Mythological Character/Group Skills Blog #3

Everyone knows the tale of The Little Mermaid, mostly because of Disney's version of the fairytale. The original fairytale is Danish and in this tale mermaids are beautiful and naive when it comes to the world above them. This is very different to what the Greeks thought of mermaids. They appear in The Odyssey as the evil sirens who lured in sailors with their magical voice to shipwreck on their rocky island's coast. To be honest my singing voice isn't that spectacular but I'm not completley embarrsed by it. I can hit a note okay, I would say and I do enjoy music a lot. Earlier this year I let my hair grow out to what I called a "mermaid length" and I enjoy swimming very much, enough to consider living in it. In these senses I would relate myself to a mermaid if I were a mythical creature. This is the "disney" side of my mythical creature-self. I have an "odyssey" side of me I would say. I feel like a lot of people underestimate me because I am small and cute. That is my way of luring people, not to lead them to their death of course, but to make more friends. When people really get to know me and I become comfortable with someone I kind of show my "siren" side where I'm mean in a joking way, kind of satirical. It may come off badly at times but people who know me already get my dark humor.

And really who doesn't like humor? It makes people work better especially when it is a little awkward because you might be in a group with people you don't know quite well. I am try to liven up the conversations while of course keeping it on track. I am not the goofy type that does not work but instead my humor makes the group work better and sometimes brings out the creative part of other members to make our projects or assignments ten times better. I feel like it is possible to have fun while doing an assigment, however important, because it brings out the fun in the project itself. If the members of the group had no fun creating the assigment then it will come through in their project and it will be hard to like. Laughing is always an option.

Goals for improvement Blog #2

I don't know what it is. Maybe it is my lack of poetry understanding or maybe my lack of practice with literary terms but I just did not do well with the practice AP lit practice exam. My strengths are that I can understand sometimes the metaphor the poem is trying to achieve and get the idea of what the poem is about like a relationship or a tree. Sometimes the language is maybe too different or difficult for me to understand but when I slow it down and read it carefully I can get a feeling of the mood better.

Its a little harder to find parallels or what a word is actually meaning if I don't exactly know what the literary device the test is asking for is. I know I've learned them all but after a while some of them mix up so really it is just the need to review the literary devices. I plan to review the literary devices and practice them by taking my own practuce tests so that I can apply them better to my writing and overall for the AP exam. Also there were questions asking specifically on poem distinctions, whether it was Shakespearen or Petrarchan. This is something I have no knowledge on so I plan to gain more knowledge on poem types this month and when we talk aboiut them in class. I know keeping orgtanized notes on the tyopes will help me to be able to identify them better. Most specifically the distinction between these two types since they are a questions that could be on the AP test.

The AP book gives tips on the answers and explanations that are good to take not on. For example I plan to remember that the capitalization of nouns often indicates personification. If I had known this before I probably wouldn't have missed the question asking what the specifics lines are primarily developed by. In those lines there was vulgar Pride and Wisdom. Both nouns and both capitalized, meaning personification. The little tips given and reading the explanation of the answers really help out so I plan in the next two months to study the tips and explanations included in the book.

I felt a lot more comfortable with the essay passage especially after taking AP Comp but I would say poems was what I struggled the most on. I know I can't rely on the essay passage to pass the AP test so by the end of this trimester I hope to get a better score on not only the essay passage by practicing more with the certain questions asked for the poems. Specific questions that I will want to practice on are when they ask what a certain line refers to. This question confuses me quite a bit because it usually refers to something else in the passage and it takes even more time to have to read back to the line and the poem also to find what it refers to. I know that by the end of this tri I will have gained more confidence in my analysis of poems because it is something I am determined to work on so that I am ready for the next tri and most importantly the AP exam. 

Design Reasons Blog #1

I decided to design my blog in a way that would show a happy and carefree personality but still formal and professional. When I saw the template of the blue sky and the green grass I felt at peace and that is what I want people to feel when they see my blog. When the sky has that "sky" blue color to it, I feel that, the day is just a wonderful day. I believe that weather really does affect peoples behavior and emotions so I liked how the template really achieved that. There are many blogs and websites that can overwhelm the reader with the bright colors or crazy fonts so I decided to keep it simple but still include my personality into it. The white dandelions take me to spring and kind of the idea of wishful thinking and hope. I hope people who see my blog get that kind of positive spirit and enjoy it. After all we all tend to have a short attention span so I want something to attract attention.

The header font is called "crushed" and the other labels/text are "cantorelle". The reason I chose those two were because I kind of felt like it was they way I write (when I really try) but then again I try because I want it to be pretty and impressive. I felt like the font was attractive and it brought a lot of my character into the page that handwriting usually achieves on print. A lot can be judged about a person just by their handwriting and even though it may not be my exact handwriting I felt connected to it. I changed the template around to what I believed looked best and wasn't messy or too crowded on the page. Some of the text colors I changed around to keep that earthy, outdoorsy feel to eat and keep it all consistent. I want my blog to look formal and neat since it is meant to be a professional blog while still keeping some playful feel to it.