Week 2 Story: Elizabeth and the Scarecrow

Elisabeth was born and raised on a farm in a small town in Oklahoma. She grew up planting crops and helping the family take care of cattle. When Elisabeth wasn't working on the farm she was pursuing her love for art. Elisabeth loved to study sculptures, but her father disapproved. Her father thought it was a waste of her time and she should focus her efforts on the farm and finding a husband to take over the farm in the future.

The only way Elisabeth could express her passion for art without her father getting upset was by making scarecrows. The scarecrows helped protect the family crops and were not seen as a waste of time to her father. Now if only she could find a husband.

Elisabeth prayed and prayed that she would find the right guy. One day as she was building the last scarecrow for the field, she said "I wish you were a real man, sculpted to my perfection." She hugged the scarecrow, set it up on its stand, and went to bed.

The next morning she woke up bright and early and went to the field. Upon reaching the crops she noticed one of the scarecrows was missing. She searched everywhere for it, until finally she ran into a man in the middle of the corn field. The man was holding the scarecrow, which looked to be in two pieces. The man said "I'm really sorry about your scarecrow, I was out watering the crops and accidentally knocked it over. I have been trying to fix it for an hour now."

Elisabeth sat down and showed the man how to make a new scarecrow, inspired by him. The two became very close and later got married. Their crops were guarded by two scarecrows, one that looked like her and one that looked like him.

My story is inspired by the story Metamorphosis: Pygmalion. In the original story Pygmalion, the main character, is a sculpture and wishes to have one of his sculptures come to life. In the original story the sculptor does in fact come to life and fall in love with the main character. In my story I decided to have the same idea but a more realistic love story, where the sculpture brings love, but indirectly.

"Metamorphosis: Pygmalion" by Tony Kline

source: scarecrow couple

Metamorphosi

s: Pygmalion

Reading Notes: Metamorphosis

I chose to read the story Metamorphosis: Pygmalion translated by Tony Kline

While reading the first couple of sentences I started to think the character was kind of odd to be lusting over a sculpture. After getting past the story details, I started to think about the way the story was written instead of what it was written about. The author is very detailed and is able to capture an image in the way the story is written. The story is very short, but is still intriguing. The author talks about the movements and the feeling of the main character toward the statue of the woman. Hopefully I can have the same impact with my future stories.

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Reading Options

The idea of the UnTextbook is great in my opinion. It save us the time and money of buying books and is available to us at almost any point, due to the fact that most of us almost always have some kind of technology with access to the internet within reach. The first section that stood out to me was Jamaican Stories. I don't know why but the title just made it seem like it would be something interesting. Upon clicking on it, I decided that a story I would want to go back to and read would be Shut Up in the Pot. The name of the Jamaican stories were very interesting to me. The second section that stood out was the Adam and Eve section. This stood out to me mostly because it was familiar to me. Upon scrolling through the stories, the story of Hercules and the Distracted Boyfriend seemed entertaining. The meme attached and the description of the story made it seem like it would be a fun read. The third and final section that stood out was Alice and Wonderland. I have always loved Alice and Wonderland and would be very excited to read the A Mad Tea-Party story associated with it.

Source: Distracted Boyfriend

Time Strategies

I think the schedule the was planned for me will work out pretty well. I am a list maker. To manage my time I write down everything I need to do on each day and if I don't complete it on that day I have to organize it into another day in some way. This is why I chose to look at The Psychology of Checklists. Everything on the post seemed to be very beneficial to keeping organized and lines up with my strategy of making lists.

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Technology of Online Classes

I have taken multiple online classes throughout college but this one is a little different to me. Most of the online classes I have taken are strictly off of canvas. I honestly like that this class isn't on canvas because the wiki page has all the links organized into specific days and is super easy to navigate. I am familiar with Weebly, but that is about all when it comes to the list of websites we could possibly be using.

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Assignments

The layout of this class is definitely new for me but from what I can tell I am going to like it. The freedom of the class is very convenient. I am interested to do the extra credit each week and try to get my extra points in for the times I am unable (hopefully never) to complete all the assignments of a certain week. I can tell that the assignments will be time consuming but hopefully I will enjoy the content and won't be worried about time. I'm excited to start brainstorming for the final project and hopefully create some interesting stories!

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Growth Mindset

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I personally have not heard of Carol Dweck before now. From what I learned from the videos, a growth mindset is the belief that one can always improve and learn more, rather than having a set intelligence or a fixed mindset. I definitely agree with the concept of a growth mindset, I am always learning more and being challenge with new concepts in class. Going into some of these classes I am initially worried that the concepts will be too advance for me to grasp and do well, but I later learn that as long as I pay attention and ask questions when I need to, it is definitely possible to do well. Every semester I have the goal to listen in every class and be fully engaged, because I am very easily distracted and my mind starts to wonder. Hopefully learning about the growth mindset and adopting the concept of it will help me to do this and have a successful summer.

Introduction to a tired student

This is my senior year and wow am I tired. I am a Biology Pre-Medicine major in a constant battle of trying to have a social life while also trying to maintain grades, volunteer and boost my resume. This might seem relatable to some, it might seem horrible to others, but either way I'm really just being a cry baby. It's really not that bad....most of the time. No matter what your major is, I'm sure you can all relate to my blog name, collegeutopia. This was my ~clever~ way of saying that online classes are the ideal college class for most busy students.

I haven't had much experience in blogging so try to hang in there while you choke down the words from my future class posts. When I told my roommate I had to finish my blog post before we could go to dinner she replied "YOU have a blog....you're kidding" really reassured me that I'd be good at this thing.

Anyways, one of the things I really love to do is to travel, whether its a short drive to Dallas or long flight out of the country. My favorite places to go always involved the beach, but my most memorable trip was when I traveled to Bolivia for a medical mission trip. Bolivia really stuck with me because I was able to interact with so many different people and learn about a new culture. One of my favorite parts about traveling is capturing the experience in photographs. Below are some of my favorite photos taken while I was in Bolivia. While I like capturing photos of nature, my favorite is photos of people. Looking at photos of nature and places never fully reminds me of the experience quite like seeing the emotions of the people. I love the photo of the three girls on the bottom because it reminds me off all the teenagers coming to the clinic, trying to talk to me through google translate and making fun of my poorly spoken Spanish.

A photo I took of the streets outside of our hotel in Vallegrande, Bolivia 

A photo of a mural at the hospital. 

A girl and her love for stickers.

A grumpy little girl waiting for her turn with the physicians.

A young boy running around the hospital.

Three girls just happy to be out of class for the day.

Storybook Favorites

There were surprisingly quite a few stories that I did not recognize form the list of storybooks. So I decided to check out two that I was aware of and one that was unfamiliar.

Due to my childhood love for Aladdin, the first storybook that stood out to me was A Whole New World. The storybook was very organized, with multiple navigation options. I thought it was interesting that the main characters roles from the original story were essentially switched. A fun twist was the fact that both Aladdin and Zakiya were given genies. I liked how each story was based off of the emotional state of a different character, helping to connect with the storyline.

Source: A genie lamp as commonly showed and described in Aladdin.

The next story that caught my attention was Back to the Inferno. My initial thought was that this story was going to be based on the movie "Back to the Future," due to the title, but after reading the intro I started to realize it was sounding offaly close to "A Christmas Carol," an all time classic. This story was very fun to read, the plot changed was creative and even witty with the use of characters like Bill Cosby and Quagmire.

source: Death as told in the story.

The third and final storybook I chose to write about was based on a story I was unfamiliar with. This was My Brothers Grimm: A Diary of the Only Grimm Sister.  I feel out of the loop not knowing this story and I know it's something that I heard as a child but just did not retain and keep to memory, considering I know of Hansel and Grethel. My main reason for picking this story was due to the layout of the post. I thoroughly enjoyed the design, with the dark background and the bright titles.

source: The Brothers Grimm

St. Thomas aka My Favorite Place

St. Thomas is located in the U.S. Virgin Islands. I have gotten to visit 3 times and hope I'll get to go many more times. When I have gone I have stayed in Magen's Bay. The house we rent is located on the side of the mountain and had the best view, pictured below.

St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Island. Pictured by myself.

Magen's Beach is located on the end of the cove and is one of the top 10 beaches in the world. If you have the opportunity to visit, you definitely should! 

Magen's Bay, St. Thomas. Pictured by myself.

Testin it out

Just making sure I followed the instructions 🙌