Stephanie's Blog

This week I read the article by Psychology Today, 10 Reasons to Stop Judging People , by Barbara Markway. This article interested me because in today's society it is very easy to judge people and be judgmental of somebody's actions, but in reality there is a good chance you don't know anything about them. I was curious to see what this article had to say. The 10 things you can do to stop judging people, according to this article are: 1) Don't Blame Yourself 2) Be Mindful 3) Depersonalize 4) Look for Basic Goodness 5) Repeat the mantra "Just Like Me" 6) Reframe 7) Look at your own Behavior 8) Educate Yourself 9) Give the Person the Benefit of the Doubt 10) Feel Good About You I think that the first one, don't blame yourself, is a great one because sometimes it is hard to control your thoughts and you often will find yourself judging people and it might be over something little. In the end, the more aware we are and the more we recognize that w...

This week I read the article from Mindset Works, Learning and Performance Zones in Sports , by  Jeremy Frith and Eduardo Briceño. This article  initially  stood out to me because sports have always been a big part of my life and I think that  they are signifiant to developing into a well rounded person.  I really liked this article because it emphasized the importance of practice makes perfect. It also introduced this concept of spending time in the "Learning Zone," which the article described as things like  practicing drills that target specific skills and playing modified games to advance our understanding of different aspects of the game, along with soliciting and receiving feedback and reflecting. This is applicabel to things in everyday life in which you want to  improve  upon, because without practice or spending time in the learning zone, you  won't  be able to get better. I also think that this is important...

To finish up the Czech folktales unit, it started with a story called The Man who met Misery. I thought that this story was very interesting because the very first line of the story was " there lived a rich man, so rich that you might almost say he oozed gold," which in my opinion definitely made me want to keep reading and see where this story went.  Overall, this story was really humbling and inspirational because they used this story as a way to show how to be appreciative of what you have. In the story, the boy of the rich man only met Misery when all of his money that his father had given him had started to run out. From there he learned a lot, as the reader did as well, which shows an important part of the Czech culture. The next story, Nine at a Blow, was really cool. A tailer killed nine flies at one time with a stocking and then goes on his way into the world, gradually receiving things from others. Eventually he runs into a giant that he tr...

This week I wanted to get ahead and dive into the European Unit. The Czech Folktales immediately stood out to me because of my ancestry in Poland. The Polish and Czech have many similarities culturally, so I wanted to see what kinds of story telling techniques and story plots the Czechs told. The first story in this part of the reading was Sleepy John. I thought that the character development in this story was really cool because initially you have John who sleeps all the time. This gets him into some unusual and difficult situations, but he manages to overcome them. By the end of the story, Sleepy John has obtained the entire kingdom. As a whole, I thought it was really cool that a character that was initially thought to have some negative characteristics turned out to be an awesome and smart character. Maybe he was just tired all the time from all the crazy situations he gets himself into. The next story was Silly Jura. This trend in the title names started to attract my attentio...

Once there was a group of raccoons. They lived far from other raccoons, but they shared a friendship that they would always treasure and they always looked out for each other. The King raccoon has just passed and as a result, there was much dispute over who should be the new king of the land. When word had spread to this group of raccoons, they travelled from afar and when they got to the land, they discovered the challenge that awaited them. Among the largest of trash cans, there was a bag of cool ranch Doritos that must be obtained, for whoever could remove this bag was for sure the indication of who should be the next king. Among this group of raccoon friends, they all decided that they would try to become the next king, and they would as a result, help out each other and make sure they were all guaranteed wealth and happiness. Arty was among them, and he was the most fragile of the group. However, Arty stepped up to the trash can and removed the Doritos bag with such great ea...

For extra credit reading this week, I chose to read Part A of the King Arthur unit. While I am familiar with the overall ideas and basic storyline behind King Arthur and his knights of the round table, I have never actually read this story, so I was curious to see what the style of writing was like, and if it matched the pictures I had in my head already. There were 3 main stories I found to be the most interesting. I found it interesting that in the first section, it mentions Christmas. Later in the story it mentions Candlemas , which I googled and found is a Christian Holy Day celebrated on February 2nd. I think the point of mentioning these two holidays was to represent the time span that this story occurs within. I found the first story overall very familiar in the sense that Arthur pulling the sword out of the stone is one of the more common images he is associated with. The second story of the Questing Beast was less familiar and I found it very interesting. I came across the...