Caitlyn's Corner

Quote from Neil Gaiman The graphic that caught my eye from this past week was this quote from Neil Gaiman.  I have been so engrossed in his book  Norse Mythology  and seeing a quote from him in the announcements got me excited. It is an awesome quote, too.  Imagination is so incredibly important. I really loved this video What Makes A Hero? from Matthew Winkler.  It would have been awesome if I had found this earlier in the semester to help write my stories, but I guess I will just have to continue writing for fun!

Wow, Dead Week is coming to an end and finals are about to begin.  I cannot believe that this semester has gone by so fast.  It seems like only yesterday I was stressing over the first day of lectures for this semester.  I am filled with a huge mixture of emotions as I go into my final days of this semester.  I am sad that several of my friends are graduating and moving off to far away places.  My best friend, whom I have known for my entire life, is moving to Washington state in just a few weeks.  My brother graduates from OU's Medical School in two weeks and then he and his wife are moving to Alabama for his residency.  I am also incredibly happy for them, but I am going to miss them so much.  Relief is probably the emotion I am looking forward to the most.  Come Wednesday at 6pm, I will be free for summer and I am looking forward to it.  For now, I still have two classes to finish assignments for and a few final papers to turn in....

This week, I did the Happiness Jar.  Everyday, I wrote down on a sticky note something that makes me happy and then I placed it in a mug (I didn't have a jar).  By the end of the week, my mug was filled with notes of happy thoughts.  I woke up feeling stressed about finals week starting in just a few days, so I started reading my little notes.  It seriously cheered me up.  Yeah, finals suck, but not every second of life does.  Journal I keep a journal and my New Year's resolution this year was to write down at least one positive thing in each of my entries.  I have kept to that and I even started highlighting all the positives in my entries.  Now, when I look back through my journal when I am feeling low, I can see that parts of my life are great and not every second is bad. I liked this jar idea, because it was a much more visual effect seeing all the happiness in my life.

Try Everything  by Shakira is not only an awesome song.  It has great Growth Mindset messages in it! She talks about how nothing is easy.  We all have to fail and fall a few times before we get it right.  It's something that we need to remember.  We have failed and are going to fail again in the future.  But that is okay.  Because one day, we will get it right.

Ragnarok For this last section of reading, I finished up Norse Mythology  by Neil Gaiman.  This was Chapters 16 and 17: Th Last days of Loki and Ragnarok.  Ragnarok was such an awesome read.  I just watched the Thor Ragnarok movie the other day, so it was really interesting hearing characters names that I remember from parts in the movie.  I feel like the movie definitely had a much more light-hearted feel to it than the original story.  This story is just filled with epic events, battles, and deaths.  I really loved reading it. I loved every minute of this book.  It made me fall in love with Gaiman's writing and also Norse Mythology.  I will definitely be reading more of both in the future.  I am so glad I was able to read this book for this class.  I definitely would not have taken as big of an interest in researching different parts of it if I had just read it for pleasure.

Thor's Fight with the Giants From reading so much Norse Mythology lately, I decided to read more about  Thor  in the Wikipedia article.  I really love Marvel Comics and that is what got me into Norse Mythology.  I was totally that girl in high school who was hardcore crushing on Marvel's Thor, Chris Hemsworth. It was very interesting reading Gaiman's book and also this wiki article to learn more about the mythology character that the comic is based on.  I remember Gaiman mentioned that Thursday was named after Thor, so I read the article until I found a bit about it.  Sure enough, in English,  Thursday  is named for Thor's Day.  I went to the article on Thursday and discovered here that Thursday is named for the Roman god Jupiter in most romance languages.  I am more familiar with Greek mythology, so I clicked the link for Jupiter to find out which one he is.  At the end of this article, in the See Also section, was a link to ...

Growth requires hard work I picked this first cat because sometimes college gets really frustratingly difficult, but we have to remember that the hard work will pay off.  We are growing so much while studying at university.  We grow in our personal lives as well as in knowledge. Enjoy the ride I chose the cat above because I find it so hard to make sure I enjoy the here and now.  I get so caught up in planning for the future and preparing for the next step, that I forget to live in the moment I'm in.

It's down to the last week of class and I am planning on doing several (maybe all?) of the assignments for this week.  I usually do a huge chunk of my work on the weekends, but everything is due on Friday, so it's time to take a look at my schedule and figure out when to fit in work for this class and my other ones. Monday Myth: finish up week 14 Historical Ling: meet with study group and review old homeworks Morphology: read articles Tuesday Myth: do readings A, B, and Extra Credit for week 15 Historical Ling: lecture, review old homeworks Morphology: lecture, look over presentation outline Wednesday Myth: Story, HEART, Growth Mindset Historical Ling: work on topic paper Morphology: work on presentation Thursday Myth: Blog comments, Feedback, Extra Comments, Wiki-Trail Historical Ling: topic paper, final paper Morphology: Presentation, lecture, final paper Friday Myth: Famous Last Words, Back up and Review, Project Historical Ling: fina...

I really loved the following graphic from the course announcements last week.  It caught my eye because the style is really cute, but then I began to read it and realized just how awesome it is.   Interior Life As I am reading Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman right now, I thought this video was perfect.  I have always loved the Epic Rap Battles of History because of their oh so clever lines.  This one was just too perfect for my to not talk about and share!

Odin and Fenris As I have been reading Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman, I have been very curious about the characters that come up in the stories.  As I was reading about Loki's children, I decided to do a little research to learn more about them.  I started at the page on  Loki  and read all about his children.  I recognized the names from the story and a couple I had heard in other things.   Fenrir  was the one that I was most curious about.  I could have sworn there was a character in a really popular story named Fenrir, but I could not remember what it was.  Scrolling down to the bottom of this article, I found the "Modern Influence" section and read through there.  I saw that Fenrir Wolf was a character in Thor: Ragnarok, which I definitely remember.  I also figured out where I knew the name from.  J.K. Rowling named the werewolf that is buddy buddy with the death eaters Fenrir Greyback .  I headed over to th...

For Part 4 of Norse Mythology  by Neil Gaiman, I read through Chapter 11: Thor's Journey to the Land of Giants.  This story is a tale of Thor, Thor's servant, and Loki visiting Jotenheim. The giant Skrymir helps them find the huge fortress, Utgard. Upon reaching Utgard, the giant there, Utgartha-Loki tells them that only those who are the best of something are allowed in his city.  The travels then proceed to go head to head against a competitor in the task they feel they are the best of the best at.  Loki competes in eating the quickest, Thor's servant competes in running the fastest, and Thor, of course, competes as the strongest.  Thor and his companions are angry and confused when they are defeated by Utgartha-Loki's champions.  It isn't until the next day that Utgartha-Loki explains who they were really competing against. This story was very interesting.  At first, it seemed like another story about the gods easily defeating their enemies and be...

I have always been very interested in Norse culture.  I tend to study the languages derived from them when given the option to choose a language for my linguistic assignments.  I don't know why, but they have always been fascinating to me.  Recently, I bought the Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman audio book on Audible.  I have always wanted to take a deeper look at these myths and Gaiman does such an amazing job telling these stories. While listening, I became very interested in getting more information about the gods, so I started a little Wiki trail. I checked out the Norse Mythology article first, to get a little overview.  From here, I became very interested in Freyja .  She is always described as the most beautiful woman and I was curious if she was similar to Aphrodite from Greek mythology.  After reading her description, I learned she shares a lot in common with Aphrodite.  They are the goddesses of very similar things.  While reading ...

For my learning challenge this week, I read all of Through the Looking Glass out loud.  I usually hate the sound of my own voice, but after a while, I found that I really enjoyed it.  I got more into the story, because I was focusing so hard on putting color in the narration.  I did special voices for each character, felt like an idiot doing it, but it made the story so enjoyable.  This was a great book to try this challenge on, too.  I think I will do this more in the future. In a Bind

In my life, it is a daily struggle to keep up with fitness.  I really love reading, watching movies, and sketching.  All of these require very little movement.  During this semester, I have been working hard to get better at my personal fitness.  I took a pilates class twice a week and started from there.  I increased my time at the rock climbing gym, as well.  I went from going once a month to once a week, to almost once a day.  I can tell I am already feeling so much better. It has been a big battle, but I set my mind to growing in my personal health and I feel like I am achieving that.  My next challenge is to attempt to get into running. Rock Climbing

From Wednesday, April 18th This graphic from this week's announcement feed really spoke to me.  I have gone through this course of emotions in most of my classes this semester.  Currently, I am very stuck on confusion is one of my classes and it is killing me. I watched this video on the survivor tree and really loved it.  My freshman year, I went to Oklahoma City University and my Honors Comp class did a lot of research and volunteer work at the memorial.  I learned a lot about this amazing tree and everything it stands for.  You should check out the memorial if you get a chance.  It is really moving.

This week, I started listening to Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology and it is amazing!  This book has been so hard to take breaks from.  I usually listen to audio books when I am driving or walking to classes. but this one has me sitting in the car for an extra few minutes after getting to my destination. Neil Gaiman narrates the story and he truly has a gift at bringing these characters to life! I love his descriptions of all of the gods and their characteristics.  He also adds in a lot of his humor and this just brings the story to life.  I recommend this book to anyone and everyone.  I have always really enjoyed reading about Norse mythology, but this book has me obsessed.  It truly reads more as a fun novel than it does a book of old myths.  I have never sat down and really studied all of the Norse myths before, so I guess it is possible that they are just that amazing.  I really think it has more to do with how wonderful of an author Gaiman i...

For me last reading, I decided to check out Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman. I bought the audio book for this and I absolutely love it.  Neil Gaiman narrates the stories and he has an awesome voice for it!  This book is a bit long, so I will be reading this for my last several reading posts.  Part 1, I read through Chapters 1 through 6.  This included the introduction and I am so glad I read it! I usually skip intros, but this one was adorable.  Gaiman wrote this book so his son would fall in love with Norse Mythology just like he did as a kid. My favorite story from this part was The Treasure of the Gods (Chapter 6).  This story tells of how the gods got their favorite and most memorable treasures.  It tells us how Odin got his spear that has special powers, like how any oath made on this spear cannot be broken.  It also tells us how Thor got his hammer.  This is one of the most famous objects owned by the gods.  There is even another ...

I have been super spacey about checking my email lately, so I have been messing up on do revisions on my portfolio for this class.  I somehow keep missing my emails from Laura about her feedback, so I bet she will appreciate the fact that I paid attention to this graphic from this week... Image source This week, the video that stuck out to me from the announcements was a TED Talk about The Power of Vulnerability.  It really spoke to me, because I have had several people tell me lately that I need to be more open and vulnerable sometimes, because I can be way too guarded.  It is something I need to work on and watching this video really helped me understand that.

I watched the Sprouts video Learning With Passion and Enthusiasm and really enjoyed it. It really makes a difference in how much you retain if you put a little passion into your learning. It is so much easier to handle a difficult class if you have passion and enthusiasm for the subject. I learned this a few years ago when I finally found a major that I enjoy. I am curious to see if I can find a bit of passion in my classes that I do not like the subject as much.

This past week was one filled with one crazy thing after another.  Monday, I went to the capitol in OKC and joined my old teachers, some fellow classmates, and my teacher friends in the Teacher Walkout.  This experience was one that I will never forget.  Monday, they had over 50,000 people at the capitol and we really thought the legislators would not be able to say no anymore.  As the week went by, our spirits fell a little with the news of returning to the schools with little to show of our efforts, but we can feel the change in the air that is coming. Wednesday and Thursday evenings, I was able to go up to Edmond and help finish making decorations with my brother and his fiance for their wedding on Saturday.  We shared many laughs and I definitely could feel some tears starting as I realized that my brother was about to get married. Friday morning brought the beginnings of one of the greatest weekends.  My brother's fiance, Aly, asked me and the rest...