Reading Diary B: Alice in Wonderland

The Mad Tea Party, by Charles Robinson

Link to image

   After her ordeal with the hooka-loving Caterpillar, Alice resumes her chase of the rabbit. Along her way, she confronts a Frog footman who is carrying a note to a fellow resident frog in a woodland house. The letter calls the residing frog to a croquet match with the Red Queen. Upon the delivery, the frog footman leaves and the resident frog sits on the porch of the house solemnly, as ruckus presides inside the place. Knowing she needs to get through the house to follow the white rabbit, Alice engages the frog in conversation. However, he's totally irate and inaccessible, so Alice bypasses his permission to enter the house and meets the Duchess and the Cheshire cat. Alice begins to notice how badly the order in the duchess' home is kept, especially when the pig baby she's caring for has its nose cut off. However, after the Duchess concludes that she must attend her appointment with the Queen for croquet, she flings the "baby" to Alice's arms as she heads out. Alice then engages the Cheshire cat in conversation about where she should go to catch the white rabbit, and Cheshire points her in the direction of the Mad Tea Party. 

   The initial impression of the tea party was one of jovial laughter and antics, however, her entrance warrants a general quarrel of riddles and logical confoundery. They then discussing the Hatter's watch and time, as if time were a real person. Then the Hatter's famous riddle comes to play:"how is a raven like a writing desk?" The Hatter admits that there is no answer to this riddle, and turns Alice's attention to the dormouse and his stories, starting with the three sisters that lived down a well. After being constantly verbally barrated by the three characters, Alice opts to leave the tea party and travel onward. 

Link to unit

Reading Diary A: Alice in Wonderland

Alice and the Characters of Wonderland, by Jesse Wilcox Smith (1923)

Link to image

I know that I am making a frame tale based around the character of Alice, but I figured it might be nice to explore her world in depth as written in the literature.
   Alice starts out her adventure following the white rabbit down the rabbit hole, commenting on how peculiar the whole experience is especially when she starts her long fall. She starts wondering what she'd do if she fell to the other side of the world. Then her mind moves onto more nonsensical topics, like "Do cats eat bats?" Alice finishes her fall and finds herself once again on the tail of the white rabbit, but finds herself stuck when she comes to a door that's far too small for her to get through. She manages to find a bottle labeled "drink me", which Alice does, and becomes just small enough to fit through the door. But realizing she could no longer reach the key for the small door, she begins to cry, and can't seem to stop herself from flooding the entire chamber. After eating a cake labelled "eat me", Alice then grows tall enough to reach the key.
   Next Alice follows the rabbit into a thick forest, where she loses sight of him but encounters the company of a hooka-smoking caterpillar. As she begins to converse with the rhetorically confounding caterpillar, Alice realizes that she has become more nonsensical and dreamy since entering this strange new world. The caterpillar, however tests Alice's patience with more learning lessons, similar but more nonsensical compared to the ones her sister read to her. As Alice becomes infuriated with the Caterpillar's attitude, she stomps off, but not before the Caterpillar calls her back over again. He tells her not to "lose her temper," and then to recite more literature from her lessons. Just as Alice was about to lose her temper from this endless quarrel with the Caterpillar, he suggests to Alice to eat either side of the mushroom to grow taller or shorter for the particular height that she would like to be.

Link to unit

Essay: Thematic Motifs in Native American Hero Tales

"Native American Chiefs" by, Claude Niepce 

Link to image

   There's quite a few things to be aware of when reading Native American tales about their most highly thought of heroes in their stories. Even though I say that, not all of the qualities that each hero or antagonist possesses will be necessarily idealistic according to the culture of the story. And this is true for nearly every genre of storytelling: there are some characters that break the mold. However, I will start off by try to isolate characteristics that keep on appearing despite the circumstances of the tales.
   One characteristic is seems to be at the essence of each hero in the stories is that of attunement with nature. All the heroes to a degree show that they are able to commune with both plant and animal life alike, as well as spirits of the dead, or embodiments of forces of nature themselves. They often use their knowledge of nature itself to help them succeed in their efforts. Obviously, maintaining a strong connection and wealth of knowledge about the land and the life in it was important for Native American in their most idealized figures.
   Another characteristic that is exhibited strongly in Native American heroes is that of taking great care to amalgamate their specific tribe's unique practices and beliefs into their mode of accomplishment. What makes native americans unique in this though, is that they exhibit these qualities in almost immediate contrast to other tribes' practices or beliefs, as if they want to prove something they have is superior than the other tribe. This isn't inherently the same as a pair of rival gangs in a city: instead, the heroes of each tribe immediately seem to attribute their successes to the personal qualities, practices, or beliefs that their specific tribe has.  Not every tribe has the same goals for their own salvation, their differing paths certainly shape the stories of their heroes.

Link to the unit

Storytelling Week 10: Retelling of BlueJay and His Companions

A Grouse 

Link to image

Bluejay, his master and companions were out one day seal hunting at one of their favorite hunting grounds, when they came across their fellow native, Grouse. After they had caught their fair share of fine seal and the resultant meat, Bluejay and his crew teased Grouse about not being good enough to eat the fat (the most succulent part of the seals) as opposed to the poorest, leanest parts. However, Grouse knew that Bluejay and his crew liked to sleep in their canoes while hunting out late. So, when they had all fallen asleep Grouse quietly pushes the all of the canoes far from the shoreline, and they drift beyond the horizon.

    The group wakes up the next day to find themselves on the coast far from their home. They see another village near the shore however. But as soon as they dare approach the encampment for help, the locals challenge the group to a show of strength, skill and willpower with members of their own tribe. The local tribe says it is merely a right of passage for their grown boys to prove their worth against members of another tribe. If the crew lose these tests, they will be killed. The crew, in quiet dismay, agrees nonetheless.
    The first trial is a climbing contest, for which the most steep cliff is selected nearby. Bluejay tells his crew that if they manage to climb to the top before the young men do, they can try to escape.Once they've all started their climb early in the morning, it takes nearly a quarter of a day for either group to reach the top. However, just as Bluejay's entire crew is about to make it to the top, one of them, Land Otter, slips on a piece of seal fat that he had kept away from Grouse as it slips out of his hip pouch. Land Otter falls into the water below, and Bluejay knows they have to come up with another plan.
    The next challenge is a seal catching contest, and Bluejay feels reasonably good about this: he and his party are the best seal hunters, and canoers, in their tribe. Bluejay tells his men that if they can canoe away from the young men, they'll be able to make it home. They all start out with their canoes on the shore with the rest of the young men, and when the elder of the tribe gives the signal they all push off to the hunting grounds. Now, when Bluejay and his crew spot a wonderful area for seal hunting they dive with their hunting knives in hand, and they manage to catch many seals (4-5 seals each). But as they all start paddling  away from the village, they all feel water leaking into their canoes. They realize that Grouse must have also poked holes in their canoes before he sent them off. So Bluejay and his crew must embarrassingly get back to the shore by swimming, far behind the young men of the tribe who already have their seals caught.
    The last trial is an endurance test: Bluejay's entire crew must stay awake for five days, while pitted against four other men from the tribe. By the fourth day, all of the men in competition were getting excessively weary. Suddenly Bluejay had an idea: he took out the seal fat that he still had in his hip pouch and threw it at Land Otter, who started yelling at him and threw a clump of fat back at Bluejay. This continued until a fight broke out between the members of the crew. The young men in competition with Bluejay's party laughed and laughed at the sorry sight. They laughed so hard that they eventually wore themselves out and fell striaght to sleep. After he was sure that the young tribe-men were fast asleep, Bluejay told his men to stop: they all had bloodied each other quite a bit during the whole ordeal, but they realized then that Bluejay was just trying to keep them awake. Bluejay then urgently whispered to his crew to break for the tribes-men's canoes to escape, and that's exactly what they did.
    However, upon seeing the shore of their home village, Bluejay and his crew see Grouse, lying on the sand, happy as could be with a fresh meal of the most succulent seal meat around.

Link to the story
Link to the unit
"BlueJay and His Companions", from Tales of the North American Indians by Stith Thompson (1929)

Author's Note: I pretty much kept the entirety of the tale the same as it was in the original, except for the black comedy/whimsical angle. The original tale was more of a story of bravery, and this didn't really make it very interesting for me. I thought the story of Bluejay and his companions could really benefit from a retelling that was more funny, but still dark (given the situations that they find themselves in).

Reading Diary B: Native American Hero Tales

Eagle by, pixabay

Link to image

Another story in this unit is The Attack on the Giant Elk and the Great Eagle: this story starts out telling of giant animals that ate everything, even men, until the Gods decided to intervene. They made a man, Jonayaíyin, who, upon reaching manhood sought out the giant Elk. He finds the Elk in a desert, but cannot stealthily approach easily. A lizard offers Jonayaíyin his coat to blend in with the surroundings, which he does. Then a gopher appears, and advises Jonayaíyin to also dig his way to the Elk. Using the gopher's hole, Jonayaíyin is able to hit the Elk with his arrows. Even though the arrows pierced the heart of the Elk, it didn't die and instead threw itself into a tantrum at Jonayaíyin (creating mountains).But it was no use: thanks to the additional help of the other animals (including a spider), Jonayaíyin was able to beat the Elk.


A follow-up story in the unit is The Son-in-Law Tests, which is about an animal trickster named Wemicus, whose daughter is married to a man that Wemicus constantly tested in feats of skill, strength, and dexterity to prove his fitness to be his daughter's husband. When Wemicus and the man went out to hunt beaver, the daughter told the man that Wemicus would try and burn his moccasins. Anticipating this, the man switched his moccasins with Wemicus', and consequently Wemicus throws his own moccasins in the fire by mistake.
    The next challenge Wemicus puts to the man is one of sliding down a snowy hill. The daughter tells the man that the hill has many poisonous snakes on it, and gives him magical chewing tobacco to spit in front of him so the snakes won't attack.
    After this Wemicus tries to trick the man into being bitten by poisonous lizards in berry bushes, but the wife warns him of this which allows him to survive.
    Another test that Wemicus has the man do is jump over a ravine, but his wife tells him that the ravine will "widen" or "close" depending on what someone says. So when the man easily makes it over, he tells the ravine to "widen", which it does, causing Wemicus to fall (But he doesn't die).
    The final test that Wemicus makes the man undergo is that of a canoeing race. Wemicus however, has his canoe overturned, and is forever transformed into a pike.

Link to unit

Reading Diary A: Native American Hero Tales

Three Crow Horsemen, by E. Curtis.

Link to image

One of the first stories to be told in this unit is Bluejay and His Companions, which is a story about the whimsical adventures of the hero Bluejay and how he manages to get back home after a run-in with a neighboring village tribe. The story starts out with Bluejay, his master and companions seal hunting, after which they tease a fellow native, Grouse, about not being good enough to eat the fat (the most succulent part of the seals) as opposed to the poorest, leanest parts. However, Grouse gets back at the crew by getting them lost at sea for a night.

    They wake up the next day to find themselves on the coast, which leads to a small village. Here, the locals challenge the group to many shows of strength, skill and willpower with members of their own tribe. The first trial is a climbing contest, which Bluejay wins for his team. The next is a seal catching contest, which Bluejay also wins. The next is an endurance test: Bluejay's entire crew must stay awake for five days, while pitted against four other men from the tribe. On the fifth day, however, Bluejay and his crew realize that the tribe's men have fallen asleep and make their escape back home.

The next story in the unit is Dug From Ground, which is a tale about parental acceptance of a boy named Dug From Ground by his non-natal mother. First off, an old woman's daughter, who is a virgin, wonders why her mother always tells her not to pick the two-stalked roots. She finds out the day that she does pick one: a baby rolls out of the ground where the root was, and the daughter takes the baby back to the village. However, the baby's now foster mother ignores him, and the baby is instead taken care of by the girl's mother. 

    The boy grows up, watching his original foster mother from afar. He notices that she goes off somewhere to watch the sun set, and always brings back a pile of acorns with her. WHen the boy gets to the age when he can hunt, the foster mother says "When he can figure out where I get the acorns from, and when he is able to kill a white dear, then I will call him my son." He does this, and hence fulfills a prophesy by the immortals of his village.

Here's the link to the Unit

Essay: Heros in American Indian Fairy Tales

Iagoo Telling Stories to the Children, by John Rae (1921)

Link to image

   The heroes featured in this unit seem to possess some characteristics that span across all the stories. They all have a sense of innocence, which is exemplified by characters like Shin-ge-bis or the children on the mountain. Interestingly, all of these characters are innocent as a function of driving the story forward: they have a "get-up-and-go" attitude whereas many of their fellow characters  in their respective stories would likely shirk the responsibility and risk of moving forward. Keeping this transition in mind, it's also interesting to note that this quality of innocence also seems to replace the Westernized-hero quality of bravery. By this, I mean that heroes in the American Indian Fairy Tales rarely seem to question their own abilities, as if their confidence was "a given". They do not doubt their ability to be responsible for their choices, so they simply do as they please.
   Another characteristic of heroes that carries across many stories is the quality of being tricksters: they often employ shenanigans on others to get what they want. However, these little pranks rarely, if ever, cause any real harm. And the tricks themselves appear to move the stories forward as well, because they force other peripheral, or at least less central, characters into action where they might not have engaged with the main plot at all. However, their reaction to the heroes' jests or tricks makes them intervene.
   Possibly the most universal trait of the heroes of the American Indian Fairy Tales was that of having an affinity with wildlife and nature in general. This is not surprising, however, because of the obvious traditional important that the Native Americans place on the treatment of and co-existence with nature. All of the characters are able to communicate and befriend animals to come to their aid if needed, and some of the characters can even transform into animals themselves with magic. The heroes further show their affinity with nature by showing a high level of interaction with spirits of nature. However, these relationships with the spirits are not always friendly, and the spirits themselves are often regarded as higher, more powerful beings, so there's occasionally tension between the heroes and supernatural beings as well.

Link to the reading unit

Storytelling Week 9: Shin-ge-bis Fools the North Wind

The North Wind, by John Rae (1921)

Link to image

It was a tough time for the Fisher Tribe of the Ice: they had wrangled a large batch of fish the month before, but the spirit of the North Wind had become even more intense and the cold over the land prevented anyone from fishing except for Shin-ge-bis. Shin-ge-bis was the best fisherman in the village, as well as a magical shaman and the most intelligent warrior in his village. He had seen the form of the North Wind spirit face to face, and told the spirit in the previous year that he would show his tribe how to survive even the most dire cold that the spirit could muster. However, the spirit did not like to be questioned in his prowess, and he made the cold over the World of Ice slightly more intense every day.
   However, Shin-ge-bis was anticipating that the spirit was watching his tribe suffer, sadistically enjoying that he was able to show his power over them. Shin-ge-bis knew how proud the North Wind was, and so he unveiled his new idea to further enrage the North Wind. He went out into the frozen lake where all the fishermen of the village used to fish (none had been here since it froze completely over), and used a large saw to cut a hole in the ice. Viola! In no time he was able to fish for his village and no one would starve.
   Enraged, the North Wind saw this as a sign of disrespect and called out to Shin-ge-bis as he was setting his wigwam up around the ice-fishing hole, "You dare mock me, little fisherman? I will bring a new blizzard to blow over your fishing hole!" And so a blizzard came, but the snow instead powdered over the wigwam and instead kept Shin-ge-bis out of the wailing wind. Then, as another affront to the spirit, Shin-ge-bis then lit a  fire, which turned into a massive bonfire. Shin-ge-bis knew this was further angering the North Wind, and so he challenged the spirit,"Yoohoo! If you wish to stop me, you must deal with me yourself. Your usual tricks aren't working!" The North Wind then took his man-like form and the two began to wrestle. Despite Shin-ge-bis putting up a admirable struggle, the North Wind threw him against the windward side of the wigwam, and Shin-ge-bis slumped to the ground.
   "I think you're going to need a blow stronger than that to keep me down." Shin-ge-bis boasted, taking out a heavy fur coat and putting it on. The North Wind charged at Shin-ge-bis, riding the waves of his blizzard and slamming Shin-ge-bis against the side of the wigwam. Shin-ge-bis, barely able to stand, murmurs, "Like I said, you'll need to hit me with your best." The North Wind gathered all of his strength and charged Shin-ge-bis, preparing to end it all. But Shin-ge-bis rolled out of the way, allowing the spirit to crash through the wall of the wigwam and into the blazing inferno on the other side. The North Wind spirit yelled in agony and anger, realizing that he had been tricked. As he fled into the Southeast, Summer came to the Land of Ice for the first time ever and Shin-ge-bis saved his village from starvation. Shin-ge-bis also made sure that from then on when the Winter from the North Wind came, the spirit never stayed too long.

Author's Note: I kept most of the narrative points of the original story. However, I made my version into a little bit more of a showdown fight, where Shin-ge-bis had to be more tactical with his decisions. In the original, Shin-ge-bis was more of a natural trickster who was just really clever and managed to beat the North Wind by the exact same method: making him fall into a fire pit. I just wanted to make my rendition more action-based to help keep the reader's attention. I also made the fight between Shin-ge-bis more personal between them, whereas in the original he simply outwitted the North Wind because he thought it would have been fun (even though his village's livelihood was still at stake).

Bibliography: "Shin-ge-bis Fools the North Wind" from American Indian Fairy Tales, by W.T. Larned
Link to story

Reading Diary B: American Indian Fairy Tales

"O-jeeg as the Fisher", by John Rae (1921)

Link to image

The next story told by Iagoo was that of the Boy Who Snared the Sun. Iagoo starts out by telling the story of the Dormouse, a creature that was bigger than all others, and he also tells about a younger world when there were a lot more animals around. At this time, there were only two people left on Earth: a boy and his sister. The boy was disabled because of dwarfism, and one day his sister made him a bow and some arrows to help him take care of himself. He takes to it well, killing enough birds for his sister to make him a coat from. The boy soon developed the spirit to travel the world, which he did but not before the Sun itself played a trick on him. The Sun burnt his bird coat as it was setting beyond the horizon, so the boy thought of a way to get back at the sun: make an aparatus to stop the sun where it was. After realizing the sun wasn't rising the rest of the animals of nature became worried and called upon the Dormouse to free the sun from its bindings. The Dormouse agrees, but is burnt down to little more than a common mouse after being under the sun's rays while freeing it.

Following this tale, Iagoo moves on to tell of How the Summer Came for Morning Glory, who has gotten tire of winter. The story is specifically about a magic man (who could transform into a Fisher (fox)) named O-jeeg who found a way to bring summer. O-jeeg was a hunter, who heard from his elders about a place called Summer, where there wasn't constantly snow and ice like where he lived. O-jeeg's son gets information from a talking squirrel on how to bring Summer through the sky to their lands, and tells O-jeeg about it. O-jeeg and his animal friends set out to find a mountain that reaches beyond the clouds to bring Summer through, and they partake the help of a Manito who shows them to the mountain after allowing the group to stay at his lodge. All of O-jeeg's friends fail in making a dent in the sky until the wolverine tries, and O-jeeg follows: they see a land with warmth, greenery, and light. They had found Summer, and as they both tried to release all of the splendor of Spring, Autumn and Summer while getting back to their world, O-jeeg did not make it back. The skydwellers shot O-jeeg through the tail while he was in the form of a fisher, and he dies soon after: his constellation lines makes up the very one Morning Glory asked about in the first place.

Reading Diary A: American Indian Fairy Tales

"The Little Boy and Girl in the Clouds", by John Rae (1921)

Link to image

The first story in this unit is Iagoo the Story Teller, which introduces the muse of the stories that play out for the rest of the unit. Iagoo was a wonderfully worldly old man with a fantastic imagination, with knowledge that he was willing to share with anyone who was willing to listen. These qualities allow him to come up with tales to enthrall the children of his tribe with. During the tribe's winter hiatus, the first tale he decides to tell the children is that of the North wind and how it was fooled by a magical diver named Shin-ge-bis.

In the proceeding tale of how Shin-ge-bis Fools in the North Wind, Shin-ge-bis is called upon by his tribe to stop Ka-bib-on-okka, the North Wind, after Sha-won-dasee, the South Wind, failed to stop the North Wind from making winter come. Despite his fellow fishermen in his tribe becoming worried about how they would fish when all the lakes were frozen, Shin-ge-bis simply laughs, fishes through a hole in the ice, and pays no regard to the North Wind.
   Even though he successfully builds a large, moon-long bonfire that allows him to fish for a long time, Shin-ge-bis is forced into a confrontation with Ka-bib-on-okka. However, when the North Wind tries to send a blizzard in Shin-ge-bis' way, his wigwam collects the powder snow and actually makes a warm shelter for him. Shin-ge-bis then goads the North Wind inside where the fire is roaring away. Ka-bib-on-okka falls for the trick and Shin-ge-bis' fire melts him.

The next story, Little Boy and Girl in the Clouds, is prompted to be told by Iagoo by a young indian girl named Morning Glory who asks him if the mountains were always there (?) Iagoo tells of a Big Rock and how it lifted a girl and and boy into the clouds. Initially these two children wandered the plains of the land with the animals and the plants, at one with nature. One day, when out froliking with their animal friends, they see a big mossy rock that they both agree would be fun to climb. However, as they climbed the rock grew for some unknown reason. Tired from their efforts, they fell asleep as the rock grew, and the animals and the childrens' parents wondered where they were. Even though all animals tried to get the children down, all failed until the measuring worm tried his effort. It took a month, but the measuring worm made it to the top of the rock, found the children, and brought them back home.

Commenting Review Week 8

Image: A Beautiful Canvas of an Enchanted Forest

(Unfortunately, I don't know the source...)

I think I am making good connections with other students through the blogs. The assignments requiring longer, analytical comments are extremely insightful. I personally think there should be more of them!


The interactions that appear to facilitate better connections in an online class usually consist of: forcing each student to peer review other students’ works analytically, but not chock the schedule too much full of analysis to take up too much of the students’ time to where they can’t have creative projects/interactions with each other. Good analysis requires enough time and effort to be worthwhile, and I think this class’s set-up accommodates analysis and creativity (for those people without already horrendous schedules).


Project comments I received have been useful so far: some I agree with, some I do not. However, I still maintain consideration even for the ones I don’t agree with, because they offer a perspective that I haven’t contemplated before.


When leaving a short comment on a fellow student’s narrative post, I usually focus on thematic and stylistic aspects that I think could make their stories richer and more imaginatively fruitful. I find it hard to just say an entire 60 words that could be summarized with “I liked your story a lot!”, and I take the consideration to make sure that whatever I leave on someone’s post will give them an opinion that they can take something from, even if they don’t totally agree with me.


In revising my writing, I use suggestions from the comments experimentally: if something didn’t work in a previous story that I wrote and someone brought it up in a comment, I will usually make the change that the comment suggested in a future narrative post.

If I had any suggestions for improving the commenting component of this class, they would be 1) that encouragement of analysis in all commenting assignments was present, 2) that not just technical aspects of other’s writing should be considered, but themes and style should be explored too, and 3) that there should even be assignments about critiquing other students’ comments in order to make sure that the quality of comments is maintained.

Writing Review Week 8

Schippietaro, by Fredrick Richardson (1862-1937)

Link to image

The image above is from the retelling post of the Japanese fairytale Schippietaro, which was one of my favorite retellings that I did for the Asia/Pacific and Africa Units. 

I think the greatest writing successes in the class this semester have been in Week 4, where I did a retelling of Arabian Nights (specifically the Greek King and the Physician Douban), and my Frametale final project called In A World of My Own. They both challenged me imaginatively and on the subject of my cultural knowledge/understanding, which I took as a great learning experience.

The writing goals that I have for myself in the second half of the semester are: working further ahead so I can devote more time to research on the stories I will be doing my work over, and also making sure that I am able to cement my true writing style for narrative stories. I know that synthesis of a writing style is among the most achieved steps a writer can take, but I would at least like to get an idea of what my particular style is.

The strategy that I use to write for this class is primarily influenced by the fact that I do not have as much time to devote to this class as I would like in order to make my stories really standout and shine. What I tend to do is this: I will usually skim over a story earlier in the day that I plan on writing and outline the story in its simplest form. This allows me to appreciate the finer cultural and plot-related nuances when I re-read the story later in the day, but since I have outlined the plot I don’t have to worry about getting lost in the details. During my re-read of the material, I will usually do research related to the narrative to make my response or retelling more meaningful.

As for the strategy I employ to create a significant twist or change in the original story when I do retellings: keeping my research in mind, I will usually opt for a plot twist that makes the retelling of the story have a deeper meaning than the original. It’s usually not hard for me to see where the original story had an opportunity to give itself a deeper meaning, and I usually undertake that opportunity to alter my retelling.

There have been a few students who have writing that is superb: they are usually students who know the subject that they’re writing about very well and have put some real thought into their writing. And even though I find it rare that I see another student’s idea in writing that I have never considered before, I definitely appreciate seeing very good ideas that I need a fresh review on in other student’s writing.

I would have to say that the feedback that I am getting from the professor and other students is helping me on a technical level, but I would like to hear if either of them see opportunities in my writing that I may have not taken advantage of. I love adding more layers of meaning to my work, and I would like to see more comments on my work challenge me to do that.

The biggest challenge I face as a writer is primarily a technical one: I would like to get used to utilizing complex grammar and syntax correctly. That aspect of writing is definitely a weakness for me, and I appreciate it when people point it out to help me. But like I said before, I would like more innovative critique on the narrative and stylistic aspects of my writing as well.

I find that learning about yourself, your audience, and your writing subject through the writing process itself is the most rewarding aspect of my writing. I find it endlessly fascinating how those three main factors combat and dance between themselves, trying to find a balance that is not entirely serene as to be boring, but not entirely conflicted as to be sporadic. It’s finding that sweet spot that is essential for the author’s satisfaction to be felt.

Reading Review Week 8

                                             

"Arabian Nights", by Good Reads

Link to image

I chose this image from the Arabian Nights unit, specifically from my retelling of the Greek King and Physician Douban (in Week 4). This unit and this story really got me to think about the culture of the Middle-East at the time of the telling of this story, and I truly felt transported to a different time and place! The retelling of this story is the one I feel most proud of.

The readings that I enjoyed the most have to be the Middle-East and Asian units: they both forced me to consider cultural and aged values that were unknown to me. In order to write Storytelling assignments, I had to immerse myself into the worlds of the stories, and that experience was really eye opening.

When I read through the stories, I found that the method that worked best for me was to read each story earlier in the day (before the assignment was due). I found this effective, because when it came time to do the assignment I had already used my time to sort of daydream about what I wanted to write about.

And as far as note-taking: I made sure to first outline the stories in the most rudimentary terms possible so that I could see the entire scope of the plot. I then read the story a second time, but this time I tried to identify as many culturally and social references the stories drew upon. This way, I was able to get a hold of the values that each story was trying to portray.

I do happen to use my Reading Diary in connection with my Storytelling assignment, because the stories the I mention in my Reading Diaries tend to be the stories that I have paid the most attention to and given the most effort to thoroughly research.

When I look back at my old Reading Diaries, it helps me remember the readings and my thoughts on them very well. However, this is mostly by virtue of the effort that I initially put into the assignments.

I honestly don’t do a lot of reading for pleasure: 19 credit hours of mostly upper division sciences, as well as studying for the new MCAT, will do that to a student. But I do like studying for the MCAT actually, because it allows me to put all the concepts I have learned in my pre-medical requisite classes together in a big picture. I would have to say that the reading in this class and the things that I like to read do not really overlap. However, I do like understanding cultures from countries that I have never been to before, so this class introduced a lot of new material that I could definitely see myself investing time in the future to.

I would have to say that the suggestions for future students regarding the readings would be to outline each reading (and each story) in the most basic terms possible. This way, it’s much easier to keep track of the plot while you analyze different aspects of the stories.

Week 7: Famous Last Words and Youtube Tech Tip

Jet Lag is Coming, by Fit Across Cultures

Link to image

I think my best writing for this class this week has definitely been in my frame-tale story that I am doing for the final project. I had to really give it my all to make the story pan out the way it does: Alice Liddell winds up getting segued into being a Snow-white type character, which brings that story line into the loop. I was able to use the character of Duke to keep track of the real world happenings of the story while using Alice’s perspective to bring a sense of the supernatural and psychedelic to the story. This turned out for the best I think, because I was able to concisely outline Alice’s experiences under the wicked Queen who envies her beauty (she is called the Duchess in this story because there will be a queen later on in future parts of the frame-tale).

My classes this week were fairly regular. However, I experienced some major trip-lag around Monday because I had gotten back at around 8am in the morning from visiting my original hometown. So I was extremely exhausted on Monday, and I was glad we had a snowday. I’m not sure if I would have been able to perform very well in my afternoon and evening classes if school hadn’t been canceled. So thank goodness it was! My organic chemistry lab was definitely going to be a disaster, because there’s so much work that goes into just preparing for it. I had only gotten a portion of what needed to be done for the preparations, so that snow day was a true god-send.

Overall, very busy week with all the catching up that my vacation trip required me to do, and I’m still feeling it! But I’ll make it through. Hopefully I’ll be able to work ahead in this class this week so I don’t have to stress out like I did this week.

Here's something to brighten your day, if you're a person who works with media: 

For when someone posts a compressed image/uses Windows XP to save a jpeg...