Week 2 Story: Reaping Feared Demons

Note: The Updated version of this story is on my Portfolio blog @ Heroes Rise and Heroes Fall
In a dimension unlike our own, there was once a traveler. Scars and tattoos covered his body and reflected that he had been through hell. Every scar and tattoo represented the battles he had been through. Alex the Reaper was seen as a killer in some eyes but a hero in others. The pain of his soul could be seen in his stone-grey eyes. Though much pain followed, he had one last mission to finish out before he would be free of this pain. His mission: assassinate the one hundred soldiers of terror. These soldiers of terror were highly trained and skilled individuals. Knowing this still did not bring fear to his heart.

Alex was traveling through the howling meadows, known to be the deadliest of forests, but the only way to gain the surprise factor on his enemy. 

Nightfall soon was upon the Reaper so stopping to rest was his only option for he had a weeks travel through the forest. He kindled a small fire from a cloth ripped from his shirt to keep him warm through the night.

A loud bang had awoken him from his slumber near the third hour of the early morning. Aware of his surroundings he had slowed his breathing and was motionless.

"Mmm a tasty meal laid out for me" said a deep voice.

Before Alex knew it a hand with ragged bones grabbed him by his throat. Immediately Alex slashed this figure with his iron broadsword. The figure disappeared before his eyes. 

Five nights later on his last night before the attack of the army, he was awoken again. 

"Keep your distance for I am armed" exclaimed Alex.

"Hehe if you slay me in a battle I shall give you the strength of one hundred soldiers and you will successfully defeat your opponent at daybreak" said the silhouette from the woods.

"I accept your challenge" said Alex.

The figure appeared and was a skeleton with five arms and an face not from this world. "Demon" Alex whispered under his breath.

The Reaper gripped his sword tight and waited, the skeleton figure dashed but was not ready for the blade which had become red hot in Alex's hands. One slash through the beast and he defeated him, the demon burned up and was never seen again.

A daybreak the army was slain and with the hundred soldier strength as promised. The Reaper was free from his pain and started a new life away from civilization. Finally, at peace. 

  Alex the Reaper 

Photo provided by Pexels

Authors Note: This story was created after reading The Indian Who Wrestled with a Ghost. The original story was of a many on a quest of war, confronted by a ghost multiple nights in a row he wrestled the ghost and won in order to defeat his enemy. I changed the story into my own version and changed quite a bit of detail because I felt the darker it was, the more interesting it was going to be. and It was a demon instead of a ghost.

Bibliography: "The Indian Who Wrestled with a Ghost" from Myths and Legends of the Great Plains by Katharine Berry Judson Web Source

Reading Notes: Understanding Stories

Overall the stories in Reading B were interesting and diverse. I noticed a pattern with the way stories were told. While the story telling changed in aspects of the type of language style or the demeanor, the stories used dialogue to add more depth to the stories. There were always characters that were not honest or straight-forward with their actions but there was a good character that always brought light to the message of the story. Two of the stories that I enjoyed most were Man in the Moon, and The Tiger, The Brahman, and the Jackal. With the Man in the Moon story having a Blacksmith as a character, a hard job that many would turn away from,  and him just complaining about everything. The Wise man, who I assumed was a God of some sort, granted the mans wishes to change lifestyles until it got so old that he said no more. It reminded me of  The Boy Who Cried Wolf because it only works so many times before people get sick of the same old song. The dialogue in this story was great because it brought some emotion into the story.
The Tiger story also stood out because it had an aspect of two deceitful characters with a fool being played by both of them just in different ways. There was a lot of dialogue in this story which showed that the characters made the story, and rather than explaining the details they just fell into place. Another thing that I thought was effective was the way the story jumped from one place to another which I took as a frantic rush from the Brahman to save his own life.
Things to take away from this reading would be to pay attention to detail as well as add dialogue to my stories. Both are effective in showing images rather than just telling a story.

This photo shows that characters are given identities by detail 

Provided by Pixabay 

Reading Options

The options for reading are quite abundant. One thing about this class that I am coming to enjoy are all the options that we are allowed to choose from. Needless to say, I am excited to be able to read some of these stories. The one thing I would like to do is keep my options open. Units that caught my attention most were the different cultural readings. I have always enjoyed reading stories from different parts of the world and different cultures. The stories told in different cultures are interesting because it shows a little bit of insight on beliefs and norms of the world. Understanding different aspects of the world helps me connect with others easily because we have more to talk about if i know a little about where they came from. 

A world map with different colors to show diversity.

Photo Provided by Wikimedia Commons

Some of the units that caught my eye were: Grimm (LibriVox) and the story The Twelve Huntsmen, the Native American unit with the stories of Creation of Man, and The Creation of Man-kind and the Flood. The Grimm unit was an eye catcher because of the fact that I really like reading those stories, and the Native American stories were chosen because I have read many different versions of creation stories told by different Native American Tribes. I look forward to the units and learning more about the different styles of storytelling in cultures.

Time Strategies: What to do and What Not to do

I feel like the schedule that was sent to me was a little out of what I wanted, so I tweaked it a bit to fit my scheduled needs. I made it so I'm doing the readings on Monday, then on Tuesday storytelling and blog comments, Wednesday is for time on my project, and Thursday is for my project comments. This will leave me with more time on Friday to review some comments and work on my project a little more. Other than that I feel like I am fairly good at scheduling and keeping to that schedule. Though reading those articles has made me realize some things to work on. The How to Beat Procrastination article by Caroline Webb gave me some insight on how to beat procrastination, and I will be using some of those skills such as visualizing how to get things done and to hold myself accountable by writing in rewards for myself. The other article The Myth of "Too Busy" by Tim Grahl will tie into helping with my procrastination as well by prioritizing my schedule. Writing everything in my planner, even small tasks, will help me to be less "busy". I would also like to start using Grahl's motto of telling myself the truth in order to hold myself accountable.

Calendar to represent scheduling

Photo provided by Pixabay

Technology in Class

There are only a few new things on the technology list that I have not used before. A blog being one of those new pieces of technology, so yay for a new blog! But most of it I have used, like the picture editing tools, Soundcloud for voice recordings, bookmarking (although I have never been big on using bookmarking), Google Docs, (etc.). Some skills I would like to improve upon in this class this semester would be obviously to increase my knowledge and skills in blogging and hopefully make an interesting blog. Another skill I will work on too is bookmarking. I think in general I would like all my technological skills to improve but those are the two I want to focus on for now.

Space representing all the possibilities to learn new things

Photo provided by Wikimedia

Assignments Overview

After looking over the assignments, I think that all of them seem reasonable and will be interesting. Not only interesting to complete but to look at others blog posts and see what they think. I feel like this is kind of like my past english classes in a way, just the fact that there are readings and we have to write about them once we finish. Other than that the class seems to be different than any other class that I have taken so far. I am excited to learn about some of the mythology and folklore as well as see how my writing skills improve through the stories I will be writing. The extra credit assignments all sound intriguing as well and it will be interesting to see how my views will transpire in my work with them.

A kid that is excited to learn (A.K.A. me)

Photo provided by Flickr

Growth Mindset: A Multiple Perspective Topic

For the Growth Mindset videos I have a few different opinions about the idea itself. I have not heard of the Mindset before the videos, but I have (in a different way) lived a mindset similar to this one. I believe in growing as a person and I believe everyone should decide to grow as individuals as well. I agree with professor Dweck on the fact that the educational system is failing the youth of today. When I started going to school I was five years old, and I remember the teachers always enjoying teaching and pushing the students in a way to grow. As I got older though, I began to notice a lack of effort from the teachers and wanted to know why that was. I remember always looking at the new curriculum every year and looked at what it was doing. The system was trying to cater to the students rather than the students cater to the education. This caused a sense of entitlement, a lack of effort, and an attitude towards the teachers. The teachers were being told how to teach rather than having their own curriculum, and in turn the test scores were supposed to go up, well they did not and in fact there was a downward slope of the learning curve.

Dweck is right in the sense that the education is failing the kids, but I don't believe the words chosen to motivate kids is right. There shouldn't be a "yet" but instead a goal. Goal is a more powerful word to drive kids. I myself have always set goals to motivate myself and I always have a lot of goals. In track I set goals for the week, the semester, and the year. Striving towards those goals keep me focused and moving forward. This translates to my schooling as well, I set goals all of the time to keep me in the right direction and challenge myself to put in the work to better myself. The system fails us all so we have to create our own to grow. Growing is such a big part of being a human being, and in the past years growth has slowed. I do believe we need something to move the youth forward and continue to grow.

Growing shows more color and production

Photo provided by Flickr

I am excited to learn more about this idea of Mindset Growth throughout the semester and I look forward to hearing everyone else's thoughts on it.

Introduction to a Student-Athlete

My name is Justin, I am a Communication major here at the University of Oklahoma. Some important things to know about me would be that I am a very outgoing person, I enjoy meeting new people and learning new things. If theres anything that you would like to ask, don't be afraid to ask because I am very open about who I am. If you have an opinion about my posts that conflicts mine please share because I would love to have a conversation about why you view a topic differently than me. Learning involves communicating with others and if you never ask we'll never learn!

I am a student first and an athlete second, I am here to get my degree and have been privileged enough to gain an opportunity to pole vault for the University. There are only two home meets total here in Norman, so if anyone would like to come and support the Track & Field team I will gladly tell you when those meets are.

Track lanes with blocks set up

Provided by Flickr

This year is my Junior year and I have really enjoyed my time here in Oklahoma. Originally I am from Colorado. I am pretty far from where I grew up and don't really get much time with my family due to shorter breaks. Most of the time I spend is on my studies or at the track training, but I do occasionally have free time and in that time I like to hang out with my friends, go fishing, hunting, or just relax and watch some Netflix. If you have read my week one posts you will have realized by now that I am a Supernatural fan and have watched every episode at least five times. I do enjoy other shows as well, but they have to be interesting enough to make me engage my mind and think about the storylines.

Theres so much more I could put into this introduction post but I think if I said it all here that there wouldn't be any future conversations to have with my classmates! I look forward to reading and talking with y'all about our blog posts this year!

Storybook Favorites: Three Enjoyable Stories with a Message

This was a difficult task to choose three stories, and while I thought that one entire post was the story, I still managed to narrow it down to three stories.

The first caught my eye because in the title An Unexpected Visitor: The Brothers Grimm there was The Brothers Grimm, and how could I ignore that? I have always enjoyed the stories from that book. So with the title I already assumed that I would be interested, and I was not wrong. The introduction gave a great background story while also engaging my mind into the story about to be told. The rhetorical questions made me want to find out what was next. The story itself mixed the fairytale of Little Red Riding hood and the story from the Brothers, The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids. The twist of the end was intriguing and painted a clear picture in my head.

The photo did not really illustrate what I wanted to portray in this post but here is the link if you would like to read more An Unexpected Visitor Translated by Dan Ashliman

The second story was by far my favorite. I am kind of a big Supernatural fan so when I saw that aspect I had to read. I apologize for having two stories with Grimm stories but I also enjoy those stories. The story introduction of When Brothers Cross Paths was great at catching my attention and making me want to read more. Though the details were great in the beginning I was a little disappointed by the lack of detail towards the end of the intro, it just seemed to stop too abrupt. I read all 4 stories in there because they were so interesting and detailed, the narrative of Sam and Dean was read in their voices in my head. The picture of all the hunting places were seen like I was watching it on a screen. They were really good, and my favorite one was Fight the Good Fight. This told a point of view where Azezel, the yellow-eyed demon, was killed by the brothers of Grimm. I would recommend checking this one out.

Blood Moon 

Image provided by flickr.com

Bibliography: Brothers Cross Paths by Tracy Ferguson

Lastly a story that most can relate to which involves Gaia, a conscious of Earth, and mixes the story of Raksha finding Mowgli. The intro to Children of the Wild was very informational on what the story was going to be like. I found that it would be told from the narratives of the animals and their thoughts on what would be on saving the human race rather than letting them die. From the title I was not able to infer what would happen so the intro was important. The story itself was about how the child grew up to be and in Mowglis case, he grew up to a graceful nature inside the animal kingdom as well as outside it in the world of the humans. Gaia in the end decided that it was best not to let the humans die because while some grew up to be terrible others grew up to influence the world in greater ways. 

The Children of the Wild can be found by clicking on the title. 

While there are many more stories that interested me I think these are the best ones to recommend and to share.

-Justin

Favorite Place (The Mountains)

Being new to this whole blog thing, I am not really sure how to start this blog off. That being said, I would like to share with you my favorite place to go at any given time. Here is a picture of the place that I enjoy most:

Photo taken by Pixabay

Photographer unknown by Pixabay 

This is the Rocky Mountains. I am from Colorado, and the mountains are always a quiet and peaceful place to get your mind off stressful things or to think about anything. It is always nice to go on a hike and just find a spot to sit and think while looking at an amazing view!

this is just a test to make sure my blog is working.