Happy mid-term weeks everybody! It is truly one of the most stressful times you force yourself through twice a year! And just when you’re done with mid-terms, with a twisted smile and sadistic laugh, your professors tell you it’s time for finals preparation. So you pull out your now grey hair and grit your teeth, and hold on to that hope that you will make it to the holiday season where you will get fat and doughy after all the stress of buying gifts and fighting mothers in the grocery store for the best turkey. Then come those stressful months of burning off the weight you gained so you can look good for Spring Break. Alas, stress will always be there is my point, but here are two weeks of stress packed into one, and posted here for your enjoyment.

So most of the work the past two weeks has been spent on the Radio Show we were assigned. We were given a lot of freedom to choose our themes and topics for our radio shows. Unfortunately, freedom does not make an assignment easier. On the contrary, you have to choose from a world of topics and themes to find the right one for a short radio show, and hope that you can work well with three other people. My group, Group 2, chose to do a Theme Park theme because the guy who started the discussion worked at a theme park. I suggested that we could get inspiration (and thrills) by actually going to Kings Dominion which is currently doing its annual Halloween Haunt. Thus, my role in the discussion (as I have been in many discussion classes) was to orientate the group and try to structure it. I wanted some concrete ideas of what we were doing, when we could make a trip to Kings Dominion, and really focus on the content. I suggested we interview some of the monsters at Kings Dominion, and download some scary music to play in the background of our product. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get on the same page as far as going to Kings Dominion, but since Hyrum worked their, he was able to get a few interviews himself, so I provided some audio I was able to find that was creepy over the e-mail discussion we started. I felt comfortable in my role in the group, as I have been in many discussion classes and I know the value of having someone who can organize the discussions, and keep them moving towards and eventual outcome and product. The hardest part was keeping in contact with each other. I was checking the Canvas and E-Mail discussion every day on my phone, but unless we were all posting around the same time, it was a slow discussion. That being said though, I believe our project was successful and effective.

Through the week, I was able to keep up with the Daily Creates, and even did one of my own suggested assignments. I found it mind boggling that I could do a homework assignment I assigned. Here is the six Daily Creates I did this week all compiled together in one neat post.

Now for the random blah blah excuses my professor doesn’t want to hear as to why my post for this is late. Nah, I’m not going to make any excuses, the fact was that I underestimated the sound assignments. I procrastinated like a naughty student and left them for one day and it’s all my fault so I accept the fact that it is late to my accord. That being said, here are the belated sound assignments. I know you all were so anxious to hear them, so I apologize again for them being late.
I know you all are astounded at my ability to completely take over the whole stage with my Macbeth reading.
And if you liked that, you would also enjoy my rendition of Green Eggs And Ham.
Furthermore, do you love those haunting jingles you can never ever forget for 22 years? Well you are in fantastic luck as I blew this one out of the park with my country boy draw as I glorify the ever-so-tasty Double Stuffed Peanut Butter Oreo.

Finally let me tell you about the media I left in the drop box for DS106. They were pictures I didn’t use for assignments. First was one called Tony’s Pizza. There was a visual assignment asking us to find our name written in a store sign or something along the lines of that. I did not end up finding this assignment again when I looked for it, so I just did another assignment. Next was one called Skins Hat. It was one of the pictures I took for design week. I was going to use this as an example of Symbolism, but the Redskins no longer use the throwback symbol much, and I had a better example. Next was one called Goats. I was trying to get a picture of the goats in an awkward angle for the Photoblitz, but I finally gave up because they were starting to get vicious, and I took a picture of Obama the Donkey instead. Finally, I posted a picture called Human Emotion. I snapped a picture of Allan because he was laughing a lot for the human emotion part of Photoblitz, but the outcome of the picture ended up being one of “I’m not entirely sure what emotion that is,” so I dumped the picture, and used another one instead. That’s it for Audio Crunch Week. I learned that procrastination does not fly in DS106. I relearned that audio is tricky to work with and time consuming. I also learned that it is difficult, but not impossible to work in a group at this. Week 9, here… we… GO!