent support of Donald Trump in the 2016 election.

Tech Tip: Google Timer

I'm so glad that this Tech Tip is available, because it's actually super useful. I use it all the time. Not only can it be used for popular timed work session techniques like Pomodoro, but it's also great for everyday things, like laundry or an oven timer. The best part is you can just have it in your web browser while you're doing something else, like homework, playing video games, or just general web surfing and it will still alert you when you need to do something.

It's also super easy, you can just time in the address bar (if you're using Chrome) or in Google web search "timer 20 minutes" or however long you need it for. You can also pause and reset the timer, which are pretty useful.

It would be cool if they let you add the task that you need the timer for, just in case you have multiple timers or if you're REALLY sleep deprived and need to be reminded (I know this has happened to me on occasion!)

All in all, it's a great tool!

Learning Challenge: I would vote for a political candidate who ran on the platform of "Reading Day"

For this week's Learning Challenge, I've decided to look through a bunch of the reading images on the Learning by HEART site because I want to remind myself to pick up a good book today. 

Especially in times of great stress or weakness, like I sometimes feel towards the end of the semester, reading seems to be such a good way to relieve my woes. 

I like this one in particular because of how amazing I think that would be! Not that it would be enforced, of course, but who knows, maybe we all could use a full day of reading in our lives? I know for sure that if any of the presidential candidates were in favor of a National Reading Day, this year's ballot would have been a lot easier to cast! 

Reading motivational poster from

the Learning by HEART website

Growth Mindset: Motivation for the end of the semester

For my growth mindset this week, I decided to watch Dan Pink's TED talk called "The puzzle of motivation." I figured it would be pretty applicable to me because I always find my motivation towards schoolwork much lower during the end of the semester.

The talk was funny and Dan Pink is a great speaker, but the advice was very business-focused. He used a lot of good examples based on research that had been conducted on motivation and performance of certain tasks which were very convincing and insightful. The main point that he tries to make is that if you want people to be creative, don't incentive them with external rewards (like bonuses, vacation, promotions). These rewards seem like they would motivate people, and they do for very clear, easy to follow tasks, but not for tasks that require a lot of critical thinking or creativity.

I found all of this very interesting, and if I were running a business, I would definitely try to apply these principles, but as a student, it wasn't super motivating. Schoolwork sometimes aligns with my personal interests and passions, but not always. Studying for final exams is definitely a soul crusher.

So what if it doesn't apply? What can I learn from this and apply it to my own life?

Another big point that Dan Pink brought up was the idea that workers need autonomy in their lives to have motivation. Well, how could I create that? What if I came up with new ways to study for exams, or studied with new people? I think there are ways to do it, and I've just got to try things out and see what works.

Motivation

image by Flickr user Jeff Djevdet

Reading Notes: Grimm Brothers (Crane), Part B

The Six Swans

Hmmm... While I understand that the step-mother was pretty cruel turning the sons into swans, I can also understand her anger at the King for hiding the children from her. That kind of dishonesty in a marriage isn't healthy.

That's an interesting arrangement..

Ah, beauty is such a curse! Couldn't they see she was on a mission??

What the heck? People in this time are so scheming it's crazy.

Yay! Happy ending!

I really like the idea of transformation for some reason, so it's cool to see it appear in so many stories from this time.

King Thrushbeard

Well that's not very nice. She should ridicule people like that!

I don't know about that sort of punishment, but she definitely shouldn't have people lining up to try and marry her if she's such a rude person.

Oh no, not menial labor! What a terrible thing to have to do! It's really hard to feel bad for this character...

Huh. I actually didn't expect that ending, but it's good to see that a character be given a second chance to right their wrongs. Hopefully now she will be more appreciative of her life in royalty.

The Three Spinsters

Oof. First the mother lies to the queen, then her daughter does the same. This can't end well...

Uh oh, here's another opportunity for the daughter to mess up! She better remember to invite them to the wedding..

Oh wow, she got away with it! That's actually crazy and a nice twist on the narrative I was expecting.

Snow-White

Okay, hold on a second. The queen wanted to EAT Snow-White's heart??? That's really insane, but kind of cool.

A lot of similarities to Goldilocks actually in how she first interacts with the Dwarves' house. Pretty neat.

That's an interesting way to try and kill someone. I've never heard of being laced to death!

Snow-White is pretty dumb. I guess she is a child though...

I wonder if the queen had hunted down every woman who was deemed more beautiful than her by the mirror, or if this was the first time.

The ballad-singer

via the UnTextbook

Bibliography: Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm translated by Lucy Crane and illustrated by Walter Crane. Source.

Reading Notes: Brothers Grimm (Crane), Part A

The Fisherman and His Wife

Well, that was quite the sudden end. I'm not sure that I liked it. I guess I expected the wife to be punished or something for being too greedy, but I they were only returned to their former state. Hm.

I really liked how the weather/ocean got more intense as the extravagance of the wish grew more and more. It was a good, although obvious form of symbolism. Additionally, it was cool for some reason to see the wife want to be the dominant, traditionally "male" role (king, emperor, pope) despite the fact that she was female.

I could see a story idea being modernized like... a kid asking parents for increasingly more expensive or more advanced form of technology, until he/she asks for something that is too demanding and loses it all!

Aschenputtel

Huh, so that's where the name "Cinderella" comes from. I like that the translation was kept close to the original name, even though the Disney version didn't include the parts about ashes.

Oh, I didn't fully comprehend the part about Aschenputtel being forced to pick lentils out of the ashes. That's actually horrible.

It's not like the step-mother is even giving her useful things to do! She's making it obvious that she doesn't like Aschenputtel and doesn't want her to go to the ball and enjoy herself. So cruel.

So the father is Aschenputtel's father? It seems weird that he would want to cut down the tree even if it wasn't his daughter in it! Crazy.

What the heck?? That's some desperation... You would think she would at least wait until the bleeding stopped.

Also I never thought about this before, but it's crazy to think testing every woman's foot in a shoe was a good plan. The chances that the shoe would only fit one woman would be so low. Also - could they really just not recognize her?

Okay birds... I don't really think that was necessary!

The Robber Bridegroom

Another talking bird who attempts to advise a human. A Grimm Brothers favorite, apparently.

This story moves very quickly. And creepily.

Hmm. That story was kind of lame, honestly. Nothing really exciting happened after the initial shock of the house of cannibals.

The bride of the Robber bridegroom

via the UnTextbook

Bibliography: Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm translated by Lucy Crane and illustrated by Walter Crane. Source.