Reflections of a Narrative

I unfortunately did not set my alarm on Friday so I did not come in to class to have my style narrative peer edited. However, I did have my mom (who is a doll) look over it for me and give me new ideas. She actually thought up the idea of the mythological beast, the hydra. She's a mythology nut and when she read over my paper, she said it kind of reminded her of the hydra. I really liked that idea and so I incorporated it into my paper.

My own voice is projected into the paper by my use of parentheses. I use them all the time in whatever I write. I think perhaps I used it too often in this paper but I really like the repetition. It was like when I write and I choose a word, I have to think to make sure that it's the right word. I thought it might set it apart by using my thought process into the paper, which was about my thought process when writing papers (Ha!).

I don't know if I have ever written a narrative before and this was interesting for me to do. It was kind of hard at first to decide what to write and where to start but once I did, it was much easier.

Style Narrative

Here is my style narrative:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfb846rz_1f4k5tbfp

The Way Colleen Sees It

There’s no better way to live your life glass half full than by always expecting the worse. If you’re thinking that only the worst possible outcome can occur, you will either be prepared for it when it does or be extremely happy when it doesn’t. Either way, you are training yourself to be a survivor and you will be happy to be living the life you lead and your cup will feel like it’s overflowing.

Day Two: The Talking Continues

Today we got the other group's cup and it was pretty random. Their cup had The Way I See It #299 (I think it was that one, I forgot to write down the number.) It was about the difference between a promise and a mission, but how when the two combine that is when the magic happens. The stuff written on the cup was kind of like stream of consciousness and it was hard to decipher how they went from that statement to Espanol, to GIRLS, to Mohammed.

But the name Mohammed got me thinking about Islam and religion in general. Religion would fit the quote on the cup perfectly. A person following a religion makes a promise to live their life according to God, Allah, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, etc. And every other member of the congregation also makes the same promise, changing the promise into a mission, to live their lives according to [insert deity's name here]. Generally this would include spreading the word about said religion.

Religion is the strongest agent of change in this world and it's the greatest resister of change as well. Every year Christians all over the country march on Washington to protest the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe V Wade which legalized abortion. While it has yet to be overturned, Christians from different states and different ethnicities all join together for one mission: the hope that the Supreme Court will decide again that life begins at conception. On the other hand, the Catholic church does not always welcome change with open arms. It has yet to allow women to be ordained priests or allow priests to marry. In this way, the church's mission is to continue with tradition.

Anyways, I like the whole idea of promises, every one of them. Lifelong marriage commitments, pinky swears, "if we're both 40 and neither of us are married...", or just the simple promise not to laugh, I think all of these commit us to each other and tangle us in the giant web of all humanity.

Day One: Coffee Talk

Today during "class", we discussed our cup The Way I See It # 76. This quotation spoke all about the irony of commitment, that it can free you to live your life the best you can. I suppose the irony is that most people feel like if they are committed to something, they are chaining themselves away from other experiences. The author of this obviously was optimistic and felt different. We thought commitment could free you from the hassle of worry and self doubt because if you're committed you are more confident and sure of your actions.

Now commitment doesn't only mean relationships, it could mean anything. But the longest relationship I've had in my life has been my codependency on cigarettes. I've been a devout smoker since the age of 14. Young, I know. I brought that up to the group to see if they thought if this applied. But we kinda thought it did apply. Sure, I'm a smoker and I know it's gross and terrible, awful for me, but still I smoke. Why? Because I don't care what others say, all I like is how calm I feel after a long hit. Prices may go up or down, maybe I have to drive over to Kentucky to save a couple bucks on a pack. But the fact remains, I smoke and I will continue to smoke until I have a solid good reason not to smoke. Like cancer or a baby. Is that logical? No. But I am committed.

Maybe this is just a load of crap and I'm reaching here. But if I get in a fight with a friend or a boyfriend, or I fail a class, or my boss is getting on my case, there is one outlet through which I am never let down. That is my Marlboro Red, permitting I can find my lighter.

Reflections on the first assignment

I thought this project was interesting. I definently thought it was going to be super easy. I mean, how could it be hard? I read 12 to 15 syllabi a year. I feel like I could quote some of them in my sleep. But this proved to be much more difficult than I anticipated. The hardest part of this project was the course description. One obvious reason, because it's a class I just made up and I don't know much about the material being discussed. Of course it's easy though to come up with an attendance policy that you like and a grading scale that you like and a fun required text or hell, maybe even no required text. But the actual layout of what will be learned and what you want your students to gain from that class is a much different story. You have to dig a bit deeper than just "that would be fun".

An interesting thing I noticed in all of my personal syllabi was that every single one had the exact same thing down for the academic policy. I know that there is a suggested wording of the academic policy in the syllabi guidelines but like when we discussed in class, many professors probably don't even know about the guidelines. So that made me think that the wording wasn't so much as suggested as it was mandated. So not wanting to ruffle good ol' Nancy's feathers, I decided to keep in line and I too included the same word for word academic policy.

I chose a strict attendance policy for my class because as I have found out over several years of college, a strict attendance policy means I will go to my classes. If I know I can skip a class, it makes it so hard to get out of bed at six in the morning to head up to class. I also liked the bulk of the grade depending on exams because I personally am a fantastic test taker and work well under academic pressure.

I chose Dream Interpretation specifically because I learned a bit about it in my high school religion class and I loved it. I read books upon books about symbology and everyone at my work used to come find me to tell me their dreams so I could interpret them. I have kind of fallen out of my obsession with dream analysis, however I still have my dream dictionary near by so when I have a weird one I can look up things. I also looked up Dream Interpretation on onestop to make sure there wasn't a class for it already and I couldn't find one but I may have been looking at the wrong places. Sometimes OneStop is confusing.

So all in all, this project took me a great deal longer than I expected but I'm glad I took the time to invent my own class and perhaps one day I may even be taking it!

Assignment 1: Create Your Own Syllabus

The finished product, ahem, my syllabus can be found at this website.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfb846rz_0f6wc6jf3