Commenting Review Week

(Image Information: Meow)

At the beginning of this class, I was wondering what kind of (if any) interaction there would be among students in the class. Of course, I was wondering about a lot of things because this is my first online class I’ve taken at any level of schooling. I really like how the course is laid out, and I like that I get to interact with different people each week, and learn more about them.

While a lot of the comments on storytelling are just interesting to read weekly, it is the project commenting that I feel I gain the most from. I really appreciate getting feedback from people on little things they catch that my untrained eye does not. But also, I appreciate the bigger comments and suggestions about how my storybook looks, if I should find a different image, use a different font, etc. Everything is really helpful and very interactive.

Usually, my comments are things that people are doing well. I like to tell them what stands out he most to me and what I think there best parts are. In addition to these things, I try to throw in little punctuation errors or other small things that I see. It may help that I haven’t read a bad storybook/portfolio yet, so I don’t really feel like I need to make any serious suggestions to anybody.

Writing Review Week

(Image Information: A really cute cat has appeared!)

At the beginning of this class, I was nowhere near the average (borderline crappy) writer that I was in my prime. Being a Biochemistry major, the most writing I do is for lab reports, so I hadn’t done any writing analysis or creative writing for a long time. After about three of four weeks in this class, I evolved from a child who was just learning to write the alphabet to a pretty crappy writer (sort of evolving from a magikarp into another magikarp). Now, I can comfortably say that I am a very middle-of-the-pack, mediocre writer. Maybe by the end of all of this I’ll be a beautiful gyarados… or maybe just a shiny magikarp… or just anything better than a magikarp.

Between the weekly essay, storytelling, and the project, there are plenty of writings to do in this class, so there are plenty of opportunities to improve your trade and try to catch them all (not really a relevant reference, but now I just have pokemon on my mind). It’s also really helpful to get feedback from fellow students and the teacher. Anyways, this class has really been valuable to my return to mediocre writing ability, so I appreciate that. Togepi.

Reading Review Week

(Image Information: A live look-in of me dozing
off to the Brer Rabbit unit)

The reading diaries in this class have been quite useful to me each week when I do my storytelling. Because I worked ahead early in the semester, sometimes I take a longer break than normal between the reading diaries and the storytelling. Since I always summarize the stories that stood out the most to me in my reading diaries, it is easy for me to read over those and then decide which story I want to base my storytelling off of.

As I mentioned above, I mostly do a lot of summarizing on the reading diaries. They wouldn’t be very interesting to anyone else that read them, but they’re very helpful for my work in this class.

My favorite reading so far would probably be between the Tales of Bidpai and Brer Rabbit. I guess I just really like reading about anthropomorphised animals. The Brer Rabbit unit was different because I used the audio recordings and just followed along with them. Which was actually very relaxing; I might’ve fallen asleep a time or two.

Famous Last Words: Week 8

This week I was planning to have a lot more free time than normal because of the injury last weekend to my knee. As it turns out, I spent a lot of this week in and out of several medical facilities. I had a meeting with the orthopedist Wednesday morning, another MRI early on Thursday morning, and I had to go in to talk about the results of the MRI and get bloodwork done before my surgery on Friday. As it turns out, no structural damage to any ligaments (i.e. MCL, ACL, LCL), but I did make the tear in my meniscus bigger. Surgery is on this upcoming Thursday.

Anyways, while I didn’t have as much time as I would’ve liked this week, I did get a good little bit of work done. I wrote the last three stories for my storybook (unofficially), so all I have to do is turn them in, revise them, and I’ll be done with all of that. One more thing I can cross off my checklist.

While I usually welcome the sight of some snow on campus, this week I was not so glad. I am currently unable to drive (my chauffeur takes me from location to location) because of the pain medication I’m on, and of course I can’t walk, so I’ve got a brace on my leg and am using crutches to move around. Just in general, crutching around campus sucks, but when it is snowing, it really sucks. That was probably the worst part of my week.

Also, after my surgery next Thursday, I am scheduled to have a Genetics exam on Friday, and a Physical Chemistry Exam the following Monday. It is going to be a busy few days that I am not looking forward to at all. Well, it has been a long day of doing Physical Chemistry Lab work, and now the couch is calling me, so I’d better go.

(Image Information: A personal photo from January 2015)