The Daily Create challenge for Monday, June 22nd was to tweet about what your favorite food would be if all food was in paste form. Thinking about this, a lot of food items came to mind for me, such as peanut butter or chocolate spreads (i.e.,Nutella). I wanted to pick something that was widely available in its use, and not to be used for only specific things; this is when I thought of hummus! Being a vegetarian, hummus has to be by far one of my favorites food pastes because of how many flavors and uses it has. You can choose to dip your favorite veggies in a roasted red pepper flavored hummus, spread a everything flavored hummus on your bagel or sandwich, or use a chocolate flavored hummus for dip as a midnight snack. Hummus is very universal in its use and one of the more flavorful choices of food pastes out there currently. It’s one of my favorite foods and I eat it almost daily with snacks or meals. What’s your favorite food in food paste form?
@ds106dc What’s my favorite part of the day? Sunset! Sunset is my favorite part of the day because of the beauty it holds: the casting rays of the sun’s last touches on the Earth, slowly receding for the moon to come out and display itself. #tdc3078#ds106@eng304crippspic.twitter.com/GAcoOI2Ufx
The Daily Create challenge for June 16th, 2020, was to upload a picture of your favorite part of the day. My favorite time of the day is sunset, closing the day with a beautiful display of the sun’s last rays touching the Earth, casting it’s shadow far and wide until it slowly recedes into the darkness. Sunset has always been a time of day I find peace and mindfulness in, especially at the ocean. For example, when I was going to school at UNE, I would take many trips – as I’m sure many did – to Fortune’s Rocks Beach; this beach is one I love and went to quite often, sitting on the rocky-wall shoreline and watching the waves crash to and fro on the shore. When the sun sets along the horizon of the ocean, it’s one of the most beautiful things from nature I’ve ever seen. The way the sun reflects and glistens on the surface of the water, replacing it’s full spherical shape by slipping what seems like beneath the waves and into the ocean’s abyss. The colors at sunset are also a breathtaking sight to see, from the pinks and purples twirling around that make the clouds look cotton candy-like, to the oranges and yellows of the sun’s rays mixing with the blue sky, all the vanish within a few minutes. Sunset is my favorite time of day, what’s yours?
The Daily Create challenge for June 15th, 2020, was to introduce your pet in a tweet and tweet something they would say if they could talk. Many of you have probably been introduced to my pet from my other posts and pages, but this is my pet male albino rat, Casper! He is almost one year old, he will be on June 22nd, 2020. Casper is very expressive and playful rat, always wanting to socialize and be loved by myself or anyone who will interact with him. When thinking about what Casper would say, I felt the caption above in my Tweet really captures who Casper is: “Hi! My name is Casper! My favorite things to do are running around in my ball, eating all the treats I can (especially banana chips), and snuggling/annoying my mom!”
Casper loves running around his ball; when I work out in the morning, as I’m getting ready, he’ll start jumping around his cage and getting excited because he knows it’s his ball time. He is also trained to get a treat after he’s been out and plays with people, with his favorites being banana chips, flavored fruit yogies (like little chocolate chips, but flavored with fruit and yogurt), and orange-cranberry cookies. Casper is quite playful and loves to be snuggled, especially when I have him out on my bed while watching TV or doing homework; he’ll crawl up right beside me and snuggle right up, wanting to be pet and loved. He can also be quite the sneak, sometimes trying to climb on things he shouldn’t or hide behind things. Casper is a pet I am lucky to have as I’ve never owned a rat who’s been so expressive and loving in his personality, especially towards people. Casper is definitely my pride and joy, and is a pet I will always love and cherish because of the strong bond I have with him.
“Good ole’ Forrest Gump. He always manages to find himself at the center of history, and using photo editing software, so can you. Find a historic photograph and place yourself into the scene, just like Forrest Gump.” This is the objective of the assignment “The Forrest Gump Project”. To do this, I first downloaded Photoshop and got myself familiar with the app and software to prepare for adding myself into a picture from history. Once doing this, I chose a historical photo from “Girls From Woodstock 1969 Show The Origin Of Todays Fashion“. Once I had the photo, I went to Photoshop and began my editing process. The picture I chose of myself was one I took about a year ago from a sunflower festival as I was trying to chose the best photo of myself to insert into the Woodstock one. After playing around, the results I got are pictured on the left.
Though I have never used photoshop before or have inserted myself/other people into a picture, this was an overall fun assignment to create! It almost illustrates that the two girls dancing are being photographed by the photographer in the back of the picture, and I turned around just in time to flash a smile at the photographer behind me. The layering, cropping, and editing with hue and shadow coloring all added to create the final picture you see. Though it may be a rough photo, I am quite happy with how it turned out.
This is a DS106 Assignment known as a “Digital Story Compilation”, with the objective being to, “Create a video compilation of some of your favorite things you’ve made in ds106.” Looking at all of the assignments I have made for my DS106 Work, I picked out eleven of the assignments I did and compiled their elements into a video (i.e., either the image, GIF, or web-based image for the assignment) to showcase my favorite assignments I did.
The first assignment in the video is for the first Animated GIF assignment, “Say It Like the Peanut Butter”; the objective of this assignment was to, “Make an animated gif from your favorite/least favorite movie capturing the essence of a key scene. Make sure the movement is minimal but essential.” I chose one of my favorite scenes from Grey’s Anatomy and wrote about why I chose this scene and how I connected to it.
The second assignment I chose was the “What’s the Meme” assignment where you had to, “Take any picture and caption it with a meme, whether common or uncommon. Or come up with a personalized meme.” Choosing from one of the meme-able images from out course website, I chose the one of Sokka from Avatar. This was a fun MEME to create as I grew up watching Avatar and it is still one of my favorite shows to this day.
The third assignment I chose was the “Selfie with Your Pet!“, where students in the course took a picture with their pet – or with their multiple pets – and discussed about their pets. For this assignment, I talked about my pet male albino rat, Casper, how I adopted him, and the life he has with me now.
The fourth assignment I chose was based off a Daily Create I made for the Daily Create #tdc3069 assignment for June 8th, 2020. This assignment was to “Design a postmodern birdie with an emotional color.” For this assignment, I chose a picture of a bird I had from my travels to Belize and edited shadowing and hue colors to enhance the emotions of the bird I felt best suited it’s behavior. I also did the same for my pet rat, Casper, adding specific hues and shadow colorings to enhance his behavior as well.
The fifth assignment I chose was the “Home Video GIF” assignment. “For this assignment, you will need one thing that eveyone has. A home video! Choose a video that you have filmed yourself and create a gif from that video. Instructions for how to complete this assignment are linked to this page!” The video I chose was of my rat Casper being sneaky by trying to escape out of his cage. This was a very fun assignment to create as Casper is always full of hilarious surprises!
The sixth assignment I chose was the “Turn a GIF into a FIG” by finding “a video clip, or shoot one of yourself, and then make it playback in reverse over and over again as a GIF. Try to find a situation that is absolutely mind-blowing when played backwards.” This assignment was fun to do as well because I had a video of Casper spinning in a forwards direction and decided to reverse it so it looked like he was spinning backwards… Something I taught him myself! (I only wish this was true).
The seventh assignment I chose was “Demotivate Yourself“, where students were required to create a demotivational poster. I chose a picture of a bear sitting in the middle of the road and liked doing this assignment because I also connected it to my blog topic, How Roads Impact Wildlife.
The eighth assignment I chose was the “Color Walk Time Lines”, where students needed to, “Choose a color and then take 20 minute walk in which you take a 5-8 pictures of the color as you encounter it. Then upload the photos to Flickr and create a time line using TimeLine JS.” I chose the color green and chose to display pictures from my travels to Belize, titling it a “Green Walk in Belize“.
The ninth assignment I chose was “The Big Caption”, where “In the spirit of http://thebigcaption.com/ take any photo featured on The Big Picture (http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/) and add typographical text elements in a way that changes the message.” I chose a picture from the February 2020 pictures by the Boston Globe and titled it to interpret a different meaning then what the original picture relayed. This was a great assignment to create as it was reinterpreting the meaning of something so it could be understood in a different way; this is similar to how people have different opinions about one thing.
The tenth assignment I chose was “We’re the Real Life Brady Bunch” where “Whether your actual family or your close group of friends, make a collage mimicking the picture shown below. Be creative with the title. Make the title alliteration either with your last name or somesort of name you wish to call your group. In your post, explain why you chose the people you did in your collage.” This was another fun assignment to create because it allowed me to showcase my “family”, or friend group from being at UNE, people I still consider to be close to me like family because of everything we’ve been through together.
The last and final assignment I chose to display was “Remix Guinness Book of World Records” through remixing “a Guinness Book of World records web page. Pick any record you want and somehow remix it. Try and connect it to a story, and add some background inspiration into your idea for inspiration. Maybe it was the record you always wanted to set, or break. Or maybe it fits perfectly into a story you are creating. How ever it fits be creativ and have fun with it.” This was a great assignment to do as I could recreate a record holder for something – I chose the Loudest land animal – and spice it up a little by adding in some funny elements and altering other elements to make the page my own.
All of these DS106 assignments I have decided to showcase in this Digital Story Compilation have all been assignments I’ve enjoyed creating as I have been able to learn how to embed images into pages, create GIF’s and FIG’s from scratch, and showcase all of my hard work to my peers and the audience my ePortfolio attracts. This is work I am proud to have made, and found meaning in doing with each and everyone.
When thinking about a historical figure for the “What They Might’ve Done in Social Media” DS106 Assignment, Rosa Parks instantly came to my mind; she is a strong historical figure, and with all that is currently going on with the “Black Lives Matters” protests, I found this fitting for the point our society is currently in.
Thinking about who Rosa Parks was, she sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott by refusing to surrender her seat to a white passenger, and this was caused all based off of the color of her skin. From her refusal to give up her seat, her act was what lead to the end of racial segregation in public places and facilities. Without Rosa Parks standing up in this way, we could still be dealing with the racial segregation that haunted her times; however, all it takes is one act to start a movement, and her act definitely did such a thing.
If social media was around during Rosa Parks’ time, I would assume her posts would look similar to what is pictured above; this is a Twister post I created for Rosa Parks back on March 5, 1954, before the Montgomery Bus Boycott movement started. It places her back in her time when people of different color had to give up their seats for those of white privilege, something she faced all too much during her time, all for a seat on the bus.
I feel if social media was around during Rosa Parks’ time, she would have started the boycott a lot sooner than 1955; this is due to the power social media has. Social media gives individuals the ability to post something they chose, and that content can be liked, shared, or commented on by as many people that wish to. With power like that given to an individual, the awareness for racial segregation back during Parks’ times would have received a lot of attention I feel, especially if majority of people were showing this was an issue and needed to be resolved quickly.
This is a video of Casper, my albino male rat! I took this video back before I actually adopted Casper and he was still a lab rat for one of my courses, Animal, Learning and Behavior. The video was taken at the end of a work day, Casper had already been run for his lab session and I was sitting at the lab table typing up the results for the day. As I was doing this, I would usually have Casper in his cage with the top off so he could sniff around and interact with me. On this particular day, he got a little daring and sneaky, attempting to climb the edges of the cage before perching on the corner closest to me. I looked over and smirked, thinking to myself, “Is he going to climb out?” This is when I grabbed my phone and started recording. From Casper’s perspective, I couldn’t help but wonder what he was thinking: “Must…escape. Must…not…slip.” The full video of the GIF pictured at the left shows Casper giving up after he almost slips and just staring at me, like “I didn’t do anything wrong…”; no rats were harmed in the making of this video/GIF.
I decided to chose this GIF for my home video one because Casper is my pride and joy, and two because it was a funny video I wanted to caption and create into a GIF. When it comes to animals, we never really know what they’re thinking or why they do the things they do. Having a lot of experience with pet rats myself, I’ve noticed that these creatures tend to be sneaky and daring with stunts they pull, especially when they’re familiar with their owners. What I mean by this is that if you own a rat and have a close bond with it, they tend to do things they know will get them in trouble because they want to play with you. Casper somewhat knew he shouldn’t have tried climbing the sides of his cage from the many times I’ve told him no repeatedly; rats are able to learn words and understand what they mean, especially single-word phrases such as, “No.” I do let him get away with things, but sometimes it’s to see what he’s doing and what he’ll do if he accomplishes it, such as climbing out of his cage. This was a fun assignment to create and something I enjoyed doing, especially because it involved my little pet ghost.
The third WEB assignment is to “Remix Guinness Book of World Records” by following the indicated directions: “Remix a Guinness Book of World records web page. Pick any record you want and somehow remix it. Try and connect it to a story, and add some background inspiration into your idea for inspiration. Maybe it was the record you always wanted to set, or break. Or maybe it fits perfectly into a story you are creating. However it fits be creative and have fun with it.” This is when I directed myself to the Original Guinness Records wesbite and stumbled upon a record I wanted remix: the Noisiest Land Animal.
The noisiest land animal in the world is the Howler Monkey (Alouatta), with a full vocal production able to be heard up to 3 miles away! I chose this Guinness Record to remix with X-Ray Goggles because I have seen these monkeys in the wild before and have heard their howling screams.
During my second semester of my junior year at UNE, I took the Costa Rica travel course where over spring break, students traveled to San José and Palo Verde, Costa Rica, to learn more about the rainforests and dry forests. In the rainforest, students would hike upwards of 10 miles a day into the jungle, sometimes being able to see different types of species (i.e., iguanas, sloths, bats, birds, etc.). One of the favorite species among the class was the Howler Monkey; when we would walk through the jungle, we would start to hear the low rumbles of the howler’s screams when thunderstorms or rainstorms were approaching. We could also hear their howls early in the morning as the sun rose, greeting each day with a welcoming howl.
To remix the original webpage, I started off my adding a picture of a Howler Monkey, as the original page did not have this. I chose this picture because it pictures a beautiful male howling with all his might in a treetop branch. I also played around with the “Where” aspect of the page and changed it from the “United Kingdom” to “Screams can be Heard for Miles (Costa Rica)”, as this is this connects to the story behind why I chose this record to remix; I also chose this as the “Where” aspect because their screams can be heard for miles, rumbling through the rainforest and making you question whether it’s a Howler calling or a thunderstorm rolling through.
I also remixed the description aspect of the page; I kept the original text, as this is factual information about the animal, and added the two sentences at the end: “Their screams can be heard for miles through the rainforest! Better wear your soundproof headphones just incase.” This added a fun element to the description by cautioning people how loud these animals are; soundproof headphones are strongly encouraged if you are in close proximity to these animals in the jungle! Along with these elements I changed, I also altered the title of the page from “Noisiest land animal” to “Loudest scream ever produced by an animal”, as I felt this was a twist on the original title of the page. This was an overall fun assignment and I enjoyed employing X-Ray Goggles to understand what I learned from my Codecademy lessons on HTML and CSS.
“Whether your actual family or your close group of friends, make a collage mimicking the picture shown below. Be creative with the title. Make the title alliteration either with your last name or somesort of name you wish to call your group. In your post, explain why you chose the people you did in your collage.” This is the assignment for the second IMAGE assignment, “We’re the Real Life Brady Bunch“
Reflecting on how to showcase this assignment, lately I’ve been reminiscing about my friend group from UNE and how much I miss them because together, we are a family. This is when I decided to create a collage with my friend-family group. Starting from the top left of the collage and working across the rows from left to right, the first person is Frank. Frank is a friend I’ve had since my freshman year at UNE, however, we did not close until our junior year when this entire friend group merged and he is now like a brother to me. The next person is Ben, being someone I met during the summer before our senior year. He is someone I’ve grown close with over this past year and someone I consider to be one of my best friends as he’s also like a brother to me. The next person starting the second row is Sara, who I’ve known since my freshman year as well. She lived down the hall from me in Assisi, and we never really became friends until we lived together our junior year with another friend showcased in the collage (someone I will discuss later). Sara shares my passion for wildlife and the environment and has been someone I’ve always loved to be around and have as a close friend in my life. The next person is myself, as I am a part of this friend group. The person next to me is Andrew, one of my absolute best friends. He was one of my first true friends at UNE, being someone I could lean on and go to for anything, and him being able to do the same with me. He’s had a huge impact on my life and is the person who I know I can go to with anything. The next person starting the last row is Anyssa, or Nyss as we call her. She has been a one of my best friends since we started living together junior year with Sara, and now I could not imagine not having her in my life. She’s the person who shares the same interest in music as I do (punk, metal, rock), as we plan to go a bunch of concerts together once this pandemic is over. She is also someone who I can go to with anything, a true friend to me. The last and final person – someone I specifically saved last – is my absolute best friend, Jillian. I met Jillian during the beginning of our junior year at UNE, as she was friends with Sara and Nyss first, and we instantly became best friends from the start. Not only do we share the same birthday, but we also have the same car, same personality, demeanor, and values for things. She is someone I know I will always have in my life, someone I can count on no matter what, because she’s my best friend.
Together, this friend group has become a family to me since we all came together our junior years. From the adventures to Salmon Falls in Hollis, ME, to go cliff jumping, to the endless nights of us all playing Super Smash Bros on Andrew and Frank’s couch at their house senior year, I will never forget the memories, laughter, and fun I’ve had with my friends. Though the pandemic currently going on makes it hard to see other people, we have still managed to all keep in touch and be a part of each other’s lives, and we’ll hopefully all be able to meet up once things are back to normal. We are the OG Crew, the people who stayed true to each other through everything that came our way.
For the third animated GIF assignment, it was based off the “Turn a GIF into a FIG” assignment where students had to “Find a video clip, or shoot one of yourself, and then make it playback in reverse over and over again as a GIF. Try to find a situation that is absolutely mind-blowing when played backwards.” Looking through my camera roll for a good video to turn into a GIF and then reverse it, I found the one to the left of Casper when I had him as a lab rat. Have you ever seen a rat spin around backwards for a treat? The original video shows Casper spinning in a forward direction before he is rewarded with a treat for performing that behavior; something he is very good at, I might add! When I was reversing this video, it was quite hilarious to me because as hard as my group members tried in the lab course, we could never get Casper to spin in a backwards direction (i.e., this is a hard trick for a rat to learn spinning forwards). Now, I have my own personal video of Casper spinning backwards – hopefully no one will figure out it’s edited so it just looks like my rat is performing a cool trick!
Looking at the image above, what pops into your mind? Possibly a little girl just having fun, minding her own business. The story behind this image is about Rylee Mehung, seven years old at the time, making the best out of her boredom while she’s waiting for Senator Elizabeth Warren to rally with her supporters at Manchester Community College in NH. But what if Rylee really just wanted the attention on her, taking the camera’s attention away from Warren and snapshotting her creative boredom strategies?
This assignment is about capturing “The Big Idea”, or finding an image off of the “The Big Picture” by The Boston Globe and adding typographical text to change the message or meaning the picture actually delivers. This image is from the “Globe staff photos of the month, February 2020“, with some of the best photographs by Globe photographers for the month of February in 2020. The first image on this page is of Rylee making the best out of her boredom. When I saw this, I pictured a seven year old girl just minding her own business while Warren was rallying with supporters; however, the whole point of “The Big Idea” is the change the message of the picture. Below, you will find the way I interpreted the picture after finding the message:
This typographical text along with the image now frames Rylee as a little girl trying to come up with creative ways to turn the photographers attention away from Warren and onto her, because who wouldn’t want the star of the show to be a little girl? She almost looks like a princess, dressed in her green tutu and blue headband, or “crown”, stepping across a bridge onto her next journey. Doing this assignment was interesting because after you know the meaning of a message behind a picture, it’s almost difficult to interpret it any other way. However, with some creative thinking and original ideas, I thought back to when I was a seven year old and how when at family gatherings, I would always try to be in the pictures because I thought it was so much fun (and of course, the attention was turned onto me). This is how I created this MEME and changed the message of the picture.
The Daily Create Challenge for June 8th, 2020, was to, “Add a GIF making funny faces! Let’s make it fun!” Brainstorming about what GIF I would chose, I went to Twitter to begin my post and typed “funny faces” into the GIF search bar. Scrolling through, I found the GIF pictured above and started hysterically laughing because of how relatable this face is! This face reminds me of the face a person usually makes when they’re really excited about something while looking at their phone; this is typically the reaction I produce when I get paid, which is where my post idea generated from. A pay schedule is usually pretty routine, with mine at the moment being weekly payments every Friday morning. Every Friday when I wake up, I go to my bank account app and always have a smile spread across my face when I see I’ve been paid, but who wouldn’t? Pay day is the day where you can relax a little more and take the time to sit in the moment, because being paid for the work you do is an overall good feeling. So, enjoy this lovely GIF of what my pay day experience is like!
@ds106dc Design a postmodern birdie with an emotional color: This picture is of a male Great-tailed Grackle in Belize. I chose yellow hues to enhance its bright, energetic behavior and green shadows to enhance the freshness of the environment. #ds106#tdc3069@eng304crippspic.twitter.com/hqzg9RsD91
For The Daily Create’s challenge for June 7th, 2020, the challenge was to design a postmodern birdie with an emotional color. Looking through my photos, I remembered that while I was Belize, I had taken pictures of a lot of birds, one of favorites being a male Great-tailed Grackle (Quiscalusmexicanus); the little guy picture above was always very chipper in the morning, bee-bopping from treetop to treetop, making it very difficult to get a picture. This is one of my favorite pictures I got of him, nestled in the over-crossing of branches and leaves high up in the trees. Turning this bird into a postmodern birdie with emotional colors, I decided to use the colors yellow and green. The color yellow emotionally symbolizes things such as bright, sunny, energetic, warm, happy, and joy; the color green emotionally symbolizes things such as freshness, the environment, money, fertility, and the earth. I chose to use yellow shadows to enhance the bird’s dark colored body to now resemble it’s perky, bright, and energetic behavior. I also chose to use green hues to enhance the environmental aspects of the picture, such as the branches and leaves, to resemble the freshness of the earth and area the bird was in. Putting these colors into this photo made the birds body pop with the shadows of yellow, and the environmental aspects around him, making for a fun and eccentric postmodern birdie displaying emotional colors.
I have also provided another picture based off of this Daily Create challenge of my rat Casper, pictured on the left. I chose to use the colors blue and pink for his emotional colors. The color blue emotionally symbolizes tranquility, security, loyalty, peace, and trust; the color pink emotionally symbolizes healthy, happy, sweet, compassionate, and playful. I chose to use pink hues to enhance Casper’s happy, compassionate, and playful behavior while using blue shadows to enhance his tranquility, security, and trust in his home environment. I hope you have enjoyed my take on a postmodern birdie/rat using emotional colors!
The “Color Walks Time Lines” assignment stated to “Choose a color and then take a 20 minute walk in which you take 5-8 pictures of the color as you encounter it. Then upload the photos to Flickr and create a time line using TimeLine JS.”
This is my timeline for the Color Walks Time Line assignment. I decided to pick the color green and use pictures from the travel course I took to Belize with UNE. Though I did not take a walk, these are pictures I wanted to share with people and give them a virtual experience of what Belize looks like and the beautiful things you can see here. These pictures are ones that remind me of all the amazing times I got to experience in Belize, from snorkeling and diving in the coral reefs to hiking through the mangrove forests. Belize is full of brilliant and bright colors, and green is something that definitely stood out to me during my trip, from the green iguanas basking in the sun, the bright green cabin I stayed in, to the greenish waters being illuminated by bright yellow lights to see the manta rays jump out of the water. I hope everyone enjoys my virtual tour of a green walk in Belize! You can also view my photos in my Flickr album as well.
#tdc3064#ds106 I ordered a pack of Monster online and never received my order after almost a month, the company took my money. After emailing customer service for weeks, the company took down they’re website and can no longer be located online… #scam@ds106dc@eng304cripps
“Describe your absolute experience with customer service…”
The Daily Create for Tuesday, June 2nd was to describe your absolute worst experience with customer service. At the end of April, I had ordered a 24-pack of Monster online from a company I had never ordered from, however, they seemed credible enough for me to place my order with them. I placed my order and waited for my order to ship; I was also aware that shipping might have taken longer due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. After about a week and a half, I received an email with a link to track my package; I checked the status of my order at least once everyday, and every time it said my order was processing. On top of this, the company had already taken my money for the order. I had been emailing the company off of their customer service “send in a request” message page, and had done this once a week for three weeks. After about a month of waiting, I went into my email to check the status of my order again, but the page was no longer loading and my internet browsing could not locate the webpage anymore; I tried going to the company’s original website as well and the same thing happened. This is when I realized I had been scammed, on top of the fact that my emails were never answered back and there was no phone number to contact the company. This is when I decided to call my bank and have them place a dispute with the payment the company had taken from me. Within a week, I received my money back and still never received my package of Monster… What I got out of this experience was the absolute worst customer service experience ever, considering I never was able to talk to anyone from the company about the status of my order and they shutdown they’re webpage altogether. In the future, I will always be cautious of the websites I use and only use ones I am familiar with so I do not get scammed again.
This meme idea was sparked from my blog topic about how roads impact wildlife. I was thinking of an idea for a meme and started looking up in Google Images, “wildlife and roads”. This is when I found this picture of a brown bear sitting in the road with a car pulled over to the side; my initial thought when I saw this was, “Huh. It looks like this bear is protesting the road by just plopping itself right in the road.” This is what began to spark my caption for the meme: wildlife don’t have a say when it comes to roads being placed into their environments; they’re expected to “deal with it” or “become accustomed” to it as our society continues to build upon the environment. Animals can’t fight back against humans or the infrastructures built on their land, meaning they become susceptible to mortality or harm when coming face to face with a car driving down a roadway. I chose the caption, “Protesting roads because killing wildlife with your car isn’t enough anymore” because this seems to be what the case is these days; wildlife are now constantly susceptible to mortality, vehicle collisions, or other factors from roads (i.e., destruction to habitat, pollution, erosion, etc.), and the only way that people would seem to start becoming aware of this issue is if the wildlife started protesting (if they could). However, the point of this meme is to become aware of the fact that wildlife may not be able talk about how they are affected by roads, but how they are being affected is what matters and what needs to cease.
“I go a little dark and twisty…but then I come back.” – Meredith Grey, Grey’s Anatomy
I am a huge fan of Grey’s Anatomy, having watched it so many times now that I know most episodes by heart. For this GIF assignment, I decided to pick a scene from one of the episodes that I felt I related to the most. This GIF is from a scene where Meredith Grey (on the left – lighter hair) and Amelia Shepherd (on the right – darker hair) are discussing some tough times they’ve been through; Meredith just lost her husband, Derek Shepherd, who is also Amelia’s brother. As they’re talking, Meredith states, “I go a little dark and twisty… but then I come back.” What she means by this is that when things get tough for her, she escapes to her dark and twisty thoughts because she finds some sort of comfort in them; this is also while considering she’s been through a lot in her past as well: her mother almost killed herself in front of Meredith, Meredith drowned but was able to be revived, her husband was shot and then he was killed from a semi-truck months later, and so on. It reminds her of what she’s gone through and where she is now, how far she’s come in life and how much she’s survived. She always snaps out of those thoughts at some point because, as she also says, “Everything must go on.” I can relate to this GIF and what Meredith said because, sometimes, you need to bring yourself back to the dark and twisty times to remind you of where you’ve come from, where you are now, and how much you have left to go. Though it may seem disturbing or weird to some to do this, it’s something about reminding yourself of those times that makes you know you’ll be okay. Making it through something horrible in your past builds you up to be able to be brave, strong, and empowered by what you went through; it makes you remember how far you’ve come through everything in your life and snap you back into reality, prepared and stronger then ever.
@ds106dc@eng304cripps This is one of my favorite poems I found a while ago… it reminds me of how far I’ve come from the hauntings of my past and how far I know I can go. This poem, as it states, is for me, who I can be, who I’ve become, and who I want to be #tdc3063#ds106pic.twitter.com/h1e88istLI
This poem is one that I hold true to and for myself. I found the quote back in 2018, and ever since I’ve periodically read it to remind me of myself: where I’ve come from, where I am, and where I want to go. My past is full of things that tried to tear me down, become susceptible to the vulnerability of other’s and my own feelings, thoughts, and emotions, and eventually leading me to my lowest point. After years of working on myself, focusing on myself and what I value, I finally made it out of those dark times; I realized who I truly was, the person I used to be had come out of her shell and changed into the person I am today. This poem makes me reflect on the memories I have and want to have, the potential my future holds for me, the struggles I’ve faced and how I’ve overcome them, and for the beauty and self-love I’ve found in myself. This poem is for me, the person I used to be and the person I have become today, the person I want to keep aspiring to be and not conforming to what others want me to be.
This is my male albino rat, Casper (the friendly ghost)! He is almost a year old – he will be on June 22nd, 2020 – and is one my first actual pets I have owned myself. Casper came into my life December 6, 2019. I adopted him from the rat lab conducted on campus involved with the animal behavior course Animal, Learning and Behavior. In this class, eight different groups were divided up with one rat per group, Casper being the rat in my group. We conditioned the rat’s in operant conditioning chambers – similar to what B.S. Skinner conducted in his studies – and trained our rats to press levers and retrieve a reinforcer for pressing the lever. This was done on multiple different levels, with Casper needing to press the lever once, twice, even five times, etc. to retrieve a reinforcer. Once this behavior was established, Casper was taught how to spin and receive a reinforcer for doing so. Once the class was completed, students had the opportunity to adopt rats to have as pets so they would not end up being euthanized. I felt an established bond with Casper while I was training him in class, and knew this was the rat for me to adopt. Casper definitely has grown and blossomed since I’ve had him, teaching me more about the bond between animals and humans too. Rats are able to bond with their humans through trusting them and eventually becoming accustomed to the way their human’s are and the way their human’s life is. Since I’ve adopted Casper, I’ve gained his trust and have been able to provide him a healthy and happy life, even teaching him some new tricks, too. Casper is definitely an animal I will always love, even after he’s gone, for the bond and connection I made with him.
Going onto the DS106DC Twitter page today, I saw the daily create challenge was to draw your foot; I instantly thought, “Ew… I hate feet…nope!” However, after pondering it for a bit, I realized that I had never taken on the challenge of drawing a part of the human anatomy before, not even a face, let alone a foot. So, I decided to draw my own foot. This was a relaxing and mindful activity for me to do, and I enjoyed being able to sketch again, which is something I haven’t done in a while. As I sat and angled my foot, I got to work with my pencil and sketch pad and started by outlining my big toe, following it done the inside arc of my foot to my heel, adding in some ankles and a leg, and back up the other side. I did the toes last because to me they felt like the most difficult aspect of sketching my foot. I’m pretty satisfied with how it turned out! Though it may be a rough sketch and not shaded or quite realistic, it’s as much of a foot as I would be able to draw!
