Breaking the Cardinal Law of the Internet

I've always heard people say to never google yourself. Nothing good is supposed to come out of it. But Kerry's presentation said exactly the opposite. The first rule of creating your own personal brand is googling yourself to see what's already out there about you. Then you can decide what you want to show up in the future and work towards making that happen.

I googled myself as soon as I got home that day and was delighted to see that I really like the results. Most of it is actually me--though there is a doctor out there named Autumn Shuler--and that it's all stuff that I proud to be associated with. Some of my Zelda blog posts come up, as well as a lot of my yarn stuff, my various social media profiles, and some feminism.

It's interesting to see what I boil down to on the Internet, and how it truly reflects what I want it to. I guess that means that I'm doing something right, since that's all the stuff I consider to be most important to me is actually what I'm talking about.

Blogging as a Class

My Writing for the Digital Age class has started giving our final presentations, and I'll be posting up some blog entries about the various subjects brought up.

Today I'd like to talk about Jordan's presentation. Jordan chose to reflect on our class and point out what she thought worked about its format and what didn't. I agreed with her on many points, but most of all on her point about our blogs. 

Though we were all required to keep a personal blog about whatever we wanted, we weren't required to read each others's blogs. I know that not everybody is as gung-ho about the whole blog thing as I am, but I read each and every one of my classmates's blogs, and I'm so glad that I did.

Because we were allowed to post about whatever we wanted and not just about class readings, I feel that I've learned a lot about my classmates from their individual blogs. I feel that I know everyone in my class much better than any other class I've ever taken, purely because I paid attention to what they had to say online.

I think Jordan's suggestion that future sections of this course be required to comment on each others's blogs is a very good one. Interaction and interconnectivity between peers is an excellent thing, and is made all the more so when it turns your peers from just students into complex individuals with lives outside of the classroom.

Link to the Past Part 4: Ice and Death

Long time, no see! It feels like forever since I posted last, and I'm excited to share my experience with Dungeon 5 of LttP.

I located the dungeon fairly easily, despite Logan's warnings that I was probably going to have a tough time with it. I think he gets used to my gameplay being poor and severely underestimates my puzzle solving abilities. If there's one kind of game I have lots of experience with, it's puzzle games.

My elation faded quickly once I actually started the dungeon. Ice floors? Really? Because I don't have a hard enough time getting around already!

This room in particular gave me a lot of trouble. (image from blondenerd.com)

According to my Google search for that picture, the dungeon is called Ice Palace. Now I feel really dumb, because I've just been referring to all of these places by their number rather than their titles. I had no idea! Loss of nerd cred right there.

Anyway, I ended up walking through the majority of this dungeon quite a bit, because the ice psyched me out and the enemies are getting tougher. Fortunately, I now have blue mail, and that helped quite a bit in the enemy department. Once I had that, I got to the boss much more quickly than I expected.

I certainly felt that I was getting the cold shoulder. (image from zeldadungeon.net)

I am pleased as punch to announce that this is the second boss in a row that I beat on my first try! Fire rod and potions all the way!

Watch out Dungeon 6. You're next.

Navigating a Sea of Jobs

Today is a "two cups of tea first thing in the morning" kind of day.

Yesterday I gave my big Capstone presentation. It went very well, and I was extremely happy with the amount of audience participation I received during the Q&A session. My mom came up to see it and was very proud, and treated Logan and I with a trip to Tom&Chee and Coldstone.

All of that stuff was wonderful, but it certainly made a Wednesday feel like a Friday, which is always a dangerous game to play. This morning I'm having a hard time getting started because it feels like it should be the weekend already, and it is anything but. I'm probably going to be pulling a twelve-hour day on campus because EVERYTHING IS HAPPENING TODAY. I have a million places to be and not enough time to really be in all of them.

But that's not what makes this a two cup kind of day. No, in addition to all of the stuff that's going on on campus today, I'm job hunting. I've been casually job hunting for a little while now, just to see what types of things were out there and to figure out exactly what I'm interested in, but so far it hasn't really gone anywhere. But yesterday I stumbled on a job that I REALLY want.

Reeeeeeeeeally want.

And now I'm panicking because I found it yesterday and it closes tomorrow, which means I have to get all my stuff together today. I have a resume that I've tailored to the position using my base resume that I'm fairly confident in, but I'm getting stuck on the stinking cover letter. I'm writing ok cover letters over and over again, but none of them seem to convey just how much I want this job and how good of a fit I would be for it. Every one of them falls short of the (admittedly high) bar I've set for them.

I know that I need to just slow down, take a step back, and restart the situation. Nothing good comes out of panic for me. It's just hard.

Ugh, here's a picture of an alpaca to make myself feel better.

Image from cutestpaw.com

A Link to the Past: Part 3 ft. The Most Annoying Dungeon (I Hope)

Image from justpushstart.com

Over the weekend, I beat Dungeon 4. I call it Dungeon 4 here for the sake of keeping the blog family-friendly, but trust me, I don't call it Dungeon 4 at home. It has a quite a few colorful names there.

I found the dungeon (do these things have real names, or they actually referred to by their numbers?) fairly easily. Logan thought I would have trouble tracking it down, but since I've gotten into the weird habit of pulling on stuff while I'm thinking because I think the animation is hilarious, I found it almost as soon as I walked into town. Of course, the completely inconspicuous statue helped.

I mean, this doesn't look suspicious at all. Image from zeldawiki.org.

I even managed to get through the dungeon fairly well. If there had been any more rooms, the similarity between all of them would have gotten me very confused, but after a little while of trial and error, I got used to the set-up.

Then I found the maiden.

Image from nerdgasmnetwork.blogspot.com

As per her request, I tried to take her outside, only to have her run away when we got to the entrance. I immediately thought that she wasn't a maiden after all, but was actually the boss. I went all the way back through the dungeon, got her again, then led her into the room that the compass told me would house the boss fight.

Nothing happened.

I knew it had to be something to do with the light outside that made her run away the first time, so I figured I could beat her with some bright light. While exploring the dungeon earlier, I found an upstairs area that was brightly lit. I led her up there, smug with my intelligence, and she ran away again.

Frustrated by getting beat by the puzzle and by Logan's obvious desire to help me, I ran around in circles upstairs while I thought. That's when I noticed I could bomb the floor right underneath a beam of light. Lo and behold, the "you did something right" noise went off, and I went to fetch the maiden for the third time.

The third time was the charm because when I led her into the boss fight room, she transformed into Blind -- the master thief who hates light.

Image from nerdgasmnetwork.blogspot.com

I'm extremely proud to say that -- despite being confronted with two invincible, fireball spewing heads in addition to Blind himself -- I beat him on my FIRST TRY! Huge success!

The fact that I used two potions is irrelevant.

A Link to the Past: Part 2

Image from justpushstart.com

A lot has happened since my last LttP update. I am now able to travel between the light world and the dark world, which is pretty exciting.

The most exciting thing that has happened since my last update was getting the hookshot. The hookshot is the greatest thing ever. Ever! And I beat the boss of that dungeon on my very first try! Thank you hookshot.

Image from gamespot.com

I also finished Dungeon 3. Twice.

Yes, you read that correctly. About 3/4 of the way through the dungeon, one of my cats somehow managed to eject the cartridge. So, I went through the whole thing again. And the whole thing took way, way, way longer than it should have because of the hands.

Master Hand is not my friend. And I have a bad feeling that haven't seen the last of them.

Why vs. How in Digital Communication

Today, I'd like to talk about a quote I found in the article "Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century."

The goal was to allow students to set and complete their own tasks with the focus almost entirely on the production process. Little effort was made to give youth a context for thinking about these changes or to reflect on the new responsibilities and challenges they faced as participants in the digital culture.

This quote is interesting to me because it brings up two main points.
1. Teaching in the digital age is focused on production.
2. There is little context for thinking critically about digital culture itself.

In my experience, it is much easier to learn how to produce something on your own than it is to understand how something works. For example, trying to explain why blogging is interesting in the digital world and what it means to be a blogger is much more difficult than acutally going out and just writing up a blog post or two. But we still focus on teaching production.

Now, I'm not saying that we should stop teaching production. It's important to be able to make things competantly and confidently, but it's more important to focus on why we make the things we do rather than on how to do so.

But there isn't really a space for us to talk about this new "responisibility" and the "challenges" it creates. And I don't mean actual space -- obviously I'm talking about it right now. I mean a space in our social order. We don't give our forms of communication as much thought as we probably should. We don't take the time to figure out how and why something works before we go and start using it or making assumptions about it. It's time to change that.

The Top 5 Reasons I'm Pro-Choice

On Thursday, November 7, 2013, I protested for the first time in my life. A group on campus (whose name I don't know -- they didn't really advertise that) had an anti-abortion display up that was so disgustingly inaccurate and offensive that something in me broke down and I knew it was time to stand up for what I believed.

First of all, they were saying that abortion is genocide and that we're going through a new Holocaust. We won't even get into how misleading and offensive such a faulty comparison is. Secondly, they were showing obviously mislabeled and extremely graphic pictures of aborted "9-10 week old" fetuses that were obviously way, way more developed than 9-10 weeks.

I stood across from the display with signs of my own proclaiming my own pro-choice views and eventually people starting standing with me. Lots of students came and went, using up their gaps between classes to stand for what they believed. A lot more stood for a long time, and many sacrificed their lunch in order to make themselves seen and heard. At our strongest point, we probably had about 20 ladies and gentlemen out there with signs, peacefully protesting.

The amount of strangers who came up and thanked us for standing up against the group was astounding, and the support we garnered was heartwarming in the most unbelievable way. Lots and lots of people stopped and offered to buy us hot drinks, to bring us food, and to apologize that they were going to class and couldn't stand with us. It was amazing.

But unfortunately, such a stand doesn't leave much room for discussion with people on their way to class, and signs can only hold so much information, so I didn't really get to explain my views, only present them. Now, I would like to share the top five reasons I'm pro-choice and the reasoning behind them.

5. We do not have enough resources to care for all potential children.
     It is undeniable that the Earth is running out of resources and that overpopulation is already a problem. If every single fetus were to become a person, we would run out of what little we have even more quickly.

4. Abortion only affects the couple going through it.
    If a woman wants/needs to get an abortion, nobody else has to know. It does not affect anyone but her, and the father of the child. (I do think the father should get a say in what happens, as long as he's not a rapist or something, but that's a whole separate issue.) By choosing to have an abortion, it doesn't affect anybody else's life, but by making abortions illegal, people are directly affecting the life of that couple.

3. A woman should have more rights to her body than a fetus.
    There are laws that state that no person can use another person's body without their continual consent. If a woman is pregnant and no longer wants to be, then the fetus is using her body without her continued consent. By not allowing a woman to terminate her pregnancy, we are giving a fetus more right to her body than her.

2. We currently lack viable alternatives to abortion.
    Most schools in the country teach abstinence-only sexual education, which are ineffective. By not teaching students about sex in a frank and transparent way and creating an environment where students are not comfortable asking questions, we are not keeping teenagers from having sex, only from having educated, well-informed, protected sex.
     In addition, we need free contraception for all citizens. Allowing our taxes to go towards paying for birth control would actually save us money, because pregnancy is far, far more expensive, as are welfare programs and other expenses that come from supporting children that are born into a family that cannot afford them.

1. Every child should be wanted.
    Most importantly, I want every single child that is born to be wanted. Every baby deserves to be raised by people who love him or her and chose to bring them into their life. In cases of adoption, because I know not everybody who wants children can have them, there will be enough people morally opposed to abortion that would be willing to put their children up for adoption. We already have more children that need homes than homes for them to go to, and that makes me sad.

I hope this entry helps you get to know me a little better, and I hope you think closely about the abortion issue and where you stand.

After Graduation

Yesterday it was brought to my attention that we are currently in week 12 of this semester. Week 12 of 16 of my final semester!

Since it's my final semester, people are constantly asking me what I'm going to do after graduation. I know I've had a few years to figure it out, but I'm still just not sure. It's terrifying to think about and between classes, working six days a week, and planning for a wedding, my job hunt just keeps falling by the wayside. The pressure from all of this is really starting to weigh on me, and today I'm having one of those days where I just want to curl up into a fetal position and shut down for a while.

This pressure has gotten me thinking quite a bit about my future career and what I want it to be. Obviously I wouldn't be able to handle a high-pressure environment. But those are the kind of jobs we're supposed to want. High-pressure jobs that allow you to make lots of money. But right now I'm a secretary for the English Department here on campus, which is work for sure, but it's nice work. Nobody is breathing down my neck for something to submit for a tight deadline, if I mess something up a little bit, nothing really bad happens, and I get to talk to people all day.

Honestly, I'd like to continue working in a similar environment, because I really like it here. Being involved in academia means things are never stagnant because every day's schedule is different, and I'm not the biggest fan of monotony (like anyone is). I always have plenty of work to keep me busy and that is important enough that I know I'm needed, but very rarely does something ultra stressful come up. Plus, the people I work with are wonderful individuals whom I don't want to part with.

Going to college "just" to become a secretary is painted as a failure. I'm supposed to become a power-suit wearing high-level executive, or at least aspire to become one through my fearless climb of the corporate ladder. This kind of job just doesn't really appeal to me, not only because it sounds needlessly stressful (how important is that report in the grand scheme of things, really?) but because it would leave me absolutely no energy for my creative pursuits.

I love knitting and writing -- two things that involve a lot of creative energy. If I work at a high-energy job, I know I won't be able to donate my best efforts to the two things that matter to me most. Is it really a failure to want a job that allows me to earn a wage while leaving me with enough will to do what I care about most?

A Link to the Past: Part 1

Image from justpushstart.com

As you can see, I decided to start playing A Link to the Past rather than to continue with The Legend of Zelda. I think it was the right decision, because I'm already having way more fun. I'm missing out on some serious potential nerd cred, but whatever.

My initial impression of LttP is that it's a bigger fan of puzzles than the original. Instead of just hitting enemies, you have to know how to hit them. Case in point -- the most recent boss that I defeated, pictured below. I was super proud of myself for figuring out how to beat him on my very first attempt, and Logan was the very picture of disbelief, because he saw me beat the boss in the dungeon before.

Image from digital-polyphony.com

Which, let's talk about that guy for a minute. I thought Zora was a jerk, but he's got nothing on Moldorm. Moldorm is a jerk, not because he takes much health at a time or anything, but because he's so pushy! And his health resets every time he knocks you off the platform! Let's just say that after getting him down to one hit left three times in a row only to get knocked to the floor below to start over, I was saying some words that my mother would not approve of.

Image from zelda.wikia.com

But the sense of accomplishment I got when I finally beat him was unbeatable. Even finding the Master Sword directly afterwards meant nothing in comparison.  I have a feeling that the fight against Moldorm is going to be a constant companion in my memory when I'm trying to get through something difficult. Can't finish my essay? Don't want to clean out the litter box? Getting out of bed is an absolute chore? Heck, I can do all that stuff and more, after all, I beat Moldorm!

The Legend of Zelda: Part 3

Image from fatratgaming.com

Since last time, I have cleared dungeon 3. I actually got through it without much trouble, which was super surprising! I'm still not very good at the game, but I have noticed a marked improvement from when I started. I die for stupid mistakes less often and I don't have to actively think about the mechanics of the game so much anymore. It's like it has seeped into my brain.

Image from Zeldadungeon.net

Despite all that improvement and my feelings of accomplishment, I am considering letting Zelda go. Because Logan and I are both playing it right now, I see everything before I actually get around to doing it, and it's quite disheartening to watch someone who's awesome at the game blast through a dungeon in 30 minutes that I later take a couple of hours to slog through. It's starting to feel tedious because it's always on in the apartment when I'm home from one of us playing and it feels repetitive to see the same bits over and over.

Image from zelda.wikia.com

So I'm torn between moving on and playing Link to the Past, which is next on my list, or sticking to Zelda. On the one hand, I would be more entertained with Link to the Past because then Logan and I would be playing different games and there would be some variety on the tv. On the other hand, I feel like a wimp by quitting Zelda. 

What are your thoughts? Should I stick with Zelda and be a little frustrated/bored, or move to Link to the Past and be a quitter? Please leave me a comment!