Tech Tip: Canvas

As I have mentioned in a previous post, I am not a "techy" person. So as you can imagine, I am not one to have opinions on a website's performance, or complain about style, interface etc. However, last semester, was the big push for courses to be on Canvas instead of D2L. All of my courses were on Canvas except for one. And it just so happened the one course that was on D2L was in fact an online course. I didn't think much of it, but soon learned how amazing Canvas is in comparison to D2L!
I downloaded the app, and I am trying to find ways to improve my experience with Canvas since it seems the majority of work I do for college is in fact done on the site. I have found the app extremely enjoyable. It is easy and fast!
The best part of Canvas is that you can change the name of a course and give it a nickname! This seems silly (I did name my online Geography of Wine course Heck yeah wine), but it is actually very helpful. For example, I have three French courses this year. So they have the same course abbreviation, and similar numbers. With nicknames, I don't have to click on one course, only to realize it's my literature course instead of my culture course. I wold recommend this feature to any upperclass student who is taking similar courses with similar codes!

Feedback Thoughts:Perfectionism

Photo from BK's photostream on Flickr

When glancing over the titles for the possible article readings, the word "perfectionism" immediately caught my eye. I've been a self-proclaimed perfectionist since high school, so thought they would be interesting reads. However I wondered what they would have to do with feedback. If I am a perfectionist, I don't have to worry as much about feedback, right? It seem logical that I would be more open to feedback and want to make whatever I am doing as perfect as possible. However, I decided to read the articles anyway.

The first article I read, 14 Signs Your Perfectionism Has Gotten Out of Control, was difficult to read. So many experiences and realizations suddenly flooded my mind. So many fears and insecurities that I had been hiding away forced themselves into the front of my mind. The first point they make is "You've always been eager to please", which I have known for a long time to be true. In this point, they used a play on the cogito ergo sum by Descartes and said "I achieve, therefore I am". I couldn't help but feel so understood. When I achieve, I usually do not feel happy. I often feel relieved, or indifferent. When I receive feedback which in anyway strongly criticizes (or not so strongly for that matter) part of my work, it often seems to be attacking the very nature of my being. If I did not excel in this, who am I? Even worse is when I do accomplish something and feel very proud or happy, and it is criticized. That cuts even more deep. I don't really know how to go about fixing this, but a good place to start would be actively reminding myself that I am not the sum of my achievements or my lack of failures.

After reading the first article, I was looking for a bit of guidance on how to move forward. I was hopeful Recalibrating the Perfectionist Mind would be a great place to start. However, I was disappointed, and found almost no help. So I skimmed over several of the other articles and found them equally unhelpful. The only other article I read closely was 5 Tips for Taking Feedback like a Champ. The problem I have with so many of these articles is that their advice is "REMEMBER! Other people make mistakes." "REMEMBER! Mistakes are normal. Feedback is how we grow. blah blah blah." It's even more condescending when they tell me this like it's news. Of course I know mistakes are normal and I often remind myself that other people are making mistakes. However, reminding myself and repeating positive affirmations has never, and probably will never, help me. Much of these suggestions they offer I already know and have been trying to do since I was a kid.

I suppose my best bet is to separate myself from my work. To say, this work is not me. My achievements are not me. I know that the feedback I receive is meant to help and be constructive.

Final Project Topic Brainstorm

Possible Topics:

• Journeying through stories with a master: I have always loved stories, but often the writers are just as fascinating as the stories they tell. I think it would be fun to pick a storyteller and be able to consult them on their thoughts of a story, almost time traveler style. I could pick an ancient/older storyteller like Homer, Aesop, or Virgil, or a more modern storyteller like Madame D'Aulnoy, Victor Hugo, or Rick Riordan. I could explore cultures' stories that are different than the storyteller, and the storyteller could then compare it to his/her own stories and culture. So perhaps Virgil explores the epics of other cultures and makes connections with his Aeneid. Source: The Aeneid by Virgil 
• Collection of stories told in modern America: One of my favorite book series is the Percy Jackson series. Percy Jackson is a demigod who lives in the modern U.S. Through his eyes we are introduced to the mythical gods, monsters, and heroes of ancient Greece who have been living in which is center of Western Civilization. I could come up with a character who introduces us to the modern fairy tale/folklore world. Perhaps Cinderella's daughter has to do a report on her mother's friends. Source: Cinderella Stories 
• Magical items: Someone is exploring an old house that has lots of different antiques. Turns out that many of these items belonged to legendary characters. When the narrator touches an item, they are able to see what happened with the person was holding that item. It would probably be easier to do with a connected story. For instance, if I chose Robin Hood, I could take a few objects that many different characters touched. So the narrator would see the different perspectives of one story. Or, it could be from different stories, but a few items were somehow shared between them. For example, a fan that was bought and sold between different legendary heroines from different times and places. Source: Robin Hood Stories
• Eleanor of Aquitaine: In my French literature pre-revolution course we discussed how Eleanor of Aquitaine was a huge influence on French language, literature, and storytelling. She was always protecting troubadours and supporting their art. So perhaps a storybook could be a new  troubadour who arrives at Eleanor's castle. They have a reason not to trust him, and so he must impress her to gain refuge. He has been all over the world and tells of the most legendary characters he has met. Source: Arabian Nights

The effigy of Eleanor of Aquitaine.
Photo taken by Adam Bishop. Source: Wikimedia

Week 2 Story: Beauty Fights back

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful girl named Mary. Her family had fallen upon difficult times, and her parents were hardly able to feed the other five children. Mary felt that something must be done. She scoured the town for a job. She searched for a kind soul who would pity her. Perhaps someone would allow her to be a governess, or a maid! But everywhere she turned, the door was shut in her face.

Hopeless, Mary’s search took her into the woods. She didn’t know what she could possibly find, but she pressed on nonetheless. She soon came upon a garden. It looked as if it had been recently tended to, though nothing was nearby. In the center of the garden where someone might expect a tree or a statue, there was a large patch of red roses. Mary hadn’t seen something so beautiful in so long that she fell to her knees and began weeping. 

Source: pxhere

“If I took one home, maybe the world would seem a bit brighter.” She grasped the largest rose, and felt a pain come into her ring finger. A drop of blood fell from her finger onto the ground. Mary hardly thought anything of it, and began to walk away.

She did not get far before she heard something rumbling behind her. She turned. Right at the spot where her blood had touched the ground, the earth was shaking, turning to liquid, burning a fiery red. Suddenly, a basilisk shot out from the earth, and straight into to the sky. Before it could land right in front of her, she turned around to avoid being left dead on the spot by its lethal eyes.

“You are so beautiful,” the basilisk whispered. “What is your name?”

Mary wondered if basilisks could tell if someone was lying. “Sarah.”

“What a lovely name,” he said. “I haven’t seen nor spoken to anyone in so long. Especially not one so pretty. Sarah, what are you doing out here in the woods alone?”

“I was searching for a way to help my family. We are left in poverty, and my brothers and sisters are dying of starvation.”

“You are so kind, Sarah. So loving. I know a way you can help your family.”

“How?”

“The rose you hold in your hand. Take it back to your family. It will turn to pure gold, but only once you come back here, and enter the garden.”

“Once I come back here, will I ever be able to leave?” Mary asked, her knees shaking.

“You will be my wife, and I cannot risk you leaving me. If you ever try to leave me, I would have to kill you. I would rather you be dead than living without me.”

Mary turned, but still averted her eyes. “How can I be with a husband I cannot even look at? How can I be with someone if his fangs could cut my throat? I will return and be your wife, but only if I can truly be with you.”

“Oh yes, please! tell me what I must do!”

“Remove your fangs and eyes. That way we can truly be together. But make sure you do it before I come back. That way, I can see my betrothed as soon as I enter the garden.”

The basilisk promised to do this, and Mary started her long journey back. She decided she could not tell her family, for she couldn’t risk the possibility that they would want to come with her, or would not allow her to go. This was her fight. If anything went wrong, she didn’t want her family to suffer. She left the rose on the family’s hearth, and left to go back to the garden.

She entered the garden to find the basilisk curled around a rock. He appeared to be shaking with pain.

“My love," she called out cautiously. "Have you done what I asked?”

“Oh yes, I have! Now we can be together.” He slowly began to rise. Before he could rise to his full height, and before she had to look at the empty pockets where his eyes used to sit, she pulled out the kitchen knife hidden in her skirts and stabbed him where she believed his heart to be. He cried out in agony, but didn’t appear to be losing his grip on life. She began to stab frantically, all over his scaly body. He lay on the ground, barely exhaling a shaky breath.

“Why?” he whispered.

“You may claim to love me, but I love my freedom much more.” She walked away from the cursed garden to celebrate with her family, never to return to the site of her murder.

Author's Note: This story is based off of two different stories (which I don't know if that is allowed/encouraged, but oh well). I combined The Lion in Love and the basilisk version retelling of Beauty and the Beast. In The Lion in Love, parents tell a lion he can marry their daughter if he removes his claws and teeth. So when they say no to him, he can't hurt them. In the Beauty and the Beast story, a parent takes rose from a beast (in this case, a basilisk). For stealing, the daughter must go live with a beast. I combined the two stories, but also empowered the daughter character. In this version, she is not at the mercy of her parents' decisions, the beast's orders, or anyone else. She is an active heroine, and saves herself. 

Bibliography: Story source: These fables all come from The Fables of Aesop by Joseph Jacobs (1894). Story source: The Key of Gold by Josef Baudis (1922).

Reading Notes: Lions Beauties and Basilisks

Photo by Sasukekun22 Source: Wikimedia

The two stories I was drawn to was the retelling of Beauty and the Beast and the stories of the lions. I liked the morals of the different lion stories, but found the last one in which the lion wants to marry particularly interesting. As for the Beauty and the Beast story, that is my favorite fairy tale. However, I found this version devoid of many of the elements that make the story special. Particularly love and kindness. Here are my notes:

The Lion in Love

• Why didn't the parents want to give their daughter to the lion? Considering this is a fable, I'm barring the normal reasons one wouldn't want their daughter to marry a lion. 
• How did the daughter feel about all this?
• Once he was declawed and detoothed (that's a word now) was he not harmless?
• The parents seem particularly terrible, laughing at the lion. 
• It seems that if the lion were open-minded enough to fall in love and ask permission, he must have been fairly kind before he was "tamed".

Beauty and the Basilisk

• Mary doesn't seem phased by being sent to live with a basilisk. I would be terrified.
• At the end of the story, the characters "had" to do everything. He had to marry her, and she had to marry him. Everyone had to show up and be merry. 
• There is no reason for the mother to send her daughter him. He doesn't know where she lives and only threatens to kill the mother. The mother didn't seem willing to save her daughter. If anything, the gender reversal (father to mother) weakens the story. Perhaps the story made sense when the father was the family's caretaker and the family would have starved without them. However, in this version, women obviously have the opportunity to work and be the sole family provider. Therefore, without the mother, the daughters could have worked to support themselves. I think the mother would have died before allow her daughter to be taken by a basilisk and possibly killed. 
• There seems to be a lack of any affection between Mary and the basilisk. So rather than the story being "she loved him despite his appearance/rough first impression", it's that the basilisk tricked her into turning her human. 

Exploring Reading Options

When first beginning this assignment, I made the decision not to do readings on topics I'm terribly familiar with. I could learn more about Greek/Roman mythology and European fairy tales everyday and be happy forever, but I know so much about it already. So I'm forcing myself out of my comfort zone to learn more about different mythology and folklore.

So I think that I want to do a mix between mythology I know absolutely nothing about (African/Asian units) and those I know a little about, but want to know more (British/Middle Eastern folklore). The two units that seemed the most interesting was the Congolese unit, Beowulf, Chinese Fairy Tales, and Turkish Fairy Tales. It reminds me of how I used to watch these VHS tapes as a kid where Pat Morita compare similar fairy tales around the world. Perhaps my final project can be something along those lines. By expanding the scope of my mythology/folklore stories, I can more easily compare and contrast stories. Maybe compare the portrayal of women?

One thing I feel unclear on is how the units are divided. There are the A and B readings, and within the A and B readings there are numbered stories. We read every story within the A and B readings, correct?

Me in front of the Parthenon, a temple dedicated to Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom.
I hope that Athena will grant me wisdom in my quest to find the best reading units.
Taken by Caroline Shepard, May 2016.

Seneca's Time Management

For this assignment, I started by reading Four Questions to Help You Overcome Procrastination. It was a short read and I thought it would be useful for the future. The first question seemed particularly helpful for me: What one thing can I do to get started? I am a list person, so whenever it is time to tackle a large project, I get easily overwhelmed. I try to parse it out and tackle smaller things, but it is always daunting. I think this question would help me with the hardest part of just beginning.

However, anything I learned from the first article was grossly overshadowed by the questions I was left pondering after reading Why time management is ruining our lives. I think I will have to go back and reread this article several times to fully appreciate all  the points the author makes and the questions it poses to the reader. A few quotes particularly got to me:

"Given that the average lifespan consists of only about 4,000 weeks, a certain amount of anxiety about using them well is presumably inevitable: we’ve been granted the mental capacities to make infinitely ambitious plans, yet almost no time at all to put them into practice."

"Plenty of unpleasant chores are essential to survival. But others are not – we have just been conditioned to assume that they are. It isn’t compulsory to earn more money, achieve more goals, realise our potential on every dimension, or fit more in. In a quiet moment in Seattle, Robert Levine, a social psychologist from California, quoted the environmentalist Edward Abbey: “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”"

"This space that has been granted to us rushes by so speedily, and so swiftly that all save a very few find life at an end just when they are getting ready to live." -Seneca

"The Persistence of Memory" 20th century painting by Salvador Dali
Posted by Via Tsuji Source: flickr

Being raised in the United States, I was taught good people are efficient and have marvelous work-ethics. Yet I would read Roman and Greek philosophers who stressed "seize the day" and to not continue living in the cave watching shadows dance. I wanted to speak French whose people are notorious for their short work weeks, long vacations, and lack of efficiency. I have often feared growing up and entering a job in which I live for the weekend and dread every hour of work. 

I entered this assignment hoping for some tips on how to manage my time and have come out of it wondering why my time needs to be managed. I have goals I want to accomplish in life, but can't forget to live life between the accomplishments. 

As I said, I will definitely have to reread that article and do further research on this topic because for the moment, I feel a bit lost. I thought I knew what I believed in regards to goals, time, and life. I knew I had more to learn, but for now I feel the foundations of my beliefs shaken. However, until I figure how to live my life, how to tackle the fear of death, and why time needs to be managed, I do plan on doing my assignments this semester. Maybe I will have to stick to more articles like the first one to do so. 

Technology is "not" evil

I have very little skills when it comes to technology. I often think I am lucky to be born into my generation because I have the basic computer skills we were forced to learn growing up. But I haven't really edited pictures since my friends tried to teach me back in the MySpace days. I thought I was on the ball because I had made a blog before, but I have never made a website. I have used a weebly before, but didn't realize weeblys were a way of making a free site. I am excited about perhaps making my own site, though I am nervous about editing graphics. I am also happy to see the suggestion for a bookmarking tool. I always find myself bookmarking so many websites, only to lose them in my crazy collections of bookmarks. 

Jillian dealing with technology.
Created by Meme TN Source: flickr

This is very different from my other classes. As a humanities student, most of my teachers are not comfortable with technology. We usually only deal with Canvas/D2L. I had one class Freshman year that insisted we tweet about our readings and respond to other classmates' tweets. However, this system objectively was a failure, and no one in the class really learned from the experience, or enjoyed it. I have much higher hopes for this class, especially since it is a tried and true practice. 

Class Assignments Feedback

I have taken one other online class at OU (Roman Civilization with Dr. Chambers), and the syllabus for this class reminds me a lot of that one. Each assignments was mandatory, but the assignments themselves offered flexibility on what we focused on and what we studied. I was skeptical at first, but ended up learning a lot!

Picture provided by congerdesign
Source: pixnio

I am excited about the set up for this class. Right now it is a little overwhelming looking at all the options and trying to decide what I want the rest of my semester to look like for this class. However, many of these assignments look interesting and I think I will learn a lot. I am particularly excited about the "Extra Reading". Sometimes it is hard to justify setting aside for pleasure reading when there is so much to be doing for classes. With this option, I feel like I can read what I want to while also getting class points for it! I also want to learn more about H.E.A.R.T. I think that we can always take more time for personal exploration and growth, which is my understanding of what that assignment would be.

I do not particularly enjoy giving feedback to other students which is where I struggled with my last online class. While I will definitely give feedback many weeks, it is nice to know that it is mandatory every week.

Growth Mindset

When I was 16 years old, I was hired to be a dance teacher. I had no formal training for teaching, I was just a good dancer who had volunteered as an assistant to teachers every year since I was 10. After 6 years of teaching dance, much of my knowledge has been trial and error. I taught ages 2-18. I noticed that around the age of 8, kids stopped trying their best for fun, and suddenly became frustrated as soon as they didn't do something perfectly. I didn't know how to motivate them to keep trying or help them understand that you'll never do something right the first time. Sometimes you do a step wrong 100 times until you realize how to do it right. 

Source: The World Bank Blog

When I was briefly in the College of Education, I took Educational Psychology. In the course, we watched the same Ted Talk video of Carol Dweck explaining Growth Mindset. It helped me understand not only my own learning process, but how to help other children. Whereas I grew up driven and optimistic, other children are not so secure in themselves and break down when not praised. I realized that I had to praise students not only when they improved, but when they failed. My new phrase I adopted was "If you didn't fall in dance class today, then I didn't push you hard enough." 

I think that in my life outside of school, I have developed a Growth Mindset. I enjoy putting myself in new, awkward social situations. Not because I'm an eccentric extrovert or a sadist, but because I know when I push myself, I learn more. I do things for fun that are outside my comfort zone and teach myself new things while enjoying the process. However, I have yet to apply this mindset to my academic life. I was taught growing up that B's are unacceptable for me. I agonize over every academic failure. I want to succeed because I learned to crave validation from my teachers and peers. When something feels too difficult, I want to shut down. If my peers find something easy that I struggle with, I feel inept. I don't know how to overcome these fears and anxieties, but I try by focusing on how I am learning and improving. 

This semester, I want to focus on bringing this growth mindset into my language classes, particularly my French literature class. As I get into more difficult literature with French, I can feel myself getting behind with vocabulary and I struggle to understand more abstract writing. When I don't know what something means or struggle to follow, I will remind myself that if it were easy, I'd be wasting my time and money in college. I am in that class because it is pushing me to become a better reader.

I wrote an Introduction

Hello everyone! My name is Jillian Buxton and I am a senior majoring in Letters and French with a minor in Latin. When I first arrived at OU, I was a history major. My goal in life was to become a historian so that I could host my own documentary on the History Channel like Lucy Worsley. However, I changed to Letters because I wanted to take more classes that would involve literature, and I didn't want my four years of high school Latin to go to waste.

Me living my best life. Did I ever tell you I love Belle??
Photo Credit: Rachel McCourt

I have changed majors, life goals, and favorite snapchat filter many times over the past three years, as I'm sure many of you have. However, my interests have remained fairly constant. My whole life, I have loved everything old. I can't tell you why I am this way, or even begin to list all the books, movies, and people who influenced this passion. When I was a kid, I wanted to live through the French Revolution. As a teenager, I moped for weeks thinking about how I would never see the Roman Forum as it was in its prime with sparkling, new, white buildings. I have also always loved mythology. I think that can easily be attributed to the Disney film, Hercules (while not "accurate", it's definitely entertaining). I took Latin in high school for two reasons: 1) I heard that every Friday we learned about a different Greek or Roman myth. 2) The Latin teacher seemed nice and fun whereas the French teacher terrified me. 

Because my interests that don't lend themselves well to making money (or many living friends), I don't have many concrete plans for my future. I hope to be accepted into the Teaching Assistant Program in France which would allow me to live in France the year after I graduate. I want to pursue a graduate degree at some point in my life, but I don't know in what, where, or how to pay for it. There's definitely a part of me that still wants to host History Channel documentaries. However, this dream may be unrealistic considering I don't have a fancy schmancy British accent. For a while, I was in the college of education and had signed a contract saying that I would teach in Oklahoma for four years after graduation. This taught me that I am apparently terrified of commitment and that having my life mapped out for me without an out gives me crazy anxiety. So I dropped out of that deal faster than I can come up with a folksy saying. It's nice to have a plan, but I would rather see where life takes me. There's just so many things to do in life and so little time! So I don't know what my future holds, but that is the way I like it. 

I will now conclude with a few of my favorite things:

Photo taken by me
of my beautiful Welsh Terrier.

• Music: Passenger, Bastille, Abba
• Movies: Barefoot in the Park, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Singing in the Rain, Austenland
• Books: Les Miserables, Percy Jackson Series, The Scarlet Pimpernel
• TV Shows: Community, The Office, 30 Rock, Law and Order: SVU
• Actors/Actresses/Celebrities: Debbie Reynolds, Louis Jourdan, Hilary Duff
• Food: Bread (Could actually live by that alone) 
• Animal: Panda
• Clothing: Vintage floral full length kaftan (found in the back of my grandma's closet. Finders Keepers)
• Dog: Eleanor Roosevelt Buxton 

Storybook Favorites

The Lady of Shalott by Howard Pyle (1853-1911).  Source. The Camelot Project

 Arthurian Women

This first storybook I chose because I've always found King Arthur stories interesting, but I do not know as much as I would like to about them. Also, because I think that women are often passive characters in western myth and folklore and I like when they are highlighted and given a chance to be true heroines. This title was excellent because not only was it short, but I knew exactly what it would be about and accurately introduced the reader to the topic of the storybook. I thought it was clever to use a background female character as the narrator rather than changing the narrator with every story. I love how the introduction cleverly uses the narrator to highlight that these women are often ignored and seen as less important than the male characters. The layout of the book itself is simple and easy to use. I will most likely use a similar template. 

Sea Monsters

When I clicked on the link to this storybook, I had no idea of what to expect. At first I thought it might say Sea of Monsters, referring to Greek mythology and the Percy Jackson series. When I realized that it was not specific to a particular culture or mythology (though majority was more Greek), I became more interested in how they would be connected. I thought it was clever to use modern technology and narration while telling of ancient monsters and stories. The introduction did an excellent job of setting up the narrator and the story's flow. I liked how the color of the template works for the story also, with deeper blues and darker pictures. 

Charles Perrault: The Magic of Reading

I clicked on this storybook because I love fairy tales, and particularly Charles Perrault. The title Magic of Reading really caught my attention. While I wasn't disappointed by the storybook itself, I didn't think that the title accurately reflected the story. True these are magical stories and we are reading them, but I thought the title meant that reading would lead to some magical circumstance. Also, by placing Perrault's name first in the title, I thought that we would "meet" him as a character. However, it was simply that they were all his stories. 

Other than my problem with the title, I thoroughly enjoyed this storybook. I liked how it seemed to be geared towards children and remained consistent with this style of storytelling. I liked the images and the stories. I wasn't a fan of the layout or background image, so I will not be emulating that. 

Eiffel Tower, Paris: My Favorite Place

Photograph taken by French photographer,
known by the username NonOmnisMoriar. Source: Wikimedia

My favorite place may be a bit cliché, but it is mine nonetheless. My entire life, I dreamed of going to Paris and exploring France. I wanted to speak French before I even knew what languages were. I wanted to "talk like Belle" and go to the cathedral from which Quasimodo gazed down at the people of Paris. I wanted to explore like the little red-haired orphan Madeline and find out how a city could capture millions of imaginations including my own.

The spring of my sophomore year, I studied abroad in Clermont-Ferrand, France. My first trip to France would be for five months. So I had to hope the country would be everything it was cracked up to be because I was stuck there for a while whether I liked it or not. 

I am not ashamed to admit that I cried when I first saw the Eiffel Tower. It was a mixture of happiness, relief, and travel fatigue. Pure bliss that I was actually in Paris, gazing up at a structure I had only dreamed of for twenty years. Relief that it was even better than I had imagined and could comprehend before that moment. Travel fatigue... I had been awake for over 24 hours. 

I could share so many stories about magical moments I have had at the Eiffel Tower, but suffice it to say that it is the most wonderful place I have ever been and will ever go to again. 

Personal photo taken by Laura Joly
 January 16, 2016

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