Kat's Myth-Folklore 2018 Blog

Feedback can be good or disastrous, it all depends on how it's presented and the frame of mind of the receiver.  As someone who grew up constantly criticized, I fear negative feedback pretty much above all.  Mistakes were never tolerated in my house growing up.  It was straight A's or disapproval and criticism.  I had to clean house daily & my mother was not afraid of the white glove test (I'm 46, most college kids have probably never even heard of that!).   In school, I was good at straight A's.  I thrived on positive feedback & being basically a teacher's pet.  Until I got to about middle school, that is.  I learned to hide every paper and test that we got returned.  I cringed with the teacher would use my paper as an example or call out the grades as they handed back papers.  See, by then, the other kids had decided my good grades were something to ridicule me for.  Can you just imagine the stress-if I didn't get str...

So I seem to have gotten confused about how this week is going to work.  But here are the topics I'm considering for my final project. Grimm Brothers:  Honestly I wasn't thinking of that at first but when I went searching for a story for a previous post, I came up with one that will work well.  So I'm not opposed to digging into some of their other stories to help with my topic.  Here's the story I used in one of my other posts, The Fox & the Horse . Horses:  Because I'm married to a horse trainer and been horse crazy since I was little, I've read tons of horse books.  I found quite the list of horses in mythology on Wikipedia . Harry Potter:  I'm a HUGE Harry Potter fan, I'll make no apologies for that.  And so much of the Harry Potter world has basis in mythology and folklore.  Many of the creatures definitely had their basis in mythology.  Here's a few links on that: The Myths and Folktales behind Harry Potter Hidden Myths...

It started out as a rumor at Hogwarts that a horse was running loose in the Dark Forest, hunting for the lion of Gryffindor.  Bits and pieces of the rumor kept getting back to Harry, Ron, and Hermione, and being the curious sorts they were, they had to investigate.  They started at the logical place to ask for information about creatures in the Dark Forest, they went to see Hagrid.  "It's true," said Hagrid, "there's some ruddy horse out there stirring up the centaurs into a fury.  He keeps going on about needing to find the lion of Gryffindor.  The centaurs are in a right frenzy because he won't leave them alone about it.  I'm afraid there's going to be a rebellion amongst the centaurs if I can't find this horse & get him out of there!" As it was unlikely there was a creature Hagrid couldn't find and reason with, the trio figured they better help him out.  A rebellion of centaurs couldn't be good for Hogwarts.  Harry and Ron to...

" The Indian who wrestled with a ghost " by Katharine Berry Judson was quite interesting to me.  It is about a Lakota warrior traveling alone on the warpath.  Each night he stops in a woods and builds a fire to sleep.  Each night he is approached by a ghost.  There are three ghosts, similar to "A Christmas Carol" and they are each after something different.  The final ghost he has to wrestle with to live and the ghost promises him that if he wins he will kill his enemy and steal many horses.  He beat the ghost, killed his enemy, & stole many horses so this is why people always believe what ghosts say. (Owl from the above story in our reading assignments) The story of Pygmalion , by Ovid & translated by Tony Kline was beautiful.  It was set on Paphos, a city on the island of Cyprus.  Pygmalion wanted a wife or bed partner desperately but couldn't find one.  So instead he carved one out of snow-white ivory, beautiful and life...

There are a lot of interesting units in the UnTextbook .  Here are the three I'm looking at: Arabian Nights  because I was always interested by tales about Arabians, more from a horse person perspective and also because of the Disney movie Aladdin. I'm also interested in Cupid & Psyche .  I hadn't heard of that one before, but it sounds interesting.  It's compared to Beauty & the Beast which I like and I like CS Lewis who is also mentioned. Lastly, I picked King Arthur .  I've seen tons of the movies, but never actually read the stories about him and since I'm of English descent I thought it would be interesting. There were several that looked good as well, but I think I'm happy with these three. (Fairy tale castle from an online quiz site )

For this assignment I read " The Myth of Too Busy " by Tim Grahl.  I've heard some of the information in the article before, from studying entrepreneur books and articles.  I've heard it said, you're never too busy for something, you're just not willing to make that a priority.  I definitely agree with that statement and the article.  For some of us, the list of things we have to get done each day is truly long & crazy, but there is always some time we're "wasting".  If we want to write, create something, read, learn a new skill, start a new business, etc we do have time in the day if we make it a priority.  So many people say they don't have time for self-care, but you do if you put it in the schedule or are willing to cut something else out of the schedule.  I know for a fact how easy it is to get sucked into social media.  When I catch myself seeing someone in my feed that I wonder "why on Earth is this even here?!" I know it...

Ah technology, one of my favorite things and subjects! I am pretty familiar with blogging and website building/maintaining as I used to be a professional photographer and those are tools of the trade for photographers.  You have to have a website for people to view their images on after the show/shoot, and a blog helps keep you connected with your customers.  Also, I used both of those for my husband's horse training business because again, photos and keeping connected are important.  As is bragging about your, and your customers',  accomplishments!  Bookmarking and image editing are easy for me, because again, photographer and someone who likes to get lost down the Google rabbit hole.  Graphics creation I have done through Photoshop, but none of the web options listed.  I'm good with any of the skills listed or required and eager to learn anything new, because this sort of thing thrills me!!!  There's always something new to learn with technolo...

Looking over the regular assignments, I am most interested in the Storytelling, even though I'm not exactly sure what that involves yet.  I like to write and I like blog posts, especially if we can get creative.  This class involves a lot of work and time it seems, especially considering my other course load and other commitments such as my family & job, but I am looking forward to it I think. The extra credit assignments I'm looking forward to are the Tech Tips and Wikipedia Trails.  I've been known to get lost down the Google or Pinterest rabbit holes quite often and Wikipedia Trails sounds like that sort of assignment, which is right up my alley.  Tech Tips I'm interested in because my major & career path put me into the IT field.  Plus I'm always up for more image editing tips, even though I'm pretty much a pro at Photoshop & Lightroom, but I've never made memes before & that looks like fun.  Famous last words, extra commenting & r...

I had not previously heard of Carol Dweck or the Growth Mindset.  This lesson was completely new to me.  I'm not sure where I would fit into it personally.  I like to learn new things and I like a challenge so I guess I would fit into that.  But also I'm 46 years old and was taught more old-school than what education is today.  I always got straight A's in school and until high school and college, most everything came easy to me.  It's not that the material wasn't challenging, plenty of classmates struggled, but I just always had an ability to pick up new things.  I really liked being in the gifted program because there were new lessons and different things we could learn and also they were more challenging.  I started having to work at it more in high school and college simply because there were more demands on my time and brain and also more stress. I don't think I completely agree with Dweck that we can simply just praise the effort.  To...

Hi, I'm Kathy!  But you can call me Kat, most everyone does.  I'm a non-traditional OU student.  I'm 46 years old and going back to college.  I was one year away from an accounting degree back at the age most kids finish college when we moved away due to my husband's business.  Back then, online courses weren't really an option.  OU doesn't really have the classes available to finish my accounting degree online and I wanted to shift my focus more to IT so I switched majors to Information Studies.  This makes it almost like starting all over again so what I thought would take 2-4 semesters is going to take me pretty much the full four years.  My favorite classes in my major have been my programming courses, but I surprisingly also love Human Relations and Business Ethics as well. I also work full-time, at least I did until May when my position as manager for a local saddle shop got down-sized.  We thought my husband had found a great job i...

I chose random storybooks for this assignment but was mostly pleased with what I found. The first storybook I read was "Italian Fairy Tales" .  I hadn't heard of these fairy tales before, but they are pretty similar to other fairy tales that I have read.  Both of the stories presented were beautiful tales with good morals presented.  The Intro did a good job luring me in, but I was already intrigued because I am greatly interested in Italy.  The layout of the storybook was very good as well.  The Italian photos were beautiful and the layout was very simple and easy to follow.  The navigation and the breaking down of the stories into parts was very easy to follow.  I truly loved both stories that were used and how she changed the first story into something that she liked better. The next storybook I read was " OU's Haunted Halls "  The layout was good on this one.  I especially liked the pick-your-path style story of "Tragedy in Cate Cente...

Without a doubt, my favorite place I have ever lived is a thousand acre horse & cattle ranch outside of Boerne, Texas.  Since Texas is a large state & Boerne is not necessarily a well-known town, it's in the Texas Hill Country and about 20 minutes from San Antonio. The ranch was probably 15 miles from Boerne, but that was the address.  My husband was the ranch manager and head horse trainer for the place.  We had one-mile of Guadalupe River frontage on the back side of the ranch and most afternoons we spent at the river with our kids. I loved being so completely in the middle of nowhere but with the ability to be in a major city with lots of attractions in less than 45 minutes. It is our dream to one day be able to return to the Hill Country, but with property values as high as they are, that dream is going to take some effort. (photos from my personal collection, Zaragosa Ranch, Boerne, TX) (Hill Country Mile, main street in Boerne, TX...

Just a test to see how I like this format .