Learning Challenge: Trying the Happiness Jar

This week, I'm going to be doing the happiness jar challenge. 

I don't want to do daily updates, because I don't want to look back on each day until the final day. So next Sunday, I will post the results of this challenge here in an edited section of this blog post. 

Happiness jar challenge, 

via the Learning by HEART blog

The happiness jar challenge was pretty fun! I will admit it was hard to keep up with, but looking back was nice because I remember a lot of good moments throughout the week that I probably wouldn't have thought about otherwise. 

Growth Mindset: The 30 Day Challenge and Failing Superman

This week I decided to watch two videos to learn more about the growth mindset. From the Growth Mindset playlist, I watched Trying something new for 30 days and Failing Superman.

I chose the first video because I've heard about various challenges to try new things, but I never actually try anything new. The speaker's message was simply, encouraging, and applicable to a number of things. I have written down a few things to try over the next 30 days thanks to this video.

The second video was pretty interesting as well, because education is something that I've thought a lot about. I don't find a lot of value in traditional education, because a lot of what I've learned that has been useful to me I've learned on my own. That's not to brag, but merely to echo the creator of the video's viewpoint that we all are interested in different things and we learn in different ways. It is rare to find cases where the public education system has taken care of a student's learning needs perfectly. I'm not sure what the solution is because it's a rather complex problem and we've been rooted in the same curriculum for so long, but I am optimistic that people like the creator of the video will be able to carve out a system that works for all of our future students.

Studious Superman, photo by Flickr user T K

Feedback Thoughts

Feedback is such an interesting thing, because it, at least in my experience, has such a bad reputation, but is truly so good for us as individuals. I'm very interested in self development, so a lot of the concepts talked about in the articles I read were not new to me, but it's very important to keep them in mind, so being refreshed on these core ideas of feedback was nice.

I'm a lot better at giving feedback than receiving it, and part of the reason is that I'm pretty sure I was raised as a narcissistic child - at least to some degree. I am the sixth of seven children, so it was pretty natural for me to make comparisons to the achievements of my siblings. It was a long time coming, but I've grown up a lot since then after having a few rough breaks. Like many others, college has taught me a lot about myself that I didn't realize as a child. 

The feedback from this course is going to be difficult to accept, but I'm going to try to do my best to absorb as much from it and learn to improve myself as a writer and storyteller. The creative arts don't come naturally to me, but I think I'll learn to appreciate them a lot more once I've gone through some of the difficulties that artists have to deal with - albeit on a much smaller scale.

Photo of someone rock climbing by Maria Ly 

via Wikimedia Commons

Reading Notes: Ovid's Metamorphoses (1-4), Part B

1. Echo

It was pretty cool to hear Tiresias' story. I had never known how he had actually lost his sight. Random thought: are any of the stories different in their Greek versions? 

I could see a story being more about Echo, having her successfully distract Juno from getting at the other nymphs who accompanied Jupiter, but I'm not sure how to make it increasingly appealing throughout the story.

2. Narcissus

Were there any instances of love being portrayed as more than physical beauty/affection? One story idea I have is for a person who is like Narcissus, but instead of loving their physical appearance, they love their own personality so much.

3. Pyramus and Thisbe

Never mind, this story seems to be an example of love that is not just purely due to physical affection.

Your reading notes were right, this story is very similar to Romeo and Juliet. The ending especially, having the male think his lover is dead, leading him to kill himself, then the female returning and finding her lover actually dead decides to do the same. I wonder if they share a similar origin, or if this story is just very common among different cultures.

I also realized that almost every one of these stories ends in something unfortunate happening to one of the characters. It reminds me of present-day, where a lot TV shows have unfortunate/scandalous things happen in them like violence, adultery, crime, etc. Humans haven't changed much, eh? 

4. Mars and Venus

And there's the adultery. Not much else to say really because this story was rather short. 

5. Perseus and Andromeda

Perseus really thinks of himself as good guy. While it's kind of annoying, he does do some pretty cool stuff like thinking to turn Atlas to stone and setting Andromeda free. 

6. Perseus and Medusa

I always thought he turned Medusa herself to stone by reflecting her image back to her, but I guess not! Perseus is a pretty successful hero, but it might be fun to write an origin story where he fails at something and as a result is taught to overcome challenges and become a truly powerful hero. 

Photo of a Narcissus flower by cristfer

Ovid's Metamorphoses, translation by Tony Kline; link to the reading online. 

Reading Notes: Ovid's Metamorphoses (1-4), Part A

1. Deucalion and Pyrrha

Floods are pretty crazy. As civilized and advanced as we think we are, there's nothing like a good, old flood from mother nature to remind us how powerless we are to her whims. A flood ending the world sounds pretty devastating, but it's terrible enough when smaller floods strike in big cities, like the flooding that occurred in Paris while I was studying abroad in France. There were a lot of delays and people were really freaked out. I was afraid my bus route was going to be flooded, but I can't even imagine what kind of disaster a flooding from Neptune would do to our world today.

That's actually a decent idea for a story, even if it's kind of been told already in a few end of the world movies. A modern day flooding that wreaks havoc all over the world caused by the gods, or some other powerful existence. 

 2. Io

I was particularly struck by the sentence that the father of Io mentioned about how his sorrow would go on for eternity, and that it was, in this instance, a curse being a god and therefore immortal. 

Also, it's interesting how the author refers to the characters in terms of their relations to other characters in the mythology. It helps show how everyone is related, but also expands your knowledge of the world.

3. Phaethon and the Sun

This is actually a story I am kind of familiar with, but I had no idea Phaethon was so young nor that he was unsure of who is father is. 

4. Phaethon's Ride

5. The Death of Phaethon

I don't really understand the metamorphoses yet. There doesn't really seem to be much explanation, but rather description of the changes occurring. Does change in form come as a result of great emotion, or just great sadness? Both parties that experienced change in this part of the story were intimately connected to Phaethon, so his death affected them greatly. 

6. Callisto

These stories of Jupiter raping innocent virgin girls are pretty sad honestly. What's worse is that Juno, wife of Jupiter, blamed Callisto for the act, and then punished her by turning her into a bear. 

It was cool to find out about Ursa Major/Minor though.

7. Semele

I can see this story retold with a different wish/ending for Semele, but I'm not sure what it would be. Do I preserve the doom that she is destined at the hands of Juno? Or do I save her, but what becomes of Bacchus, whose birth story may be important to his life later on?

Phaethon by Gustave Moreau

Ovid's Metamorphoses, translation by Tony Kline; link to the reading online.