Reading Notes: Tibetan Folk Tales, Part B

My second story for this week’s notes seemed very familiar; it was also one of Aesop’s tales. It’s called How the Raven Saved the Hunter, from Tibetan Folk Tales by A. L. Shelton.

Reading Notes

• There was a very poor man who managed to make a living by hunting, but he often had nothing to eat or drink. 
• One day he went out on a hunt, and traveled for a distance.
• Eventually he came to the top of a mountain, and realizing his thirst upon seeing a stream, he made his way down to it.
• He fashioned a cup from a leaf and filled it with water, but just as he raised the leaf to his lips, a raven flew up and knocked the leaf from the man’s hand with its wing.
• The man thought it was an accident, and refilled his leaf, but the raven knocked the water away again.
• When this happened a third time, the man became angry and shot the raven dead with his bow.
• After his rush of anger, the man wondered why the raven had been so adamant about the whole thing. 
• Before he drank, the man walked a short distance upstream, only to discover the stream originated from the mouth of a great snake, and the skeletons of different animals littering the banks of the stream.
• The man was greatly upset, realizing that he had killed the raven when it was just trying to save his life.

Source

Reading Notes: Nigerian Reading Notes, Part A

This week, I decided to write up my notes for the first reading about Why the Bat Flies by Night, from Elphinstone Dayrell’s Folk Stories from Southern Nigeria. In this story, playing a prank has deadly consequences, as the bat finds out.

Reading Notes

• A bush rat and a bat were friends, but for unlisted reasons, the bat was jealous of the bush rat.
• They often dined together; the bat’s food was always good and tasty, and the bush rat asked the bat for his secret.
• The bat told the bush rat that he boiled himself in the water he used, and that was what made the food tasty.
• The bat offered to show the bush rat his process: he took a pan of warm water and told the bush rat it was boiling, then jumped in and out relatively quickly.
• The bat had prepared some soup beforehand but pretended it had just been made from the water he’d “boiled” in; as usual, the soup was tasty.
• After their meal, the bush rat went home and told his wife he was going to make soup the same way as the bat.
• He had his wife boil up some water; then, when she wasn’t looking, the bush rat jumped into the boiling water and quickly died.
• When his wife realized what happened, she reported the matter to the king, who ordered the bat to be captured. 
• The bat managed to hide himself before anyone could catch him, but now he has to hide during the day and can only come out at night.

Fortunately, Bat’s gotten used to flying around at night (Source)

Week 8 Progress Review

In reflecting on what I’ve done so far for class, I’d say overall I’m pretty satisfied with what I’m doing. At the very least, compared to Week 8 last semester, I’m doing great. While my weekly routine may not be the most productive (since I’m not working ahead, but working at the pace of the class, basically), but I’m still getting stuff turned in on time, so there are worse things I suppose. 

Right now I haven’t been doing a lot of extra credit, but I’m going to use this week to both catch up and get ahead, so that leaves more room for extra credit. There’s been a couple extra credits I want to do anyway, it’s just a matter of actually finding the time to do them. 

I think as far as looking forward, the big thing I’ll want to focus on is not procrastinating (as I usually say) and just making sure I don’t let my time get away from me. I should probably also focus more on giving feedback, but that’s hard to do sometime, so that’s a thing that I won’t worry about as much. 

And now, a motivational (for me) picture:

The only thing getting me through midterms right now is thinking about how I can decorate my graduation cap (Source)

Week 8 Feedback/Comments Reflection

Feedback is such a fun thing. Sometimes. Not really. But it is necessary, especially in a writing-based class. That being said, giving feedback can be good, in the long run. Overall, I do enjoy the feedback I’ve been getting from my classmates. Especially when my grammar errors are pointed out to me. 

As far as giving feedback, sometimes I do struggle to come up with enough to talk about, but the feedback techniques do help. Hopefully the feedback that I do leave is helpful for people! I tend to focus more on grammatical stuff than writing things, I think. Consistently writing comments/feedback that meets the word quote is pretty hard for me, I think because I end up struggling with not sounding repetitive. Dividing it up over the week would help, but that means not procrastinating, and as I’ve established that’s hard for me.

In the future I think I’ll try to do more blog feedbacks. Going through intros and not sounding repetitive is difficult for me, but I think spreading it out over the week will make it easier. Something to try out anyway. 

Source

Week 8 Reading/Writing Reflections

Now that we’re at the halfway point, it’s time to reflect on what I’ve done so far both in style and in writing. I think I’ve made it further in the class than I did last time, so I’d say that’s going pretty well so far.

So, the first part to reflect on is the aesthetics and appearance of my blog and storybook website. Overall I’m pretty happy. I messed with my blog settings a while back until I was able to find the look that I wanted. I feel like all the blues and grays give a calming feel that goes with the whole “mythological” aspect. I’m also pretty happy with how my Storybook website is looking. That took a lot more tweaking since i’m not as familiar with Google Sites settings vs Blogger, but I think I managed to make it work. There is some stuff I wish I had more flexibility on, but it’s not a big deal. I’ll probably keep tweaking it as I go just because I can.

In terms of my writing, I don’t think that’s going too badly, overall. I probably have an issue with procrastinating too much, then rush-writing at the end to make the deadline for the assignment. I don’t think that’s a super big deal for the short, weekly assignments, but it’s definitely more of a problem with my storybook. After I posted my latest story on my website, I later reviewed it with my boyfriend. There was some stuff in there that I probably wouldn’t have left in there if I wasn’t rushing the writing. As it is, I definitely revised those things a little.

Honestly this picture from my comments wall is still my favorite. Because Futurama and memes. (Source)

In terms of what I’m looking to do in the future, procrastination is, as always, something I always intend to stop doing. (I procrastinate a lot of things.) Beyond that, I think I also want to work on making sure I find new ways to tell stories in new ways, and not just sticking with the same things. I tend to stick with first or third person POVs, and looking at the story from the other point of view, rather than expanding a little and looking at things like rewriting the ending to be different, or gender-bending.