Week 11: Famous Last Words

This week has been pretty crazy.  I am working to complete my graduate school applications, thankfully that are still being accepted for the Spring semester.  I am also working towards graduation, which means that I am stressing out about keeping grades up and making sure my GPA doesn't drop.  I will be really glad when December rolls around.  That means that all I will have to worry about are finals, as well as making sure everything goes well with convocation.  I am planning on coming back to OU for graduate school.  Hopefully I will find out in the next month if I have been accepted into the Human Relations program.  It sounds like it will be a really interesting program to focus on, particularly when looking for a job in a few years.  I am really hoping to get in, both to continue my education and to further put off figuring out what I want to do with my life for the next few years, at least regarding employment.  Right now I am working at Payless, which is fun even though it can be tiring at times.  One of my coworkers walked out a few days ago so we are hiring again.  Even with the stress at times though, I really like my coworkers, which makes working there better. The fact that I get an employee discount on shoes is a major benefit as well.  I am working on my final papers for a few of my classes, which have had us working on these papers as our midterms.  It is nice to be able to work towards these papers early, though it is not comforting to know that the teachers expect a lot more from all of the students as a result of the extra time given to it.  This week is finally over! I hope everyone has a great Halloween!!

(Pumpkins for sale: Image source Wikipedia)

Week 11: Essay on Diagramming Sentences

 (Cartoon by Scott Hillburn)

This cartoon is hilarious, both because that is how Yoda talks and because grammatical structure was one of the main things teachers stressed in elementary school.  The funny thing is that after elementary school, it wasn't really talked about at all.  Once middle school hit, it was expected that you would be able to create proper sentences.  The parts of the sentence were no longer discussed.  When I saw this cartoon I started to remember the different English classes that I would have to sit through and hope that I was able to correctly diagram the sentence.  It is ironic that I hated having to do that in elementary school, yet I have ended up getting a minor in English Literature.  Even though I do not enjoy having to diagram sentences, I love reading and writing, so my love for that overcame my dislike for correctly structuring a sentence.  Even though I do love writing, I am still not able to easily diagram a sentence.  I can set the sentence up correctly, yet I will not really be able to tell you the role that each word in the sentence is playing.  That is mainly due to the fact that it was not really talked about at all in high school.  I am hoping that I will continue to be able to love English for the years to come.  This cartoon was able to display the fear that I faced along with a lot of my classmates.  Thankfully I was able to overcome this as time passed, as I hope others are able to do.  Without those classes, I do not know if I would have developed my love for English, even though I hated them at the time.  Either way, I enjoyed the way that the comic captured the fear of being called upon by the professor, as well as using Yoda, who is one of my favorite characters from Star Wars, to showcase that.

Storytelling for Week 11: Who Shall She Marry?

There was once a beautiful girl, known throughout the land for her stunning looks and her amazing voice.  Her family was very proud of her, protecting her from those who sought to marry her and use her for her beauty alone.  They wanted someone that would take care of her.  She also wanted someone who was willing to prove that they would do what was necessary to provide for her and protect her from danger.  In order to do this, she told her family that she would marry someone who embodied the characteristics of bravery, wisdom, or cunning.  One day, each family member met someone who fulfilled her demand.  Without consulting one another, or even talking to the girl about it, they agreed that in one week the man they met could come to the palace and meet the princes in order to marry her.  The princess was stunned when she found out.  She never expected for something like that to happen, especially as she did not think she would find even one man to truly fit the characteristics that she required in order to meet them.  To discover that her family had found someone who embodied each characteristic separately meant that it was an extreme shock to her.  On the day that she was meant to meet the three men, she was kidnapped by an evil man who sought to keep her for his own.  Though she struggled, she could not get away.  In order to rescue her, the three suitors had to work together and build a chariot to follow her in.  The wise man knew how to find the evil man, instructing the others as to where he was.  The clever man built the chariot to follow the princess in.  The brave man, however, went above and beyond, risking his life to defeat the evildoer and save the princess.  When they group returned home, they argued their cases to the king.  He ended up giving the choice to his daughter, as it would be her who was getting married.  She said that while the clever man and the wise man aided in her rescue, it was the brave man who truly was at risk, placing himself in danger of death so that he could help her to escape and regain her freedom.  Without his contribution, she would have been forced to marry her captor, as the other two men were afraid of what might happen to them.  The brave man and the princess were wed and they lived happily ever after.

(Damsel in Distress; Image source Wikipedia)

Brave, Wise, Clever is the tale being retold in this story.

Week 11 Reading Diary: 22 Goblins

The Twenty-Two Goblins

The Three Lovers
     - The Three Lovers who brought the Dead Girl to Life. Whose wife should she be?
     - Of the three youth, the one who brought her back to life acted as a father should, the one who took care of her bones and had them cleansed in the holy river acted as a son was meant to, while the third slept in the cemetery with her ashes, enduring hardship and earning her hand in marriage.

Brave, Wise, Clever
     - The brave man earns the hand of the girl in marriage, as he risked his life to rescue her from the giant. The wise man and the clever man aided him, but they did not risk anything to save her.

The Girl, Her Husband and Her Brother
     - When a girl accidentally places the wrong heads on the bodies of her husband and brother, after they have cut their heads off, she must determine who is who.  It is determined that the body with the head of her husband will be her husband, as it is by the head that people recognize others.