Online Education Review

(Thumbs Up, Rio!)

Personally, I love online classes! I am really bad at getting up and going to classes, so having on my computer and able to work on it whenever and wherever I want to is a major plus. On the other hand, it sometimes can be confusing and hard to keep up with all that is required of you. That's why I love this class (and the myth-folklore class!) - because everything that you have to do is laid out in a week by week way. You are never wondering what is required of you and you always know where you stand points-wise. I love that this class has that week by week thing and I also love that there are certain assignments due on certain days. I love the reading diary posts because there is no specific word requirement so I don't have to worry about that, I can just write whatever I'm thinking about the reading at the time, so they ensure that you're doing the reading while also allowing you some leeway. If I were to design an online course I would honestly do exactly what you've done here because I can't imagine anything better than what you've already done. I especially love that we can pick our own readings sometimes and get to know what interests us!

Gen. Ed. Review

 

(Not Facebook Not Like Thumbs Down)

Overall I have not had the greatest experience with gen. eds. but that could just be because I prefer all of my majors classes and thought that most of the gen. eds. were a stupid requirement. I liked this class and a couple of the other classes, but why, I ask you, do psychology majors need chemistry/physics, algebra, or environmental science?? They don't! There's no reason for me to have taken any of these things unless I was planning to go to med school and had declared the pre-med option (for chemistry) or something like that. There's no point in a psych major having physics and we learn all the math we need for psych in statistics so algebra or calculus is completely unreasonable. When will I ever use it? Never. Do you want to know why? I have a calculator and the internet my friend! If I were going to design a gen. ed. program it would have the humanities and histories and political classes and english classes that are included now, as everyone should probably know, but would not include anything to do with math, physics, or science, as those things should be based on the degree that you're in. 

College Writing Review

(Writing)

I'm a psychology major and we don't have a lot of writing courses, per se, but we do have A LOT of writing in our different psychology courses. The problem with this was that for my psych classes we had to write in APA style and in all other classes (like all of the gen eds I had to take that required writing, i.e. English classes, History Classes, and some science classes) I had to use MLA style, which I'm really bad at in general and always have to look up how to do things now that I'm in the hang of APA style. I've taken classes that were writing intensive like my Honors English 1 and 2 classes and my Honors History class, all of which required a ton of writing. And now I'm in a science class that requires a lot of writing of lab reports. Plus all of my psych classes required things like research papers or term papers. I don't really think a lot of these classes have helped me grow as a writer because they all wanted different things and nitpicked about different things, so I'm not really sure what's the right way and what's not. But this class has helped me because it's focused solely on my writing skills and not so much on APA vs MLA or on the topic at hand. This is really the most helpful writing class I've had so far and if I had to design a class, it would be just exactly like this one, both in my major and out of it, though within my major it would have pointers about APA style and outside of my major it would have pointers about both styles.

Week 14 Reading Diary B: Santal Folktales continued

Image Information: Red Fox Lying in Snow from Wikipedia page.

Today I've decided to focus on a story that I found particularly cute from the Santal Folktales: A Fox and His Wife. I thought this story was cute because it showed how a quick-witted woman who never bragged about her intelligence was able to out-smart the tiger while her husband, who always bragged about his own wit, cowered and shook with fright.

So in the beginning the story tells about how the Mr. Fox is always bragging to his wife about all of the wit he has (his wit would load twelve buffaloes) and Mrs. Fox never bragging about hers (hers would only fill a small vegetable basket). Then one evening they're on their way home and are stopped suddenly by a tiger who wants to eat them. Mrs. Fox tells him to wait a moment because she and her husband need someone to settle their quarrel about how to divide up their five children and the tiger agrees to help thinking that he will get both foxes and all five of their children if he plays along (plus he's flattered that she's given him an honorable title: uncle). He follows them home to their burrow and Mr. Fox goes in to gather the children, but when he doesn't come back out Mrs. Fox tells the tiger he must not be able to handle them all and she will go help him. She doesn't turn her back on him, however, because she somehow knows that he is planning to swipe her away and eat her if she does, so she backs in backwards. When the tiger asks what she's doing, she says that she couldn't possible turn her back on such an amazing person as he is and he's flattered again and lets her go. After she's safely inside, and - mind you - the hole is really small for the going in and out of the fox den, she calls out to him that he's free to leave now as she and her husband have figured out their dilemma on their own. The tiger realizes he has been fooled and is furious and tries to go in after them but is way too big for the door. So in the end, Mrs. Fox's wit was able to save them all from the tiger's hungry belly.

Week 14 Reading Diary A: Santal Folktales

Image Information - African Leopard in Serengeti, Tanzania from Wikipedia page

The story I liked best this time was actually the first story I read from the Santal Folktales page, called Ledha and the Leopard. I liked this story because it had several twists that were entirely unexpected but that weren't too far-fetched (most of the time) to be believable. I do wonder, however, what the moral of the story is because I thought folktales were meant to impart some lesson or other, but perhaps I'm mistaken and not all tales that are told are for learning, maybe some are just for entertainment.

So in this story it starts off with some pretty foolish young boys who like to call out to a leopard that lives in the forest above them, not expecting that he would ever show up. One day, however, he does come running for them because he has a lizard on his bum and can't get rid of it (he had been playing hide and seek with the lizard and accidentally sat on it, then got bitten by it and it wouldn't let him go). Ledha couldn't run fast enough to get away so the leopard caught up with him and promised not to eat him if he'd just take the lizard off and never tell anyone that a lizard had been able to bite him and scare him so badly. If he did tell, though, he would be hunted down and eaten. So the leopard apparently went on his way (though in reality he followed Ledha to make sure he didn't tell anyone). Ledha refused to tell his friends what had happened, but that night did eventually give in to his sister's wheedling and told her. The leopard heard him tell and that night snuck in and stole him and his whole bed away and carried it deep into the forest. Ledha woke up during the journey and realized what was happening so he caught ahold of a tree branch and escaped. The leopard, after finding him gone, retraced his path through the forest until he found Ledha in the tree. He promised not to eat him when he came down, so Ledha did, but the leopard was going to break his promise. Ledha asked if he could have just one pinch of tobacco first and the leopard agreed. When he heard the tobacco (which was apparently very dry and noisy) rustling around in the bag he asked what was really in there and Ledha told him it was the lizard from earlier. This scared the leopard away and Ledha escaped, though he didn't know how to get out of the forest so he made a home for himself near some wild buffaloes. He cleaned up after the buffaloes every morning when they moved away to graze and they were eventually curious as to how their home was getting clean so they left one of their kindred behind one day to see. She found out it was Ledha and told her friends it was a kind man who had come to take care of them. They made a bargain with Ledha, if he would take care of them and help them wash, they would give him the milk of whichever of the cows was his favorite and tastiest. One day, as he was washing in the river (and this was the most hard to believe part in the story because what on earth would have prompted him to wrap his hair up and why would she have cared about the hair of someone and then married that lame long-haired nobody who lived in the forest??) some of his hair fell out and he wrapped it in some leaves and let it float down the river. A princess found it and declared that she would not go on living without finding the man that the hair belonged to so her father sent a crow to find him and the crow lured him out by stealing his flute and making him chase it all the way back to the palace. She married him and they lived there for a while but the buffaloes were suffering without him so he moved her and him back to the forest and built a palace there and a highway so that he could travel back and forth between his forest home where he cared for the buffaloes and her home in the city.

Week 13 Extra Reading Diary: Folktales of Bengal part 2

Story source:Folk-Tales of Bengal by the Rev. Lal Behari Day, with illustrations by Warwick Goble (1912).

I'm going to write about two stories that were very similar in this unit (Folktales of Bengal part 2): The Ghost-Brahman and A Ghostly Wife. In these two tales, a ghost poses as one of the characters and lives as if it were them until it gets caught.

In the first story, a Brahman is too pore to afford a wife so he begs for the money until he can afford one. Once he marries her, he moves her in with her mother but doesn't stay with them because he really can't afford to support all three of them, so he leaves. Later a ghost takes his place and nobody can tell the difference. The Brahman comes back but people call him an impostor and banish him from his own house. He goes to the king, asking for help. The king agrees to try the case but he can't tell the ghost from the real man either. The Brahman is distraught until he finds another king who comes up with a plan. He comes in and says the real Brahman is the one who can fit inside the very small container. The ghost is tricked and gets into the container, showing that he is, indeed, a ghost. The ghost-Brahman is then thrown out and the real Brahman is reinstated in his family.

In the second story, a young wife marries a Brahman and moves in with him and his mother (I'm sensing a theme here...). One day she offends a ghost who almost strangles her and then traps her in a hole in a tree and takes her shape (another theme?), rejoining her family. The mother notices that something is amiss with the wife (aha, a difference!) and watches her very closely. She sees her stretch her arm out too far one day and tells the Brahman, and then they both watch her closely. The wife does some more ghostly things, like lighting the stove with her foot, and someone is called in to perform an exorcism and he gets the ghost to admit what she's done to the wife and then exorcises her. They rescue the wife just in time and return her to her family.

Week 13 Reading Diary B: Khasi Folktales part 2

(tiger from wikipedia)

Now I'm going to write about the next half of the Khasi Folktales and focus on How the Tiger Got His Strength. I chose this story as my favorite because I love learning about tigers as they are my favorite animal and I thought maybe I could retell it for my story this week. Ok so, in the beginning all of the animals were created equal, but this led to some problems as they were always fighting about everything. So the gods got together and decided that to fix this problem they would give specific animals different specific gifts so as to separate them and maybe make them live more harmoniously. So all the animals were gathered and the gifts were handed out. Men got the gifts of beauty and wisdom and tigers got the gifts of craftiness and the ability to walk silently. When the man got home that night though, the mother sent him back to the gods to ask for strength so that they'd be at the top of the food chain. The man did but was told to come back in the morning. The tiger overheard this and because he was so crafty he was able to come up with a plan to get the strength for himself. The next morning, before man was even awake, the tiger sent a messenger to receive the gift for himself. The gods, thinking they were bestowing strength upon man, gave him 12 times the normal strength. Later the man woke up and headed for the gods, but the tiger intercepted him and challenged him, telling him about getting the man's gift. The man dodged the tiger's attack and ran to tell the gods what had happened. They were dismayed but didn't know how to fix it, so they gave man skill with a bow and arrow instead so that he could hunt the tiger.