Week 14: Famous Last Words

As this class is coming to an end and it is a bittersweet moment for me. Bitter because I have truly enjoyed this class and getting a chance to push myself to do different things that I would never have done before. Sweet because it means I am one step closer to graduation and going to study abroad this summer.

I am really going to miss seeing everyone’s stories each week. I think people in this class truly have a lot of talent and it has been so much fun reading all of their stories. I can’t believe it has been 15 weeks it felt like time was flying.

I am super excited for summer to be here, but I am also sad because my friend/ roommate is graduating and going to graduate school next year so I will miss her like crazy. I think all of college is like that. There are such great moments, but nothing lasts forever and that’s hard for me to accept right now.

I saved this Famous Last Words post to be my very last post in the class to get my last two points. I think I have really enjoyed writing these each week to see all of the things I was thinking at the end of each week as the semester progressed. It was funny to look back over them and see all the funny things that were stressing me out at the time, or all of the random things I did each week.

I have loved taking this class and getting a chance to try new ways of writing. I think it has been a love-hate relationship throughout the semester though. I am not the best or most creative writer so at times I really struggled with the different assignments we had, but it got better the more practice I had. I am so happy I took this class!

It's only fitting that I put a picture of my puppy Skyla up here since she was in my very first post in this class, and now my last! It was from her 1st Birthday!

(Personal Photo of Skyla taken in April 2015)

Week 9: Famous Last Words

I can’t believe that spring break actually over! I felt like it took forever to get here and flew by in the blink of an eye. I have so much stuff to do this week that I am very stressed out, but I had a fantastic break and I don’t really want to get back to school yet.

I guess I can tell you all about my fantastic but crazy break! My family and I went to Costa Rica! It was a crazy experience though. We were flying out on Friday from DFW to San Jose and when we arrived at the airport we checked our bags, made it though security, got some coffee, and then realized our tickets were booked to San Jose California… Man was that a sad situation. I felt so bad for my dad who had worked so hard to plan this vacation and such a simple mistake changed it. But no worries 45 minutes later, some airlines miles, and we were booked on a flight the next morning the same time to Costa Rica.

We had a hotel in the middle of the jungle, which was absolutely beautiful. We were right by an active volcano, which I thought would be very scary, but was actually fantastic! The weather was awesome too. We spent every day doing some sort of fantastic adventure, from zip lining over the rainforest canopy to riding horses to waterfalls. It was a dream come true. If you ever get a chance to go there you should and you should head to the rainforest!

(View of the Rainforest and Volcano from our room. Photo Credit: My father.)

Before I left for spring break I went and saw the speech by Gandhi’s grandson! It was great! He gave us some great advice on how to handle things non-violently. I think it was the perfect speech to go to after some of the stuff that has happened on campus. I am glad I got the chance to go see him speak.

Week 8: Famous Last Words

This week I believe my best writing was in my storybook post. I have spent a ton of time researching my characters in order to develop their personalities into what I believe they would be like. I am really enjoying spending time on this and making it the best that it can possibly be. I am still editing it, so it is not absolutely finished, but I believe you can never edit too much. I think that we can always find something to fix in our work.

For this assignment I did not experiment with a new style because I have been using the same style for my other storybook posts. I did try to include more of my characters in my dialogue though, because this is a critique that I have received from a few people so far. I believe I still need to do a little more of this though.

My other classes are going well! I am just in a lull right now, the week before this was super busy, and now I have some down time. I don’t know if other people are struggling with their motivation right now, but I sure am. I am just ready for spring break.

(Waterfall in Costa Rica. Source: DeviantArt.)

For spring break my family and I are going to Costa Rica. I have never been here before, but I have always wanted to. I love the jungle and all wildlife, so I am very excited! My family hasn’t had a “family vacation” in a long time. My brother graduated from college 2 years ago and it has been hard getting everyone together while he has a ‘big boy job.’

On a side note, I gave up sweets for Lent this year, and it is probably one of the hardest things I have given up during a Lent. My roommate also did it so it’s nice to have some support, but our other roommate thinks it’s funny to bake cakes and buy candy… But that’s why we love her!   

Week 7: Famous Last Words

This week I believe that I did my best writing in my storytelling post. This is usually the writing that I spend most of my time writing and planning, so it turns out to be my best writing for the class. I really enjoy planning and carrying out these different storytelling posts. This week I didn’t really focus on a new creative writing style. One thing I did do was just focus on an item, the golden statue, and develop a story that was completely my own.

In the book we aren’t told what happens to the golden statue so I thought it would be fun to imagine what would happen if the man who loved Sita so much just left her statue in her favorite place. I think it turned out well, but I could have put more detail into my description of the statue, why it was left there, and what happened to it when it was left there. I did all of these things, but I believe I could have added more.

This past week was a little stressful for me because I had a quiz in one of my classes that I thought I completely bombed, but it turned out I did pretty well on it! I have a test in that class coming up on Tuesday, which I am very nervous about because I am obviously not the best in this subject. I just need to make sure I prepare myself with my other classes and do lots of studying.

Other than all of this life is going pretty well. I am just trying to decide what I will do after I graduate college. That big life decision moment… stressful. All my friends seem to have everything figured out, which just stresses me out more. I’ll get there though. Here comes week 8, we’re almost halfway done! Or we are already halfway done?

Because I am a huge fan of the tv show The Office, and Dwight is my favorite character please enjoy this Dwight quote. 

(Dwight Schrute quote. Source: hdwallpappers)

Week 6: Famous Last Words

For this past week I believe that I did my best writing in my Storybook post. I spent a lot of the week writing this post in order to get it as perfect as I could! I had to do a lot of research, because the vahanas are not necessarily mentioned that much in the books. I have thoroughly enjoyed doing the research thus far. I did struggle to get into the groove to write this post though, because I could just not focus. I had to just put in my earphones and blast some music.

These storybook posts are really taking a lot of time for me because I have been using a lot of dialogue, which is very hard for me for some reason. I have enjoyed working on it though. I have also struggled with putting these stories into my storytelling style, but I’m getting there, I am happy that we can keep editing it throughout the weeks.

I plan on sticking to this style because it is the style that I picked to write my storybook in. I am happy that I am sticking with it because it will hopefully give me time to master it by the time I am done with this project.

(Hearts. Source: Pixaby)

This weekend I attended an event called Red Dress Gala. It is the Philanthropic even for my sorority, in which we wear red dresses and sell tickets to the event to raise money. Red Dress Gala helps to raise money to donate to the American Heart Association, and women’s heart health. This event is always one that I enjoy attending because we get raise money for something very important, and my parents came to the event. Heart disease is currently the number one killer of women, killing 1 in 3 women, so I am proud to be in a sorority that helps to raise awareness and money for research.

Overall it was a great week!

Week 5: Famous Last Words

For this week I believe that my best writing was done in the Storybook Introduction. I know this was written in week 4, but I spent this week revising it. For this post I spent a lot of time researching about each of my characters to create a different personality for them. It was exciting to pick who my ‘therapist’ would be for my Storybook, I ended up picking Ganesh. For the Introduction I tried to write using more dialogue, which was actually really hard to do. I also had more than two characters, which was the amount I have usually used in my posts this far. It was a difficult, but fun challenge to try. I believe this new style was a success.

(Large Ganesh Statue. Image Source: Wikipedia)

I really enjoyed reading some of my fellow students work this past week. I truly believe that there is some great talent in this class! I was reading through some of the posts and Allison took the story of the Himalayas and Vindhya and turned it into a story about a blanket fort! I thought that it was an awesome story! I think she did a great job of taking the story and making it truly her own, which is something I continue to struggle to do. This was a very interesting story to read and it made it more realistic and understandable to this day and age. She did awesome!

This past week was a pretty good week. My other classes have been going well. I just need to keep up with them and try to stay ahead as best I can. This week I have been really focused on filling out all of my study abroad forms to finalize everything so I can be ready to leave in May. It’s a very stressful, but also very exciting event!

When I was writing my storybook post I used a lot of dialogue. I realized that I did not know a lot of words to use in the place of ‘he said’ or ‘she said.’ So naturally I Googled it and found this website that gives you tons of words to use instead. You should definitely check it out by clicking here.