Week 8: Famous Last Words

At the halfway point in the semester, it seems appropriate to do one of these posts. :) I'm mostly keeping up in this class, despite having to switch to doing things according to the daily due dates instead of being a week or more ahead. Again, maybe I can use this weekend to forge ahead into Week 9 and buy myself at least a little space? (But who am I kidding; I'm also trying -- and not really succeeding -- to get ahead on research papers right now, too.) I'm getting more selective about the assignments I do; for example, I intentionally skipped the blog comments assignment for this week but made up the points with two tech tip extra credit things.

I'm super excited for the readings in the second half of this course! I've already started in Palace of Illusions, and up after that is Breaking the Bow and then, hopefully, allowing enough time, I'll read The Missing Queen. I love being able to work fun novels into my readings for class! Not to mention, these are all books I'd either run across before and wanted to read, or that were mentioned earlier in this course and sounded intriguing.

The Storytelling and Storybook assignments are hit-or-miss for me. I was surprised by how my first Storybook story turned out. I had expected to put in more detailed information about festival celebrations, but I ended up having a difficult time finding much more than surface descriptions. On the other hand, I felt like Sita's voice really took over as I was writing, which is the first time I had that authorly character-writes-own-story feeling. For the weekly blog assignment, meanwhile, I loved the idea of telling Krishna's story as a revitalization movement, but I felt like the idea fell flat as I tried to actually write a version pulling out those elements. Eh, on to the next week!

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Week 8: Reading Plan

Weeks 9-11: I've been wanting to read Breaking the Bow: Speculative Fiction Inspired by the Ramayana for several years, as I enjoy both sci-fi and retellings (and finding them in combination is unusual but always awesome!). I've been looking forward to reading this since the semester started. :) Because I've typically been doing the extra credit readings as well, my plan is to do Parts A-C during Week 9, D-F for Week 10, and finish on Week 11.

Weeks 12-14: Again, since I like retellings, I want to read the novel Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. I think I've read a book by her before and I enjoyed it, and I'm interested in a retelling of The Mahabharata from Draupadi's point of view. As with Breaking the Bow, I'd likely complete the reading in three weeks, doing the extra credit assignments in addition to the regular ones.

cover of The Missing Queen (GoodReads)

additional: Continuing with the retellings theme, I'd love to get to the mystery novel The Missing Queen by Samhita Arni if I get a chance. Assuming I do all the extra credit reading diary posts, I think I'll be able to get partly through this one as well before the semester ends.

Week 8: Blog Ideas

I'm pretty happy with my introduction from the beginning of this class, and no one's really asked questions in the comments, so I'm letting that be for now. I'm glad people are using the "correct" pronunciation of Appalachian...I wish some of my professors this semester would learn the Southern way, too, so that I'd stop cringing every time they say it in class!

I really like how clean Christina's blog looks. I noticed it earlier in the semester and appreciated the wider space given for text and how clean, neat, and professional her blog template is. I was surprised to realize just now that it's also hosted by Blogger -- I had assumed it was a different host! I should play around with the templates for my own blog, to see which good options I might have missed/been too impatient to find when I first created this.

I also liked how Thomas had his labels as tabs at the top of his blog. I'm surprised at how much easier it is to read and navigate these than when they're in a list on the sidebar, but the separation and larger text really helps to skim and find what I'm looking for.

Finally, I love Nikita's header for her blog. The design is simple enough to not be ostentatious or too much, but it also adds a special spark to the overall look of the blog. As a bookworm, I also appreciate the books on either end of the title, and they seem very appropriate for this class. :)

Week 8: Time Strategies

I started out with good time strategies for this semester -- I got over two weeks ahead in this course because it opened up so early, and I opted to maximize my spare time before the semester started full-force to give myself a lot of room for assignment deadlines in Epics. Overall, I've been doing well managing time when I have it to do homework for both this class and my others, in that I'm generally able to focus and get things done rather than procrastinate or get distracted.

What I haven't done so well is make time in which to do homework. I thought I'd have plenty on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and into the weekends, but my schedule has a way of filling up with school things during the week, and on the weekends I've been off to folk dances and really prioritizing my time with that community over schoolwork. By this point, I've lost the extra weeks I'd bought myself for this class when I worked ahead, and I'm sometimes struggling just to keep up with the daily due dates (including choosing sleep over completing a few assignments during the past two weeks -- I had enough extra credit to pad these out, though).

 Despite being super busy this semester, I feel more energetic than stressed most of the time. I'm currently towards the right side of the yellow part of this meter -- edging towards too much, but still overall enjoying what I'm doing.

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My goal for the second half of this semester, then, is to really, really maximize the time I have over spring break to get ahead again in this class and also to work on research papers that are coming up due in April. If I can get just a week ahead again in Epics, it will make my workload during the weeks easier to manage. I like the schedule I had set for the first part of the semester, doing most of the week's work on the weekends before it's due, but if I can't get ahead again, I'll be stuck doing most assignments the day they're due instead of before. I want to get back to my earlier schedule, and I also would like to finish this course early, as the week before Dead Week is when things get rough for me with research papers and such.