Myth-Folklore 2019

The two articles I read for this assignment were Jory MacKay's The Important Habit of Just Starting and Lauren Marchese's The Psychology of Checklists: Why Setting Smaller Goals Motivates Us to Accomplish Bigger Things . I found MacKay's piece particularly interesting because I often find it difficult to start working on things like papers and projects, even ones I am excited to do. I never really understood why I was so adverse to starting these sorts of things as I enjoy writing, but this article sheds light on how fears of failure and focusing on short-term rewards can stop people from starting whatever it is they need to start. The simple idea of just starting something can actually be very difficult for some people, myself included, so I found it useful to see the reasons why this is difficult and strategies for, and benefits to, simply starting, all laid out in a short article. I often have to tell myself to just start and I always find it much easier to do the work t...

As far as technology we will be using in this course that I am familiar with, I have used free textbook/book websites before and greatly appreciate the access they give poor college students! I am also very familiar with Google Docs and love using it anytime I am working on a project that I want to be able to take on the go or share with others, like with group projects. I love that it saves your work automatically and that groups of people can edit it whenever and wherever they please. I also make frequent use of support websites involving writing and citing whenever I am working on a paper for a class. No matter how many times I use Chicago style in my citations, I am always forgetting something and find websites like Purdue OWL very useful in the citation process. Blogging, however, is completely new for me and I am excited to add to my blog and to see how others' blogs progress throughout the semester! The online environment is, so far, very relaxed and comfortable for me in ...

Storytelling is a new type of assignment for me as I have never really taken a creative writing course in college before. Generally, all reading in my classes is done either for strictly informational purposes or for forming a thesis for a paper, never for telling a story based on these readings. I have also never had a blog before, much less for a class, so blogging and commenting on others' blogs will be new for me, as well. I have had classes where students commented on others' work, which I find extremely helpful and interesting. Looking at someone else's work often changes the way I look at mine and gives me new ideas on how to improve my own work. I also enjoy semester-long projects as I find it fun to slowly build up a project and see how it turns out after weeks of work (instead of procrastinating until the last second and producing a less-than-stellar project). As far as extra credit goes, I am very excited to do the Wikipedia Trails (something I spend a lot of t...

I vaguely remember hearing my AP Psychology teacher in high school mention Carol Dweck's ideas, but no details of the discussion come to mind. So this course marks the first time I have heard in full about Dweck's growth mindset ideas. In my personal life, I have always been in the "fixed" mindset, unfortunately. In school, I was always taught that some children were capable of doing certain things and others were not and that it is best to stick to what you know you can do so you get good grades rather than branch out and try something you might fail at and risk getting bad grades. I knew that the only way I would be able to attend college without going into tremendous debt would be to get really great scholarships, so I worked to protect my GPA and to do well on standardized tests and actual learning fell by the wayside. This mindset has extended to most other areas of my life: I can either do something or I can't, and I should probably stick to the things I can...

For starters, I am a history major and a German minor and I greatly enjoy the fact that I get to learn about different people, places, and cultures in my field of study. I love the fact that several people can see the same event so very differently and that we can read texts today that were written thousands of years. I enjoy the fact that history shows us great changes in human civilizations all across the world and offers methods for better understanding these changes, while also showing similarities that arise from simply being human, despite vast distances in time and space between individuals. In the same vein, the best course that I took last semester was Imperial Russia which covered a region I had never before studied. I was determined to take at least one Russian history course before graduating in May 2019, so I am quite happy that I was able to do so and greatly enjoyed learning about the formation of the Russian empire and the eventual destruction of the imperial Russian ...

Nine Lives of a Cat: Falling Through the Generations One of my favorite storybooks is Nine Lives of a Cat  as I love the mysterious and clever creature that is the cat. Having two of my own, I loved seeing the playful and also serious nature of our feline friends crop up in the stories of Li Shou, U Kai, Bastet, and Muezza. I also enjoyed how the author weaved myths and folktales about cats into world history. The introduction was perfect for outlining the general premise of the storybook and for giving a glimpse into its contents. The design of the story book was beautiful and streamlined, with gorgeous photos of nature at the top and interesting depictions of cats and cat-like beings at the bottom. A personal photo of my cat, Maximus. Of Monsters & Myths: Sakurasou to Ume Of Monsters & Myths is another of my favorite storybooks. The dialogue is interesting and well-written and I enjoyed the way the author incorporated various Japanese mythical creatures, h...

My favorite place on earth is Heidelberg, Germany, where I studied for four months in the fall of 2017. Heidelberg is located in southwestern Germany, very near the French border, and sits on the Neckar river. It is home to the stunning Heidelberger Schloss (Heidelberg Castle) as well as the Old Bridge. While I did not live in the beautiful Altstadt (downtown), I enjoyed living in the more modern area across the Neckar river as this is where I met a lot of other foreign exchange students, including my wonderful roommate from Bulgaria. Student life in Germany was incredibly cheap, with housing, food, and university costing next to nothing. This allowed me to travel to various places like Krakow, Prague, and Milan, as well as across Germany. Heidelberg remains my favorite place to visit and I hope to return in the near future!                                             ...