The Myths/Folklore Blog

For my Famous Last Words assignment, I’m going to talk about how my other classes have been going, because (like so many others right now) I’m pretty stressed about them. My only two hard classes that I have had this semester are Physical Chemistry II and Principles of Biochemistry. Let me talk about PChem II. My biggest issue right now is that the professor really doesn’t seem to care about actually teaching the subjects to the students, simply writing/reading notes out loud during class apparently classifies as teaching for him. The subject is already extremely hard, so one can easily imagine how I’m feeling while attempting to teach the information to myself right before the tests. Thankfully, I’m right at the average percent score for the class, so I’m honestly not sure where I’ll finish for the semester. Thankfully, the growth mindsets that I have been reading this semester have been helping me somewhat cope with this class. I’ve been trying to grow from my mistakes within t...

For this week’s Wikipedia Trail, I decided to start with the Wikipedia page, “ Divine Comedy ” in order to get more background information upon the story that I read this week. I’ve always wanted to more detail within the story, which the summary provided through Wikipedia provided. The long poem, itself, is somewhat unwieldy to read, so getting a clearer picture through this was definitely nice. The next page that I was led to was, “ Seven deadly sins ” which I have always found interesting. Part of the reason why is because so many stories that I’ve read have personified these sins, making them stand out even more. I’m not sure which one of them I find to be the worst – probably wrath since murder is pretty terrible. It was really cool seeing how old the ideas of the sins are – being from way before Dante’s time really puts a perspective on how old some of Christianity’s beliefs are. The third page that I stumbled upon was, “ Edmund Burke ”. I just randomly clicked on his n...

This week I decided to delve into the Learning by H.E.A.R.T. which I think is absolutely amazing. I decided to delve into the first thing that I saw on the website which was the article, “An Underappreciated Key to College Success: Sleep”. I absolutely agreed with almost every point that was made within there. I’ve always been a huge proponent of sleeping and how important it is to doing well within your classes. I can proudly say, as a senior in college, that I have never had to pull an all-nighter (not that I would even want to). That’s just me, however, some people can focus extremely well at night, and if they’ve procrastinated enough (a not very healthy thing to do) studying all night can actually help them. Other than just sleeping itself, sleep can keep you happy and healthy. Think to last time you got extremely little sleep – you weren’t as alert the next day, you probably had a shorter fuse, and your work overall was probably slacking. Sleep is just SO GOOD for you – getting...

This week I decided to share some of My Growth Mindset tips with my sister, who recently became a freshman at the University of Tulsa. She’s always been somewhat of the same person as I am/was, where I would obsess over getting “perfect” grades, constantly putting myself under pressure to do well. It’s things like this idea of being perfect that truly can add some extreme stress to your life at college. So with my sister, I explained to her a main idea of a growth mindset is to accept failure, using it as a motivator/learning tool to move forward. People fail. That’s just part of life – things aren’t always easy. While we can definitely feel bad about our mistakes, we can’t let them consume our life. She took this advice really well (she’s more laid back than I was) and has been doing well in her classes, with probably a tad bit less worrying. Grades are important, but learning from your bad grades is even more important in my opinion. Image provided through Dreamstime

For my final reading assignment, I decided to look into the Laos subunit, which caught my eye when I was looking for more readings to do. I quite liked the stories that were told as they had to do with a lot of animals that are in those parts of the world – I also liked it because of the spirits that were constantly present throughout the story. An example of a kind spirit was when a Hunter came to the enchanted mountain, his arrows could not pierce the breast of any fowl that were nearby. This was because they were protected by the spirits that roamed there. My personal favorite story out of the unit was, “The Enchanted Mountain” which described and detailed a mystical place on top of a mountain that only those who are completely exhausted from the hard labor that was hunting can discover. People attempted to find it naturally, after hearing of the renewing water, the plentiful fruit, and the amazing amount of animals that can be found there. I could definitely write a great story a...

This week I delved into the TV tropes website again – this time I focused on Topical Tropes, with even more focus on Death Tropes. Some tropes that I found to be highly interesting were: “Agonizing Stomach Wound”, “The Plot Reaper”, and “Pop! Goes the Human”. The last of this is definitely the most grotesque out of the three, with again this website being so much more specific with their tropes that I thought was possible. The only time I can think of a death like this happening is during the movie, “Big Trouble in Little China” where one of the warriors in the movie, after being defeated, becomes so angry that he causes himself to swell up and explode. This almost ends the lives of the main characters, but naturally, they manage to survive the impact. I really like the “Plot Reaper” trope, which is where a character is killed off because the writers didn’t know how to deal with them. This hits home for me because, like so many others, I was extremely disappointed by the ending of Ga...

Again, Dante’s depictions of hell truly sends shivers down my spine. For today’s readings, he is sent further down into hell, out of necessity to escape. Guided by Virgil who was sent from a goddess, Dante sees with his own eyes the bottom circles of hell. The seventh circle is punishment for those who commit violence, with 3 rings for different kinds of violence. The first ring is “against neighbors” where a brutal scene of souls trapped in boiling blood and fire – if the sinner emerges too high above the river of blood, three centaurs would shoot them full of arrows for them to sink back lower into their punishment. Ring 2 in the seventh circle somewhat scarred me, with it being violence against self that is punished. People are turned into trees, where they are then fed upon eternally by the harpies – only when they are damaged are they allowed to speak. Overall, these punishments are truly horrific to think about, maybe showing that Dante wanted people to save their souls bef...

During this final week of school I decided to read one of the most famous works of literature, “Dante’s Inferno”. I have had experience with this story before, so most of it is not new to me. Overall, I love the themes that are explored within the story, alongside how they are described. Doing some research into this, this was one of the first stories to depict Hell as such a place. Differing levels, with a guide leading him have captured imaginations everywhere. Today, there are so many different stories about Hell, or the people that go there, or even about the devil himself. They each describe Hell in their unique way, but all have one thing in common – suffering. I mean, what else is there to have within Hell? I love the way that Dante described what it was like when he first heard the sounds of Hell, “Here sighs, complaints and deep groans sounded through the starless air, so that it made me weep at first. Many tongues, a terrible crying, words of sadness, accents of anger…” All...