The Last Thlog - A Time of Reflection

This week was a little emotional, not going to lie. I even got a hug from Zack, that was pretty cool. I did not get that hella cool Adidas shirt but it is what it is. I don't exactly know what to reflect on this week, so I will reflect on the whole class. Thlogging was probably my favorite thing about this class. I had always wanted to start a blog and this class gave me a head start, or at least some blogging experience. The whole class was a really cool experience. Zack is totally unlike any teacher I've had before. I mean, you don't usually walk into a classroom and see a cool Jesus-looking Adidas-and-Birkenstock-wearing dude. It was pretty awesome. The class started out pretty mellow. It seemed pretty standard. Some reading. Some writing. But then, BAM!!! FABULOUSNESS!!! Zack introduced me to a side of writing I had heard about but never tried myself, which is creative writing. Of course we had some REALLY challenging assignments *cough, cough WP2 cough,* but we also had WP3 which is by far the weirdest writing assignment I've had in the history of my writing assignments. That one was by far my favorite. I am really surprised that I started enjoying writing more. I actually really like writing now, although not exactly academic writing. Essays still aren't my favorite, but I think I have significantly improved. I have learned a lot, but my favorite thing by far is first order thinking. Although it is something I was familiar with, I didn't really know what is was called. It was so interesting to learn that there were terms for things I have been doing ever since I can remember. I hope I am not rambling, but there is so much to talk about. I think the main thing I really loved about this class is that it was so unconventional. I really enjoyed the laid-back vibe. It got pretty stressful at times, but Zack always seemed relaxed. He walked us through all the assignments and made sure we had the ability to be successful. If we weren't as successful as we wanted, Zack made sure to remind us that there was always room for improvement. I'm glad he made sure to not talk down to us. He treated us all equally and made sure we felt like we all had the same opportunity to succeed in his class. Writing 2 was just an awesome class-- it honestly made writing seem a lot more meaningful. It also made READING more meaningful, which is not something you'd expect from a writing class. I'm really glad I experienced it, and I will definitely miss it. The only thing I won't miss is the bike ride to class!!!

THLOG #9 #9 #9 #9 or is it 10?

This week was incredibly short. I came home on Tuesday after my Earth 10: Antarctica class, so really, it felt like Monday was my only day of instruction. Monday was, however, packed with a TON of material. I don't exactly mean to make my Thlogs sound like journals, but they always seem to end up sounding that way. I feel like they wouldn't be as interesting if I didn't go over what happened a little bit in detail. Monday felt super busy. My group was a little over the place last week, and we all had super different schedules so we didn't end up meeting a second time until Monday morning, where we went over our presentation one last time and added the finishing touches. I feel like we ended up doing a pretty good job even though we didn't use as much humor as the other group. I was extremely nervous when we were practicing and I was still nervous as we were going up, but I feel that I did pretty well considering how terrible I am at public speaking. At least I didn't cry--I've done that before (multiple times, unfortunately).  I'm getting better at it so presenting wasn't as awful as I thought it would be. I have a tendency to forget what I am going to say so thankfully I made a flashcard ahead of time (whew). The other groups' presentations were pretty engaging as well, which, as most of us know isn't usually the case. I personally really liked the first group. It was super engaging and that "joke" activity they started us off with both confused me and got my attention. The video they used was pretty funny, especially because I really don't like Donald Trump. The skit was also pretty cool, especially because that one guy did a pretty good impression of an old lady. Sorry for forgetting your name, friend. Altogether, Monday went pretty smoothly despite the stressful days leading up to it.

Thlog #8 - The Thlog I Slept Through

Well, evidently, sitting on your bed at 8 p.m. on Saturday night doesn't really lead to productivity. Although, this week certainly was productive. WP3 was turned in, group presentations were worked on, and I even participated in a fundraiser I helped organize. I broke through! I spent hours working on WP3, which, to be quite honest, I thought would be more fun. After two terrible WP scores, I spent more time worrying than being happy about WP3. Creating my adult piece was definitely more fun than the usual writing assignment, but ultimately I ended up stressing out anyway. I feel guilty that I've been feeling this way about my assignments because it feels like no matter how much I try I still mess up. Writing doesn't really come naturally to me, but I doubt it comes that easily to anybody, so I guess I'll just have to keep working on it. Class feels a little different lately, too. Everything feels pretty final which is both nice and scary. I feel good almost having made it through the quarter, but I also feel a little weird leaving the comfort of the classes and professors I've become accustomed to. What is my next writing professor makes me write title pages?!?!

On another note, I feel like this week has been extremely stressful. I also feel like I say that in every Thlog I write, but the stress seems to intensify as finals approach. Hopefully Thanksgiving Break will be a nice getaway from the stress of college (which I seem to keep falling victim of...)

As for my improvement check, I don't exactly know where I stand. Sometimes I feel really good about where I am as a writer, but lately I feel like I might have gotten worse, if that's even possible. Sometimes I feel like I am writing too hard to develop a style and not trying hard enough to work on my content--sometimes it feels the other way around. But writing is a process, and I've come to terms with that. I hope that by the end of the quarter I will have found a balance between the two.

THLOG 7- TT&T

To put it shortly, this week was about Translating, Transforming, and TEARS. It was a very short week but it felt very stressful. In terms of personal growth, well, we win some and we lose some. This was a very self-defeating week considering the fact that I got a 6/10 on WP2. I realize that it is my fault but I have to come to terms with the fact that writing maybe just isn't my thing. I'm still trying and I don't know where this course will take me, but that's beside the point. I'm still feeling pretty hesitant about WP3 which I feel completely went in one ear and out the other and then right over my head. I am still struggling to grasp a lot of contents but I am hoping that somewhere along the way I'll figure out what I'm doing. Another thing that is kind of freaking me out is the group presentation. I still have no idea what it's about or what is even going on, to be honest I don't even remember who is IN my group so that's a little scary. I should probably check. I'm still feeling pretty self-defeating at this point but I have to put my big girl pants on and move on from that terrible grade and try to do better next time. I am hoping that things will start making sense soon and that the group presentations will be a nice break from all the writing we've been doing. I realize it's a writing class, after all, but like anything, sometimes it gets to be too much. At least the readings were pretty decent this week. All the talk about comic books and choice of creativity got me pretty excited for WP3, even if it is still confusing me. One thing I did like about this week, even though I got a 6/10, was that Zack commented that he heard my voice in my paper. I'm not much of a writer, but that made me feel good about something, even if it was small. I am hoping that I will be able to accomplish this for my WP3 and the rest of my work this quarter. It feels like it is all coming down on me right now, and finals are quickly approaching. Let's hope next week is a little better.

PB3A - Brainstorming!

While brainstorming for WP3, I had a hard time thinking of a topic to even search for my scholarly article. Then I decided to think about something that I love and could somehow convey to both a younger and older audience: animals! I searched dogs, cats, and finally just animals. Upon searching, I found an article entitled “Animal Symbolism in Folk Narratives and Human Attitudes towards Predators: An Analysis of their Mutual Influences.” At first I did not think much of it, but after rereading the assignment, I realized that this scholarly research piece had many possibilities. The paper focused on:

            “the symbolic aspects of folk narratives involving animals considered to be 'harmful'. Its main focus is a study of narratives collected by Chilean schoolchildren concerning eight endangered animal species. These narratives are analysed as cultural models and as educational tools for environmental purposes” (Benavides).

Simply the abstract description made me consider the assignment. The scholarly article itself dealt with conventions, not of a genre, but of a topic—which I had never even fathomed before. The article focused on predispositions we have on animals based on aspects such as their likelihood of being domesticated and social constructs that history has imposed on us. Both children and adults are exposed to these predispositions or “conventions” of animals, so translating the scholarly article would be simple. I brainstormed some more and later remembered that the topics don’t exactly need to be related, and while writing WP3 we have a tremendous amount of freedom and room for self-expression. I tried to think outside the box in terms of how to “transform” and “translate” the piece I selected into one suitable for a younger audience. Since our discussion last week, I wanted to do something that I could incorporate my art into. My first thought was a comic book or a children’s book, but after reading the scholarly article I found I felt that a good way to appeal to a younger audience would be a personality quiz. The scholarly article continually illustrated the relationship between animals and humans and how those relationships have affected the ways in which we see animals, so a personality quiz seems like it would be a good way to describe these relationships in a different way. For example, it could be something like “what do you do on your free time? Which one of these 5 words would you most likely use to describe yourself?” and if they chose “Being by myself” and “Fierce” they could get a test result like “Wolf.” For a more mature audience I was thinking of transforming my piece into a horoscope kind of deal, sort of like “Your favorite animals and what they say about you.” It sounds childish but I have seen so many of these on ADULT magazines. Most of the time these personality quizzes I have seen on adult magazines are about alcohol, something like “Your favorite cocktail and what it says about you,” or “Your drink of choice and how your night will go based on that choice,” so I was thinking of incorporating something like that into my work directed towards a more mature audience.

            I am still unsure as to where I want to go with this and if I will even keep this topic going but I would love to hear some feedback. Are any of you doing anything similar and do you have any comments/suggestions/concerns? I would like to see someone else’s approach on something similar to my idea. 

Here is my scholarly article:

http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=8c3115bd-d5e1-4ec4-9608-8311832c3749%40sessionmgr120&vid=11&hid=107

THLOG 6 I THINK

To be quite honest, this week was very, very weird. It mostly felt really stressful because of WP2, which I messed up on pretty badly. At first I thought I did a good job, but then I started to feel bad about it. At this point I am just stressed out about it again. The peer reviews definitely helped, but for some reason I just didn't think it would be necessary to refer to the reader (stupid, I know). It was not explicitly stated on the instructions but I should have known better than to do whatever I wanted. I just wanted to give the paper more of my own voice and all of the information we had to include made it very difficult and overwhelming. At this point I am just hoping that the rest of the content of my paper will help me out a little bit. Other than that this week was also pretty interesting. We talked about our group presentations white a bit on Monday, but I still have no idea what is going on and what the assignment even really is. I do not know what is being asked of us other than the whole "make the presentation engaging" part. We also talked about WP3, which is still confusing even after reading the assignment several times. There are so many options and so many ways to go about those options that even though it sounds interesting, it also sounds extremely overwhelming. The creativity factor of WP3 is putting a lot of pressure on me, especially since I feel like I have go think extremely out of the box. Hopefully the more we talk about it, the better I will understand the assignment. The best part of this week was the online class. It was sort of stressful too, but it went better than expected. The chat was definitely one of the best parts. It seemed like it had way less boundaries than talking in class, so everyone was being random and using curse words (which is always a good time). The discussions were fun but the time constraints made it a little difficult to say everything I wanted/needed to say. I tried my best but at times it really was stressful. Other than that it was pretty refreshing to be in a new setting. It's good to change things up!

Bob Ross/Disney Response

Both the Bob Ross and the Disney videos had many things in common. Both were extremely soothing (and somewhat creepy). They focused on self expression and uniqueness. However, the Disney video focused more on what would be more "aesthetically" pleasing, while Bob Ross simply told the viewers to express themselves and enjoy themselves while doing so. Bob Ross encouraged the viewers to please themselves, but the Disney video pushed for achieving something more than inner peace.
Both Bob Ross and Walt used a soothing voice and relaxing shots in general.
They both encouraged the artist to develop their own style, but only the Disney video showed different artist's views.
Much like last class's framing activity, the artists in the Disney video focused on different things about the trees. They compared the trees to different things and viewed the tree differently. Their views ultimately changed the way their art looked. Some focused on the tree, some on the trunk, and some on the surroundings of the tree.
All of the pictures of the trees looked different and focused on different details. They kind of made the process of painting seem complicated, while Bob Ross just focused on doing whatever makes the artist happy. He achieved very realistic paintings by using simple techniques that could be achieved with some practice but could look good even if a beginner tried them.
Some of the moves they used were using the paint spreading thingy rather than a brush. Some used white paint to make their paintings 3-dimensional. One of the artists viewed the tree as architecture and his tree ended up looking like some sort of jaggedy sky scraper. One of the artists focused on the bark and therefore put all the detail he could into the trunk.

Different thinking processes = Different art styles. Cool!