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"It may have been in pieces, but I gave you the best of me." - #JimMorrison pic.twitter.com/mprS1XpBH5

— Classics Du Jour (@classicsdujour) December 8, 2016

Learning Challenge: The Value of 10 Minutes

This week, to get my Project and weekly story schedules back in sync, I'm picking up some extra credit instead of adding a new story to my portfolio. I'd never tried the "Learning by H.E.A.R.T." option before, so I thought I'd give the time-managing strategies there a shot.

I ended up reading "The Value of 10 Minutes" by Gregory Semenza, and I’m glad I stumbled across this article, because I definitely related to some of the things Semenza talked about. It’s my last semester before I graduate, and even though I didn’t think my class schedule would be too bad, I’ve been pretty much buried in homework since January. Because I’m a PW major (and because of this class, I guess), a lot of that homework is writing—which would be nice, except that I’m also trying to complete a novel outside of class and seek representation for it, and class projects are stealing a lot of time from that personal project.

At the end of February, I set a rule that I write something on that novel every day, even if it’s just a couple of sentences. That’s helped me chip away at it quite a bit—and sometimes, even if it’s late and all I want is to go to bed, just the act of getting a few sentences down pushes the snowball down the hill, and it’s easy to write quite a bit more than I expected. So I do like that the system is helping me get down more than I would otherwise, even if it’s a little lacking in the “consistency” department. That said, I loved Semenza’s approach of getting up early and trying to get two pages written first thing in the morning. I’m sometimes a slow writer, especially when I’m first getting into a scene, so I definitely wouldn’t have time to commit to two pages every morning—but I like the idea of starting the day out by getting some words under my belt, before everything else gets in the way. I’ve also recently read that author James Scott Bell does the same thing—he calls it the “nifty 350”—before the day starts up and his willpower is given away to other things on his to-do list.

Also, I’ve totally been guilty to dismiss extra ten-minute chunks of time between classes as inadequate to get anything substantial done, and “surrendering” to “distractions” like email or Twitter, like Semenza admits to. This semester, when I’ll take any spare time I can get, it hasn’t been as much of an issue—but I love the 3 points Semenza makes in his case for writing every day:

It makes writing less daunting, demystifying the process.

It makes you want to write more—a snack-sized appetizer, sort of, instead of a full meal that leaves you too full to even think about more food.

And finally, it keeps you in the flow of things: not only on “the specific sentence or paragraph you’ll be starting in on the next time you write,” but also on brainstorming new ideas or problem-solving current stumbling blocks as you run errands or go about your day.

Image Credit: Watch & Work by Unsplash. Source: Pixabay.

Review Week: Week 8 Growth Mindset

Since being exposed to the idea of the growth mindset theory last semester in the Myth-Folklore class, I've tried to keep it in mind for situations outside of class, too. Learning about it came at pretty much the perfect time in my life, when I was starting to realize what I wanted my life to look at but also that trying to make that happen was also kind of scary, and was going to call for a lot of small changes to add up to big, eventual change.

I think part of what makes that so unnerving is the idea of changing not just my habits or beliefs, but changing me myself. I've always been strong in the belief that it's important to be yourself and stick to that gun, and a lot of the times, it's easy to think that self-acceptance and self-improvement are two diametrically opposed things. But really doesn't have to be that way, and I'm working on making myself more of a people person—at least enough of one that I'll be better at connecting and networking and being able to get the kind of career I want—without feeling like a sellout. It's a slow, sometimes uncomfortable process, but it's worth doing, and I'm working on it.

That said, I'm still a raging perfectionist, and I haven't gotten much better at letting go of things and moving on if I haven't gotten them the way I want them yet. Even stuff I shouldn't really care about. While cleaning out my family's garage the other week, I found an old letter from my second-grade teacher to my mom, explaining that I was too much of a perfectionist and was in danger of falling behind in class. I've gotten to the point that I can make that work without falling behind, but everything else is about as fraught as it was back then. And even though being a perfectionist is kind of miserable on a personal level, I can't say I don't want the results. One thing at a time, I guess, but for now, I'm okay with it—as long as I keep working on the balancing act between that and functionality.




Image Credit: "Trust the Process" by BK. Source: Flickr.

Review Week: Week 8 Reflections

So far, I've been content with the reading options I've chosen so far. Sita Sings the Blues was a fun take on the Ramayana, bursting with visual creativity especially, and while the Narayan option was nice for the Ramayana, I found the links in the PDE Mahabharata pretty amazing. I'm really looking forward to the free reading options later in the semester: after some Karna-based reading recommendations from Laura, I'm excited to read Karna: The Unsung Hero of the Mahabharata, The Missing Queen, and The Palace of Illusions. That'll probably take up the main chunk of my time, though I'd also love to read some Indian folktales, because those are almost always my favourite.

As for the writing component of the class, I hate how many weeks I've fallen back on the "story planning" option, but I really am pleased with choosing a portfolio instead of a storybook. As much as I loved how much writing the storybook felt like overseeing a TV show last semester--each episode its own thing, but also tying in to the "season-long" arc in some way so they all dovetailed into the finale that the introduction promised--it was quite a bit of work, and I just didn't have time to do something like that this semester (heck, I haven't even finished the finale of my storybook for last semester). Going the portfolio route has worked well for my schedule this time around, since instead of spending just as much time on my weekly stories and my storybook installments, the work I put into my weekly stories is put towards my portfolio as well. It's also kind of nice having plenty of variety, and getting more expose for the weekly stories, which otherwise wouldn't see much light of day.

Just like last semester, I enjoy the weekly commenting so much more than I would've expected to. It's so interesting seeing how the same source material can end up becoming so many different things once different people start approaching it, and how sometimes you can see the interests mentioned in people's intro posts end up influencing what they do in their stories.



Image Credit: Water Drop Splash by Janeke88. Source: Pixabay.