Indian Epics Blog

This week, I had relatively boring classes and lectures. We did a little bit of new stuff, but overall, with no tests or major assignments, it was pretty easy for the week to pass quickly. In addition, since it is a bye week, there has not been a lot of things to happen today to entertain me either. This entire week as a whole MIGHT have been something that passed me by quickly without a second thought. That is, until my roommate suggested we get a dog. For a bit of background knowledge, we had considered getting a dog for a while before moving into a house, but we ultimately decided not to because we were not sure if we had time. But now, we have an additional roommate and we are considering it for a real possibility. I would guess that overall, it has a strong likelihood of happening. One of us would have to own the dog outright for when we inevitably move out of the house, and we would also need to figure out what to do with it during summer and winter while we are not at school. ...

This week, I changed things up, and I decided to learn more about teaching skills. I read the article entitled, " What Kids Wished Their Teacher Knew " by Donna De La Cruz. This article is of interesting to me because I TA for two separate classes. Some of these are interesting for learning, such as "I wish my teacher knew that I wanted to learn more about history," while others are heartbreaking such as "I wish my teacher knew my family and I live in a shelter." The interesting topic between all of these are that teachers sometimes can make presumptions on students. The article confirms for me that children are excellent at hiding things. Whether it be poverty or a genuine interest in a field, they can mask that up to where there teacher would never know. One thing that I learned is that teachers often make presumptions about students based on their own upbringing and how they went through school themselves. This resonates with me pretty heavily, beca...

This week, I continue my learnings on the growth mindset. I read the article entitled, " Behavioral research illuminates the very human heart of when, why, and how we fail ," by Cassie Werber. One thing that this article confirmed was that we often blame ourselves when we fall short of our goals. For instance, when someone doesn't go to the gym on February 1st, they try to blame themselves for their failure. But perhaps instead, we should just view it as an inconsistency that is surrounded on one side by 30 days of success, and has the potential to be surrounded by 30 more. I was able to learn that another approach to this is by applying Game Theory. Game Theory is a sort of economic theory that tells us how a multi-player interaction can be optimized. They give the example of a smoker as both players in a two player game and how he was able to overcome his vice. One thing I would like to know more about is how many people simply give up on an entire goal when they ha...

This week, I look back at my progress as a whole, and I will determine if there is anything else that I want to change moving forwards. As per overall progress, I am very happy with where I am. Formally, I am exactly on track in the course, but point wise, I have completed a decent chunk more due to doing extra credit. I used to be far more ahead, but as school trudged on, I slipped back to being on time. If possible, I would like to allocate a little more time to complete assignments, but if not, remaining on time is more than enough. I am pleased with the Extra Credit assignments that I have chosen, though, I believe I will change out Wikipedia Trails with Tech Tips, or drop Wikipedia Trails all together. It just seems to take a little too long, and the learning is not in depth enough to make the assignment attractive to me. Looking forward, I really just hope to allocate a little more time for the Project assignment, and I do not see the need to change anything else. I have re...

This week, I continue looking back on my progress in the class so far. The topic is on Feedback and Commenting, where I will analyze the comments I have received, the comments I have given, the blog comments in particular, and a plan moving forwards. First, on the comments that I have received. In general, I enjoy seeing the reactions to my stories just for the sake of reactions. The comments that are most helpful are the honest ones, as they focus on some random detail of the story and run with it. This generally helps the story writing process, and I enjoy getting ideas from these small and innocuous details. As per my comment wall, I liked seeing the anticipation for the story on Indra, but more importantly, I enjoyed seeing the overall opinion of the story to see which one people were looking forwards to the most. As per the comments I give out, I have tried to read the stories, type a comment, re-read the story, then refine the comment. In general, I get hung up on a detail or...

This week, we look back at some of the things that we have done in the class, seeing as it is the halfway point. First, I will review my blog and website. Then, I will review my stories and blog posts. Starting on the blog, I actually really like it. It is not nearly as flashy as other people's, but I like something that is easy to navigate, and I enjoy reading the content as opposed to viewing different pictures. The labels are easy to find to navigate, and it also is broken down by month. As per the website, the same principles apply, I enjoy basic websites that get the point across. Looking back on my stories, I made a change around Week 5 where I decided to write a story about a dog being tricked by squirrels. This was followed up by a story about Baker Mayfield, which was then succeeded by a relatively original story about the Vajra. I made this conscious decision after I was not enjoying trying to somewhat accurately retell the stories that I had read, and I wanted to hav...