Week 1: Famous Last Words

So far everything I have done has been before school has even started. I learned from last year that working ahead is the best way to keep from being stressed in this class. Though I never really got stressed because I enjoyed the work we did for the class I was in last year. I am actually writing this the Thursday before school. I guess I could be called an overachiever. So far the orientation week has been pretty easy. A lot of the material is the same as last year and we are able to use our work from last year or do a different assignment. I think that is a great idea. This makes the beginning not redundant. At this point I am excited for classes to start back up. This is my last year of college and I am excited to graduate. I have no idea where I will be next summer and that kind of scares me. Everything will work out in the end. I have yet to do any major writing for this class yet. That will change shortly though. I have been able to give feedback on the differences from last year though and that is nice to feel needed. This is actually kind of hard to come up with ideas on what to talk about since it is the first week. I do have to up at two thirty in the morning to go work. I have been inspecting at a job site in Newcastle the past month and a half. They are working on a bridge. Tomorrow, they are going to pour the concrete for the deck. The deck is the part that you drive on just for clarification. Tomorrow is also my last day at this internship. Back to this class, I hope I am able to come up with a good topic for my storybook this year. I really enjoyed my topic I chose for the Epics of India class last year. That will be a hard one to beat but I will try this year.

Be Yourself

Source: MKALTY

Week 1: Introduction

Hello my name is Colton Roberts. I am a senior this year and I cannot wait until May 2015. I am majoring in Civil Engineering and I am currently an intern at ODOT. ODOT is Oklahoma Department of Transportation. Thus, I work with roadways.  I am from Tuttle Oklahoma. I love sports and am very active. My favorite sport is wrestling. This is because I am a two time state champion wrestler in high school. Wrestling taught me many things but the main ones are hard work and dedication and to never give up on myself. Besides wrestling I love to run, wakeboard, ski, play football and really anything else athletic. I am not big on reading but when I get interested in a book it becomes hard to put it down. The Hunger Games are my favorite books.One of my favorite quotes is by Mia Hamm. It is “ the vision of a champion is bent over, drenched in sweat, at the point of exhaustion, when nobody else is looking." I took the Epics of India class last semester with our same teacher. She is really one of the best teachers I have had while in college. She is very helpful and understanding. I am just saddened that I have never got to meet her in person.

 (Image Information: personal photo of myself;

photo from February 2010.)

This photo is of me and my opponent after our match in the state final my senior year. This is also one of the happiest days of my life. Nothing compares to feelings you get when all your hard work pays off.

Week 1:Storybook Favorites

The storybook Jungle Tiger Stories caught my attention first. I thought the design of the storybook was quite plain but my thoughts about the storybook changed when I got to the introduction. I thought it was plain because the background was just green. There was not any design to the storybook. As I read the introduction I got the feel that the story was about the Jungle Book. I am not sure that it is about the Jungle Book but that is what I thought. The introduction made me want to read the whole story but do to time I am unable to but maybe I will go back and read it sometime.

The second storybook that caught my eye was Peter Pan: The Boy That Would Not Grow Up. I am a huge Peter Pan fan. I actually have a Halloween costume that is Peter Pan. The layout of the storybook is nice. There is not anything special but the font is fancy and there are two green colors. The introduction was put together pretty well. This is another story I would like to read. I am really curious as to who is telling the story. I guess to find that answer I need to read more of the story.

My last storybook is The Trickster of OU. I really like the look of of this storybook. The layout is very precious and neat. I had to look at this storybook because it is about OU and it is about tricksters. I take that as it had to be funny. I got the same feeling from reading the introduction. Again, I wish I could read this story. I really want to know what tricks the trickster does in the story. I think the author couls have changed the font to give the look a little more pop but overall I think this is a good storybook.

Week 1: The Adventure of the Un-Textbook

Week 2: I am a huge fan of fairy tales thanks to Disney. I think  Apuleius's Cupid and Psyche will be a great start to the semester. The story should get my creativity up and running. We will see how well the story compete with the great Disney story Beauty and the Beast.

Week 3: I think the Adam and Eve section will be a nice read. I have heard their story growing up from the Bible. I think getting more stories about them will help with my knowledge.

Week 4: My first pick is easily Ramayana. I loved this book last year when I took Epics of India. Rama was my favorite of all the characters that we read about. I would like to see what the brief overview is like.

Week 5: Arabian Nights will most likely take my week 5 reading. Aladdin is one of my favorite Disney movies. Since this reading will include Aladdin, I figure the story will keep me interested and make reading the story easier. I also like the kind of Inception feeling of stories within stories within stories.

Week 6: The Monkey King Sun Wu Kung caught my attention because monkeys are my favorite animal. Then when I read the blurb about the story, I became even more interested. I cannot wait to see what all Sun does that ends up making Buddha intervene

Week 1 Storytelling: My Cousin the Hero

It was the summer I was 12 at our holiday home when the craziest story of my life happened. Here is how it started. “Why don’t you just go outside and play Colton but be home before dark. You know the angry birds come around after dark” my mom said. “Okay” I said as I bolted from the house. Once outside I was trying to decide where to go. The summer before I went to the Northeast corner of the area around our holiday home and had a wonderfully scary time at the Haunted Castle. This summer though I had hoped it would be a little less scary so I decided to go with the Southwest corner. It was opposite of the Haunted Castle so I thought it had to be better. I have never been so wrong in my life.

My journey started off through a lot of trees till I came across a Bunker. I went in but there was nothing inside. “Boring” I thought to myself. So I continued to make my journey to the Southwest. That’s when I came across a huge bog. By the time I realized I was in a bog it was too late. I sunk into the mud and couldn’t move. I was just about to except my fate when I heard a sweet ladies voice. She said to me, “I will help you out but you have to help me in return. Will you help me?” I agreed to help and this weird looking old lady came out from behind a tree. She threw me a rope and managed to pull me out. After she got me out she told me to follow her. I did and we made our way out of the bog.
We arrived at this cleared area. It had a circle of rocks and what looked like a stone platform. As I took in my surrounding, the old lady grabbed my wrists and tied them together. That is when I realized what this place was. The old lady put me on the table. I asked, “what is going on?” “I am a witch and to regain my youth I must sacrifice a young boy” she said. It was a sacrificial altar. How could I have not realized that when I first saw it? I started pleading for my life but the witch was evil and only cared about the regaining her youth. I started to cry and that’s when the witch started to laugh. It was a horrible laugh that sounded like a donkey. She grabbed this rusty old knife and was walking towards me when my cousin Amanda tackled the witch.

Amanda got the knife and cut me free. We took off running towards the house. The witch was after us. She was about to catch us when this ogre jumped out and grabbed her. We never stopped running. We screamed all the way back to the house. We made it back to the house just as the sun was setting. My mom met us at the door because she heard our screaming and asked what was wrong. I told her the whole story and she started laughing and said we have a crazy imagination. She then hurried us inside because the birds were starting to show up around us. When we got inside I thanked my cousin for saving me and asked her how she found me. She said she arrived at the holiday house shortly after I set out on my adventure. My mom had told her that I went towards the Southwest and asked her to check on me. She said she made it to the bog and saw four sets of footprints and followed them. Then she found the altar as the witch was grabbing the knife. I have never been happier to see my cousin than in that moment.

Author’s Note: This story was based off of Tom Gauld’s Map of a Holiday in Hell. From this map I used these motifs: the Angry Birds, the Bunker, the Haunted Castle, the Bog, the Sacrificial Altar, the Ogre, and the Witch. I used these motifs because I knew if I let my imagination wonder I could come up with a good story. In this story I wanted to create an adventure of a boy that is walking through the woods looking to come across something fun. Instead he has two scary life changing moments. Then as he tries to tell his mom what happened she blamed it on his imagination. Like most adults when a child tells a crazy story. I didn’t have anything to really base my story on in the beginning but as I started writing I started to picture some parts of the cartoon Scooby Doo. Though I have never seen an episode that is anything like this, the monsters and ideas behind the cartoon helped my mind wonder. I wrote this story last semester. It was the first of my many crazy stories I came up with. I hope you like it.

Map of a Holiday in Hell, by Tom Gauld

Web Source: MAP

Week 1: Favorite Place

My favorite place is Texas. I was born in Texas. I have been to many different places in Texas but the one place I have been to the most is Dallas. Dallas is a great city with many places to go and activities to do.

(Dallas, Texas:

Wikimedia Commons)