Online Education Review

I love online courses. I try to take as many classes online as I possibly can. I only take classes at the school if I absolutely have to. I have a job and I have two children. It makes it so much easier to be able to do my work when I am available. If I have to take a class at school then that involves me having to find a babysitter, getting my kids ready to go, driving to the babysitters, and then driving all the way to the school. I live 45 minutes away from the OU campus so it is quite a long drive.

The best part of online education is that for the most part, I get to teach myself the material. I find it easier to read and look up things myself versus having to listen to a long lecture. I always find myself spacing out when I have to listen to someone talk for too long, so I like the benefit of being able to learn things the way that I learn.

I haven't really had many bad experiences with online classes. The only big thing that I have noticed is that sometimes I put things off until the last minute. This is especially true for classes that have a longer span of time in between deadlines. The biggest advantage is that I can do my homework where ever and when ever I am available to do it. I can honestly say that I would have no idea how to design an online class.

Computer to do online work. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Gen. Ed. Review

I am taking this class as a general education requirement. I came across it by accident because I just needed as many online classes as I could take and this happened to be an option. It sounded interesting so I decided to take the class. This has been a positive experience but that hasn't been the case in a lot of the humanities general education classes that I have taken before.

The thing that I like best about the humanities requirements is that it gives you such a variety of classes that you can take that are outside what your major is. It allows you to pick some classes that are of interest to you and you are able to take them. It is nice to have at least some knowledge of a variety of subject matter not only what your major is.

The thing that I like least about the humanities requirements is that you may not know how difficult the class might be. If you chose a subject based on what sounds interesting, you may end up in a class that becomes overwhelming. The classes that are not specific part of your major may very well screw up your GPA and then you will feel pretty mad at yourself for choosing a class that you are not able to do well in.

A happy face just because I felt like posting it. Source: Wikimedia Commons

College Writing Review

College writing is sometimes stressful. I like being able to write about things that interest me or to write things that are a subject that I chose. It is harder to be able to write things that you are told to write but it does come in handy. I feel that the amount of writing that I have done in college has prepared me for anything that I may have to write in the future. There haven't been very many classes where I had to write a whole lot. Mostly the usual with subjects like English. I have also had to write a lot when I took a philosophy class.

The writing in this class has definitely been my favorite though. I used to write stories and stuff like that when I was little but after being in college for quite some time, I stopped doing it. This class has reminded me that I love writing and I actually missed doing it. This class's writing was completely different than the other classes I have taken and I really enjoyed all the assignments. My overall college writing experiences have been average. I actually feel like this class has helped me improve my writing more than any other class that I had taken.

Stack of papers. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Reading Diary A: Brothers Grimm (Crane)

These are some of my favorite stories Brothers Grimm (Crane) unit.

The Fisherman and His Wife- This is a four part story. In this story, the fisherman catches a flounder that says that he is a magical prince. The fisherman lets him go and tells his wife about it. The wife demands that he go back and make a wish to the magical prince because she wants a bigger house. The flounder gives them a bigger house but the wife is not satisfied. She wants the fisherman to go back and ask for a castle, so he does. The flounder gives them a castle but the wife is still not satisfied so she demands that the fisherman go back. Her demands continue and each time it is not long before she is unsatisfied again. This continues over and over again. Finally the flounder gets annoyed and when the wife demands more, he turns everything back to how it originally was. I think the reason for this is because the wife would never be satisfied so the flounder decided that it was not worth it and turns everything back into how it was to begin with. This story shows that if you base your happiness on material things, you will never be satisfied with what you have because you will always be searching for the newer and better version.

The Robber Bridegroom-This story was quite disturbing. The woman realizes that the man that she is set to marry is actually a cannibal who planned to eat her. She finds this out by seeing him and others kill and eat another woman. She is able to escape and tells everyone of what he has done.

"Turn back, turn back, thou pretty bride,
Within this house thou must not bide,
For evil things do here betide."

"Sweetheart, the dream is not ended."

Bride. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Famous Last Words: Week 13

This month has been quite hectic with regards to school. It is finally hitting me that I don't have much more time left in this semester. It is making me really wish that I would have worked ahead a little more especially in a class like this. It would have been so easy for me to get a head this semester and I didn't. I am definitely feeling the stress of the end of the semester.I am also going to be going to Florida for vacation in a couple of days and I will be there for a week so I have extra school work to do so that I don't fall behind the week before finals. It wasn't my best timing for a vacation but I know that I definitely need one. This week has been pretty hectic becomes of it.

I felt pretty good about this weeks writing though. I liked the units that I read so I was excited to be able to do my storytelling. There are some weeks that I feel like my writing is horrible and then some that I feel like my writing isn't too bad. I really liked the story that I based my storytelling off of so I was excited to tell my version of it, especially since I wanted to change the ending as I read it.

My other classes are staying pretty busy too. I have a Spanish presentation to do soon so I have been working on that. Its not going very well as of right now but hopefully I can get things on track really soon. I just can't believe that there is such little time left in this semester. It is really getting down to the times where there is so much that I need to study but I feel pretty good about how this semester is going so I am not too worried about everything.  I know that in December, all this studying will finally pay off when I graduate.

Personal photos of my children. Taken on Easter Sunday.

Essay for Week 13:

This week I chose to read the Hans Christian Anderson unit. I chose this one at random so I did not have any idea what the reading unit entailed. I really enjoyed this unit though and I wasn't sure that I was going to. I especially liked the fact that it contained The Little Mermaid. I had only seen the Disney movie and so I was interested to see how this version was different. I did not have any expectations before reading this unit so I was glad that I enjoyed it.

I really liked how all the stories did not have the same type of ending. Some of the stories had happy endings and some of the stories had sad endings and some had a mixture of happy and sad. It would have been a little depressing if all the ending would have ended sadly and boring if they all had happy endings. Overall, I really enjoyed this unit.

My favorite story from the unit was The Little Match-Seller. It was such a beautifully tragic story. The little girl dies in the end but she was so happy at the final seconds of her life. She was no longer feeling pain. It was very sad but I loved the story. My least favorite story would have to be The Brave Tin Soldier. I just could not get interested in it. I really enjoyed all the other stories in this unit though, so this was the only one that I did not enjoy.

Overall, this unit is one of my favorites. I liked how some of the stories were familiar and exactly like I had already known. One of those stories is The Princess and the Pea. The story was exactly as I remembered. I also liked how some of the stories were nothing like I remembered. The Little Mermaid was completely different than I had every heard. I knew some of the differences between this version and the Disney version but I did not know exactly how the story went so it was nice to have a completely different view of it. This was a really good unit in my opinion.

Ariel from Disney's The Little Mermaid. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Storytelling for Week 13: One Last Flame

It was a cold night. One of those nights where you could see every breath that you took and your body shivered just trying to gather what little heat it could create. Everybody was trying to stay out of the cold except one little girl. She walked up and down the streets every night, rain or shine. She was a quiet little girl. Everyone always wondered where she came from.

In her cold hands she held a box of matches. The little girl never said a word. It was as if she had already given up hope that anyone was willing to buy a match from her. Nobody offered her any help. They just stared at the quiet little match seller. She continued to walk up and down the streets. It was a wonder how such a little girl was managing to bear the cold weather, with only the slightest chance of anyone buying anything.

She knew that she could not go home. Her family was not the type of family that one wants to go home to. Each night, long after most little girls her age had already gone to bed, she would sneak into her house, hoping that everyone was already asleep. She was lucky for most of the time there would be no one awake in the house. She could sneak into her tiny room and sleep for a couple hours. She made sure that she awoke long before anyone in the house did. If she didn't manage to sneak in unnoticed, she would have to pay the price.

Because she knew that she had to, she continued to walk through the streets, hoping that today was the day that she would finally sell a match. Each day she was disappointed, yet again. On that particular day, the cold was brutal. The little girl was no longer able to feel her hands. She decided that she had to light a match. She cuddled up against a brick wall and lit the match between her fingers. She was able to feel the warmth. It was like nothing she had experienced before. The match went out in no time and so she continued to light the matches. She looked at the wall but it was no longer a wall. She saw beautiful things and even though she knew that this was a sign that she was not doing well, she did not care. She started to feel happier. She felt herself falling and realized that this was probably the end for her but she did not care.

A woman was walking by and noticed the little girl, lying on the pavement, cold to the touch. She picked up the little girl and ran home. She wrapped the little girl in a blanket and the little girl began to stir. She awoke, not quite sure where she was or why. The smile on the woman's face told her that everything was going to be okay. The little girl began to get feeling back into her hands. She relaxed her hand and the last match fell and landed on the ground. The woman picked up the match and struck it until a nice flame was coming off of it. The little girl smiled at the woman and the woman smiled back as she through the match into the fireplace. The little girl knew right then that she had finally found a safe place to be.

Burning Match. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Author's note: My story is based off of The Little Match-Seller. I chose to use this story because it was my favorite out of the unit. It is a story about a little girl who is trying to earn money by selling matches. She knows that she has to sell them or else she would be punished when she got home.She is outside on a freezing day just trying to sell the matches. When she gets too cold, she leans up against a building and lights one of the matches.She begins to see beautiful things on the wall of the building. The wall disappears and she is able to see through it and she sees all these beautiful sights. When her match burns out, all the amazing things go away too and she is stuck looking at the brick wall. She continues to light the matches, one at a time. Each time she does this, she sees all these amazing sights until she sees a shooting star. Her grandmother had taught her that this means that someone is dying. Her grandmother then appears to her and grabs her hand and leads her to heaven. People walk by and see her dead body lying on the sidewalk. I changed the story because I thought that the little girl deserved a happy ending. I kept the majority of the story the same, only changing the ending to where she was saved by a nice woman and brought to live with her.

Bibliography: This story is part of the Andersen Fairy Tales unit.
Story source: Fairy Tales and Stories by Hans Christian Andersen, translated by H. P. Paull (1872).