Myth and Folklore as a gay Christian Witch

(Personal Photo) As the semester draws to a close, I have been stressing for the past week to accomplish tasks that I thought were impossible. If there is one thing that this semester has taught me it’s that with hard work anything is possible. I have truly enjoyed the semester. I did not like having to take French every day however I knew that it was enjoyable to take French over Spanish for my language requirement. Reflecting on the whole semester I have found that there have been tough times and there have been easy times. I have gone through a lot this semester and am continuing to go through things every day. I have also learned the meaning of hard times are the challenges on the road to success. The further I get into my degree the more I find myself writing more. I know that my career will be a fun experience. I look forward to reading more novels and getting to write more fiction and quite possibly writing a novel sometime soon. I also look forward to my tutorials cl...

(Personal Photo) I have found that reading out loud is definitely different than reading silently. Sometimes it helps me to catch grammatical mistakes that I would have missed originally. Overall I really dont like reading out loud because it makes me lose my spot often. I am glad that I was able to have the experiences I have had this semester with writing and reading so much material. I look forward to my future and will definitely be doing a lot of reading.

(Image made with Canva)      I saw this quote on my advisors computer and it resonated with me because I have been going through a small identity crisis in the recent couple weeks. This quote reminds me that I may have to make changes to move ahead in my life. It also gives me hope that as I improve my writing that one day I may be published. 

(Photo found on Wikipedia ) I have found the sport of archery to be interesting but my original search brought up the page about bracers. I found that this page was very interesting because the original bracers that were worn by Native Americans were made of bone. The way how the bracers became decorated is that they were made from different material so that elements of turquoise could be added as decoration on them. The next page was an arrowhead page. Arrowheads are wonderful pieces of art and it gives us a glimpse into how civilizations prior to us hunted for their food. These pieces of art were mainly made of stone and were sharpened often to ensure the clean kill of the animals that would be used for food and clothing. These were later modified to create the modern arrow that we know today the next page describes that arrowsmiths made arrowheads and fletcher's make the body of the arrow as we know it today. Arrows were used for centuries and they predate even record...

I dont have very many time management tricks that I could give but setting a timer for me never works. I found that many times I have found that I measure the time by just getting things done and then taking a cigarette break. Sadly I have learned how long fifteen minutes is by knowing how long it takes to smoke two cigarettes. I will say however when I am not smoking I tend to rely on my body to tell me when I need to take a break. The body has a way of letting us know if we need to take a break.

(Image found on Wikimedia ) I enjoyed reading this story so much I found it interesting that the coyote's ignorance and jealousy got the better of him. There is a great moral lesson in this story that we should not be quick to be jealous of others and we should also be careful about how ignorant we can become if we do get jealous of others things. I wish I would have read this story earlier in the semester as it would have given me a lot more ideas for stories. overall I have enjoyed this experience and I love bluebirds.  bibliography: How Bluebird and Coyote Got Their Colors by Kathrine Berry Judson 

(I really enjoyed this image posted by Professor Gibbs from Grant Snider, and I thought it really was true.) So many times as a writer we dont think about the complexity of the language we write in. Over the course of the semester I have truly enjoyed getting to learn French in my Beginning French continued class. We hardly ever think about the languages that are invented within fiction. Take J.R.R. Tolken's Elvish language in the Lord of the Rings trilogy for example. Tolken had to have given some serious thought to come up with a completely different language and I had to wonder if he wrote some of that language in a writers journal at some point in his career.  I enjoyed getting to watch the video about languages in fiction that I will link at the bottom for your entertainment. I really appreciate getting to write in this class. 

(Photo of a blank book. This image reminds us that there is always a story to be told. Found on Wikimedia ) As the semester comes to a close I have thought a lot about how many assignments and how difficult this semester has been for me. I have been thinking a lot about how much work that I have been working on. I found the readings this semester to have been extremely enjoyable and have enjoyed the story writing that has taken place this semester. Most of the time I prefer to write stories that come from my mind that I can feel like they are more original so it was a challenge to have to write stories while using other people’s work to create something refreshing. As much as I enjoyed it I look forward to getting further into my degree and I also feel as though my writing will continue to improve over the next year.  I do feel as though the semester has been a rough one. After working so hard these last few days I definitely have a better insight into what I will have...

(Photo found on Wikipedia about Mourning Dove ) I have always loved studying Native American Traditions because I am Native American myself. I enjoy learning about the culture and I also enjoy learning about the art forms from the artists. I have made my own dream catcher and have it hanging in my room at my mother's house. I am also very strongly attached to the lives of Native Americans and it was one of my favorite subjects to study within my history classes.  I appreciate the opportunity to see Native American art and to experience the culture in this class. I appreciated watching the video about the Ledger art and learning more about how the Native American's recorded stories.  (Found on YouTube)

(Feminist Books picture from Harpersbazzar ) I have always found the concept of sexism to be interesting. This led me to my first article titled Sexism. I enjoy reading about this because it helps me to understand why I relate to feminism as a whole and it also helps to see where the feminist movement comes from. This led me to my second article Androcentrism. Androcentrism is the exact opposite of feminism as it focuses strictly on lifting the male up while placing the female at a lower level. This of course is sexism at its finest and it is not fair to women to have to fight this type of prejudice. In similar fashion the article of Gynocentrism is about the same except it is the oposite of Androcentrism. This viewpoint does not consider that men also have feminine traits and this, therefore, negatively affects feminism because so much of the ideas of feminism is equality between the sexes. This led me to the article for Equality Feminism which is a viewpoint that holds th...

I used the pomodoro technique with my novel. I found that it was extremely benificial as after doing a lot of writing many times I will feel like my energy and my mind is exhausted. By allowing myself to have a small break within the times of writing it has helped me to be able to think clearer and it also helped me to write more on my novel than I ever have before. It also helped me to focus my attention on writing the words that I needed to write on my novel. I also feel like I could incorporate these things into my writing on my assignments for my writing classes and it would help me to get more of the assignments done. I hope to definitely use this technique in the future. (I found this photo because I am currently writing at night and have always thought skyline photos were beautiful. Found at Public Domain Pictures .)

I have always enjoyed word counts because it also helps me as an author know how much I have written. I cannot say, however, that the Chrome word counter helps me out a lot because i normally use microsoft word or pages since I do most of my writing on a macbook pro. I do feel like word counts are useful when writing short stories or novels because so many publishers are limited on their word count. I feel as though these publishers would not, of course, want a manuscript that is 30,000 pages long and it would be a pain to go through and read these manuscripts and edit all of them. As a writer I feel like a wordcount is useful for these purposes and also so that when I am writing I have a measurement of how many words I am writing as well as where I am at within my work.

(My Mantra created on Cheezeburger ) I have always felt inspired by Lady Gaga and so the picture was a nobrainer and I just had to remember why I am doing my degree to come up with my mantra. I am in no way sure that the mantra has not been used before but it helps me to motivate myself so that I will be successful. 

(Photo found on Pixabay ) For this extra credit reading assignment, I decided to write and read the selection that was suggested to me by professor Gibbs. I really enjoyed reading this article as it gives me insight into transgender fairytales that were written even years before the transgender movement. I think this reading also helped me to understand that we need more LGBTQ+ material being written because representation is necessary for these communities. Thank you, professor Gibbs, for allowing me to read this article because it also drew out the concept that I should also be mindful of how I present material to my future readers as an author of LGBTQ+ novels and stories. I think that more people should read this article. Thank you for a fantastic read. Bibliography: The Public Medievalist's Series: Gender, Sexism, and the Middle Ages Part 8 by Paul B. Sturtevant