Challenge Check-in 3!

For my challenge, I had to read the original fairy tale of The Little Mermaid and also watch the Disney animated movie. From this activity I learned a lot about Disney itself; that it thrives on happy endings. I also learned, at least with the case of The Little Mermaid, that Disney took a minute amount of the actual story and made a new story around that bit of history. From a Gothic stand point, I didn't learn a whole lot of what I didn't already know. To me, the Gothic is anything that is scary to a person. You could even go as far as saying that it is anything that goes wrong in a person's life, because that in itself is a scary thing to have happen. In the life of the original little mermaid, her dreams were crushed by the prince not loving the little mermaid. In the animated film, Ariel almost had her dreams crushed by the sea witch, who was plotting against Ariel. My understanding of the Gothic has been further enhanced through this challenge by showing me that there are different levels of Gothic. There is light and friendly Gothic like Disney's interpretation of The Little Mermaid where there are some wrong doings but in the end everything comes out okay. There is also a heavier kind of Gothic that is represented in the original tale of The Little Mermaid where everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. Although, defining Gothic in this fairy tale is up to the person who has read the story and everyone's interpretation is different.

Emblem

I would have to say that my emblem is a puzzle, but I guess you could say that for everyone. I picked a puzzle because there are different  areas of my life that have to merge in order to show the person that I am. The different areas are: the academic piece, the social piece, the volunteer piece, the family piece, the childhood piece, and the by-myself piece. They represent all of my interests and all of the people that have come into my life.  My family puzzle piece is definitely the biggest piece just because I have several different families. Sometimes these pieces can be split into two different pieces. In high school, I had two different set of friends who never really intermingled. I had my academic friends, who I met through my classes, and I had my band friends, who I met exclusively through band and they were not usually in my classes. I would have to say that the band friend piece would be bigger than the academic friends piece because my band friends were in my life more than my academic friends. This could be just because we were always together at band events, but it could also just be because I connected with them more. I have tons of different experiences and people that make me me and they come up in all aspects of my life at some point or another.

Blod Post 4

A literacy agent in my life, who did not necessarily sponsor me, is a program called Y-READS. It was a program to help children in elementary school read better and in some cases learn how to read. We were always at the same school, working with the same students, in the same classroom, but all the teachers made a bond with the students that they would work with. One of the teachers, Mrs. Colleen Fearney, who was also the supervisor, really showed me how to not only manage kids behaviors, because sometimes they would have a bad day at school and take it out on us, but also to help kids learn a skill that is much needed in the world today. I was a "teacher" throughout my whole junior year of high school. Everyday, before I got out of my car, I would think, "Okay, here we go, another day." Sometimes I would think about making this one a better day, if the day before did not go so well, but my days were usually fine. Some days, I would get out of my car with a not so great attitude, but I would change it, right then and there, so that I would not upset the kids. Overall, the mood of the day would just depend on the people who are interacting with each other.  On very good days, I would walk in the door I would be greeted with a multitude of hellos and how are yous, which made me feel wanted and gave me a sense of belonging. In a way, I guess, you could say that I was a literacy sponsor to those children.