Week 12 Review

This week, my favorite item from the announcements was this cartoon  by Tom Gauld originally featured in The Guardian's twitter account! How funny to imagine these twists to Shakespeare's works beyond just bringing it into the present day!

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Week 12 Famous Last Words

I cannot believe that we have almost reached the end of the semester!

This past week, I read nursery rhymes. As always, I was most fascinated with how the stories came to be, what they were based on, and how they continue to live on. It was really neat to see several of my favorite rhymes from childhood in a different context! However, this week I most enjoyed finally finishing up my first story and edits on my story book! After getting the chance to travel to Australia over spring break, I am even more excited to create new stories out of some of the many fascinating Aboriginal myths! While there, I even got to see some Aboriginal cave paintings. I am so happy to be able to use some personal photos of the art work to illustrate my storybook!

In my other classes, things continue to wrap up. In most of them, my focus has shifted from regular assignments and exams to the larger final projects and papers. So much writing and research can certainly be daunting, but I am confident that I have the skills to produce great papers that I can be proud of as I reflect on my undergraduate career.

Last week, I picked up my cap, gown, and honors stole and carved my name in the leadership table in the union for the last time. It is all getting very real! I cannot believe that four years have flown by so quickly. Now, as well as working hard, I need to take the time to cherish the experiences I have left as a sooner!

    Personal photo of my graduation attire

Week 12 Tech Tip: Google Reverse Image Search

Wow, what a useful tool! I have always wondered how to search using an image that was found online in order to find its source, and now I know! I learned this using the Google Reverse Image Search Tech Tip.

It's as easy as copying and pasting or uploading a saved image!

Here is my test image in larger format:

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Week 12 Learning Challenges: Post Secret

Post Secret is usually the first website that I go to after the clock strikes midnight on Sunday evenings. However, over the last few weeks, I have let this habit slip through the cracks as I worked on homework and papers. I was so happy to see Post Secret listed an a challenge in empathy.

Everyone has a unique story that may not be evident just by looking at them or even speaking with them briefly. In order to truly create community, it is necessary to foster understanding. However, understanding goes beyond feeling sad, sorry, angry, or happy for someone. Instead, we have to learn to feel each person's experience as an extension of our own. We have to truly value others! Post Secret does a wonderful job of creating this kind of open and accepting community.

Below, I've shared one of the secrets that caught my eye from this week's post.

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Week 12 Growth Mindset: Resiliency

For this week's Growth Mindset Challenge, I read the article "How People Learn to Become Resilient" by Maria Konnikova in The New Yorker.

As I continue to face the crazy game of law school admissions, it's more important than ever that  retain a growth mindset. One quote that really struck me was that, "one of the central elements of resilience, Bonanno has found, is perception: Do you conceptualize an event as traumatic, or as an opportunity to learn and grow?"

What an interesting and productive way to view our stressors!

However, it is only natural that even a resilient person can differ in their reaction to stress from time to time. Sometimes, resiliency is difficult. So, there is hope even when you let rejection or difficulty get to you personally. There is still opportunity to learn from that, too!

Ultimately, the article teaches that, regardless of our background, we can teach ourselves resilience. We can always strive to adopt a growth mindset!

Resiliency is everywhere!
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Week 12 Extra Credit Reading: Canterbury Tales

I read parts of the Canterbury Tales in high school. Another English class was reading the story as part of the curriculum, but my class was not. So, I took it upon myself to read the same sections and sit in on discussions! However, it seems like a long time ago! So this week, I wanted to take a look back and re-read the stories. I'm excited to look at them in a new light and catch new details!

These stories are in modern prose from The Chaucer Story Book by Eva March Tappan.

I particularly enjoyed one of the first stories: The Wife of Bath's Tale: The Unknown Bride. There was a lot of cultural detail as well as humor inserted into what at first seems like a general story. For example, when the knight is finding out what women want, he says it isn't possible for her to keep secrets! Stereotypes galore! Of course, the knights stereotypes are quickly turned when an old woman is the one to help him.  I was sad, of course, to find that even though he agreed to respect her regardless of her appearance or poverty, he truly expressed love for her after she became beautiful.

Storybook Cover
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Week 12 Reading Diary: Nursery Rhymes

Today, I finished up reading  nursery rhymes! The rhymes are originally from The Nursery Rhyme Book edited by Andrew Lang.

I really enjoyed todays reading sections on Love and Matrimony, mostly because more of them were familiar. It's always fun to see an old favorite in its full version. I think a fun storybook idea could be to take a short version and expand it out like that!

I also noticed a lot more name references like in the first section. This time, though, they referenced people's names instead of place names, especially in the jingles and relics readings!

I also took special note of "Hey Diddle Diddle!" I noticed similarities in one of the rhymes in the earlier readings, so I'm going to spend some time on wikipedia and see if maybe they are from the same area or reference the same historical story!

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Week 12 Reading Diary: Nursery Rhymes

This week, since I had so much fun playing around with word use last week, I chose to read nursery rhymes! The rhymes are originally from The Nursery Rhyme Book edited by Andrew Lang.

I was initially surprised to find that many of the nursery rhymes that I was familiar with actually have much more to them! For example, the first reference to "the man in the moon" had nothing to do with a dish running away with a spoon!

Many of the tales in particular had dark endings or subjects. I think these would scare me more as a child than anything! Of course, I knew that some of them might have this tone because of "Ring Around the Rosy" being about the plague; however, I still expected it to be somewhat hidden! Ones like "Three Blind Mice" are more discreet. That one is about Queen Mary I putting to death three noblemen.

I particularly enjoyed searching for the context of the games like Oranges and Lemons. So many of the place names mentioned wouldn't make sense to someone who was unfamiliar with the area of origin.

I think it could be fun to try and turn other familiar games from my childhood into rhymes like these!

Three Blind Mice: a rhyme with a dark hidden meaning!
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