Pip Pip Hurray!

For this week's storylab, I decided to write some notes on the Crash Course videos over mythology. I thought this would be a fun wrap-up after completing the entire class this semester; a crash course would help me to make sure I understand how everything is intertwined, as well as remember some things from early on in the semester. I watch Crash Courses for my science classes and they have always helped me, and so I was very expectant that I would learn a lot (I was not let down)! In the first video, I liked how he considered mythology a "slurrpie of knowledge." I think this is super accurate! They did a great job of explaining a myth as a story instead of as facts. Although some myths may have factual parts, there are so many renditions that it is hard to consider all of one myth a fact.  The second video was very different from the first because it talked much more about the actual theories of mythology. In our class, I didn't feel that we spent much time on t...

I can't believe this is my last reading of the whole class! This has been so much fun and I have really enjoyed getting to read stories from so many different countries, cultures, and backgrounds. I decided to focus my last set of notes on the story called "The Cat and the Mouse." I enjoyed most of the stories from part B, but I liked this one the best because it seemed familiar to me. For this note-taking post, I decided to do the note style focused on sentences. I love picking out beautiful sentences, and so I thought that would be a good note to end on. A dog passed by and said, "Do you want me?" this made me laugh, trying to imagine a cat standing on the corner advertising how she wanted to get married, but then being asked by a dog if she wanted to marry him. This was a funny sentence!  The cat accepted him and said, "Let us go and be married, for you please me." So they were married. This was just as funny as the first sentence because he...

This is crazy that it is our last week of reading! I am so excited about reading some of the Italian Popular Tales. I wanted to focus my notes today on the story called "How the Devil Married Three Sisters." I have never heard of this story before and so when I read it I thought it might be fun to focus my notes on it. I loved all of the stories that made up part A of the reading, but for some reason, this one stuck out to me most. I decided to keep it simple with my note-taking style for part A, and then I will do something new for part B. The devil decided he wanted to get married so he left Hell, disguised himself as a handsome young man, and built a grand house he introduced himself to a family with three daughters and won over the oldest, and they got married soon after  the devil asked his new wife to not enter one door of the house, though she could go to every other part of the house this part reminded me of Beauty and the Beast and how Belle was not allowed to...

This week, I loved getting to watch the video about Bob Marley's song that he posted on twitter. Growing up, my family listening to Bob Marley all the time because we were always at the lake or at the beach. This song brought back so many memories and feel-good thoughts about my childhood and my family. I also really liked seeing it performed from the inside of the guitar, it was a great perspective shifter. My favorite picture from the announcements was the groundhog, which I've posted below. I think groundhogs are hilarious to look at! Groundhog!

Woah! 29 days left until the beginning of the rest of my life. Now that is a weird thought! I feel like I just started college a few months ago, but here I am, approaching my last finals week, finishing up my last few assignments, and preparing for my lasts tests in my undergraduate career. I have absolutely loved my time in college. I have made some amazing friends, learned about topics and things that I will use for the rest of my life, and learned SO much about myself.  As I approach the last few weeks of my undergraduate career, I am really trying to stay motivated and appreciate my time in Norman. I live with 7 wonderful roommates, and I have been trying to spend as much time with them as possible. We have been having movie nights, cooking together, and basically spending every waking moment together. I cherish my time with them and I truly don't know what I am going to do when we don't all live together anymore!  I am also working hard to stay motivated in my classes....

I loved this learning challenge! Because I'm taking 18 hours this semester, I do a LOT of desk sitting. Finding some yoga and exercises to do while sitting at a desk is so applicable to the season of life I am in. I included the link to the article I liked best, and I will list the exercises that I am going to continue below. Shoulder rolls  two minutes of rolling your shoulders forwards and backwards, which loosens your neck and shoulders.  chair twist  this is something I already do but will definitely continue turning in your chair from side to side in order to stretch and pop your back.  https://hbr.org/2015/12/6-yoga-exercises-you-wont-be-embarrassed-to-do-at-your-desk?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=harvardbiz Chair twist picture

I have never even heard of DuckDuckGo before this tech tip. It was super cool! It was much different than Google, but I did like having something different. Below, I have a list of pros and a list of cons. Thanks for the tip! Pros: This does not keep track of your personal information like google does.  I loved the beginning little pop-up that gave 3 quick facts about DDG.  They made it very easy to add to chrome as an extension.  It came up with most of the same results as Google.  Cons:  It's over 10 years old and I haven't heard of it- they are not doing a great job at getting their name out (or maybe I live under a rock).  I could not think of anymore cons! yay DDG. 

Alice knocked on the door and there was no answer. She knocked again, still no answer. "I wonder what is going on in there," Alice said to herself. She could hear people in the kitchen and knew that there was something going on, but no one would answer the door. After waiting for another five minutes or so, Alice finally decided to take matters into her own hands. She promptly turned the doorknob and walked right into the house. She followed the noise of cooking and laughing back into the kitchen and saw a cook, a woman, and a baby. The cook was furiously whipping up something on the stove. The cook mumbled, "I am missing it! I am missing what I need!" Alice thought, "Well now that smells delightful... I just must figure out what she is making... and what she is missing!" The woman was feeding the baby a bottle, and the baby was cooing in the mother's arms. Alice said, "Hello!" and the woman and the cook did not even look at Alice. She was wi...

I am doing another set of reading notes on Alice in Wonderland. This has been one of my very favorite weeks of reading yet this semester! I think the stories are so sweet and enjoyable to read, and I really have been loving the throwback to my childhood. Of part B, my favorite story was "Who Stole the Tarts?" and so that is what I am going to focus my notes on. I am doing the same style of notes as part A; summarizing and sharing some of my own thoughts. The first paragraph did an amazing job of presenting imagery and explaining the setting to readers. I immediately understood what was going on, and I even felt sort of hungry when Alice mentioned how good the tarts looked!  I loved getting to read Alice's thoughts and feel her confidence as she knew the names of all of the people, creatures, and animals that made up the court system. It was so cute how proud of herself that Alice was.  It made me laugh when the pencil was annoying Alice and she went and took it from ...

This week, I get to read Alice in Wonderland! At the beginning of the semester, I remember being so excited to read a story that was one of my favorites as a kid. I have such strong memories of my grandpa reading this story to me and my sister, and so it is really sweet to get to read Alice in Wonderland again with that memory in mind. I think for this week, I am just going to do a normal note-taking style since I just want to appreciate the special aspects of this story and record my favorite parts. It was cool for this reading to get to see a lot of the different Alice in Wonderland stories. I remember reading the story that was shorter and what the movie was based on, and so I liked reading the more in-depth stories. I am focusing my notes on the Pig and Pepper story. To start, I love the way this is written. The story-telling style really makes it easy to imagine what is going on and actually feel like I am there in the story.  It made me laugh when the delivery men said th...

"That darn Mary...I can't believe her. Every time I ask her to do something she's always got an excuse: 'Oh but Martha I have to go to read,' or 'Martha, I'm sorry I told ___ I would walk to the well with her so she could tell me about her latest problems,' or 'Oh Martha I really wish I could do that for you this morning but I told the women of the town we could meet and have a Bible study at that time.' Okay, I get it. She's a good person. But sometimes it would be nice to have a little bit of help around the house! All I ever do is cook and clean and cook and clean and cook and clean. Guess who reaps the benefits but never contributes? Mary. What am I going to do about her?" Martha's head was swirling was thoughts and complaints about her little sister who just didn't get it. Martha doesn't understand Mary, Mary doesn't understand Martha. They have a great relationship and they love each other a lot, but Martha has s...

I am focusing my notes for pt B over the love and matrimony rhymes and poems. I love reading poetry because my grandma used to always write and read poetry. I think it is so sweet to think about how important it was to her, and it makes the poems much more meaningful to me. The first few rhymes I read did not make much sense, but there were definitely some that stuck out to me that I really enjoyed. I decided to do the beautiful sentences note-taking strategy since rhyming and poetry are often very beautiful. "Jack fell down and broke his crown" I love this sentence because I always heard it as a kid but never thought anything of it. Calling someone's head a crown is such old-fashioned language, but it's very pretty sounding.  "Sylvia, sweet as morning air" I think this is such a beautiful sentence. It obviously shows and explains how much someone cares for Sylvia and what they think about her. I wish that people nowadays still used some of the same lang...

I absolutely loved reading the riddle section of the nursery rhymes. This is one of my favorite readings from the entire semester! As a kid, I used to always make my parents tell me riddles because I thought they were so fun to figure out. I hadn't heard most of these riddles before and so it was fun to read them and try to figure them out before I saw the answers. Although I loved this reading, it was somewhat hard to take notes about since it was more like a list of jokes instead of an actual story. I decided to stick with my normal note-taking strategy and just jot down the main idea of each riddle as well as some details about my favorites. the first riddle made it seem like the thing the main character got was a gift of some sort until we read the third line. Then, when the author said that they brought it home because they couldn't help it, it gave readers an understanding that it was something that happened to the person. I would have never guessed the right answer, b...