Review Week 8

McHumor Comic (Class Announcements Blog)

I chose this image because I thought it was pretty funny and I feel the same way. Losing that extra hour of sleep really seems to affect me... I could hardly get out of bed this morning.

And I chose this video because I occasionally enjoy watching SNL. Haven't seen this skit before though, it was pretty funny. Could have been more melodramatic.

Wikipedia Trails: Hate-watching to Stranger in a Strange Land

So I picked up a new word from the Class Twitter: "Hate-watch", and I had no idea what that was so I started with it.

TV News Simulation (Wikipedia)

Hate-watching: Hate-watching is a neologism for watching something despite hating the content. I don't really get the point in watching stuff you hate.

Neologism (Merriam Webster)

Neologism: I got here because I saw it was one of the first words in the article and I wasn't familiar. It turns out a neologism is a word or phrase that's just beginning to enter common speak, but it isn't fully integrated yet. I wonder if hate-watching is considered fully integrated now that it's in the dictionary..

Stranger in a Strange Land (Flickr)

Grok: An example of a neologism, first used in the 1961 novel "Stranger in a Strange Land". It's been defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as "To understand intuitively or by empathy".

Also Stranger in a Strange Land (Wikipedia)

Stranger in a Strange Land: The book "Grok" was used in. It details the story of a human male who was born on Mars and raised by aliens. He returns to Earth, where theocracy rules and World War III had already occurred. The Library of Congress put it in its list of 88 books that shaped America.

Learning Challenge: I wish my teacher knew...

Chalkboard (Eagle Country Online)

I read "What Kids Wish Their Teacher Knew" by Donna De La Cruz.

I think this article brought to attention a very good idea. Having these anonymous forms for kids to fill out ends up in some really eye opening responses. It shows that a lot of kids go through some rough times and are often hindered by them. This kind of activity encourages people to minimize assumptions about other people and increase empathy. A good way to practice compassion while respecting privacy is, of course, to throw out any assumptions you might make about someone. I haven't participated in anything like this, not as far as I can remember at least.

Growth Mindset: Growth Article

May Company Building (Wikipedia)

I read "7 Key Maxims Of A Mindset Focused On Growth" by Martin Zwilling.

The article applies growth mindset to managing a company, interestingly. It introduces some familiar concepts, such as success through taking bite sized chunks of work instead of trying to do it all at once. I didn't know that growth mindset was so compatible with being an entrepreneur, but it makes sense in retrospect. I'm not quite ready to start my own business and become an entrepreneur but it's always a possibility, and if I end up doing that I'll keep these tips in mind.

Tech Tips: Browser Bookmarks

Bookmark (Flickr)

Surprisingly enough, I haven't been using bookmarks at all. I usually just type stuff into my url bar and choose a suggestion instead. I can see how bookmarking can be really helpful though. I might keep separate folders for stuff like artists websites and manga since I can forget about those pretty easily and it'd be nice to have them organized.

Week 8 Progress

Graduation cap with degree (UConn)

I'm pretty happy with the progress I've made so far, I have a bunch of extra credit work done to fall back on in case I get really busy. My weekly routine isn't so great, since I get most of my work done over the weekends. My favorite assignments are the Wikipedia Trails ones, since there's a lot of interesting stuff that I learned from doing them.

For the second half of the semester I'm hoping to keep on doing the extra credit and try to get my workload more spread out across the week.

Week 8 Reading and Writing

The reading assignments are working pretty well for me overall, but I did get really busy last week and had to skip a reading. My favorite reading was the Ramayana, it felt a lot easier to follow than the Mahabharata and everything seemed very memorable. My reading notes help a lot, to the point where I have them open while I'm writing my stories as reference. I discovered that looking up stuff on wikipedia when coming across unknown things in the readings gave me some useful background information. I'm pretty happy with my class project so far and I still think my greatest accomplishment was writing that rhyming poem.

Tar Seep (Wikipedia)

I chose this image to go with, not because I liked the image, but because it's associated with one of my more creative stories that I had a lot of fun writing.

Thinking forward, I think I'll keep up what I've been doing so far, but maybe I should do my assignments earlier so I don't have to block out multiple hours for them on Sunday.