Story: Cupid and Psyche

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess. She was so beautiful that every man in her village wanted to be her husband. Her beauty was compared to Aphrodite and statues were erected in her honor. The princess was called Psyche. Any time she left her castle, she would be bombarded by men who wanted her and would propose to her. It was overwhelming, so she chose to spend all of her time in her room.

Her sister was also beautiful, but not nearly compared to Psyche. She had a husband and lived her life happily outside the castle without any extra attention. Psyche became very envious of her sister. She would sit at her window and watch her laugh with her husband and children. Her jealousy grew until she began to have hatred for her.

"Why must beauty come with such a price?" she would ask herself. "I have no friends, and any man who wants me wants me only for my looks. No one knows me for my true self. I watch my sister live her life happily with a man who truly loves her. It isn't fair that I must spend my life away in this castle while she walks freely!"

With this anger, Psyche prayed to the Gods for assistance."Gods, please hear my prayer. Help me escape this fate of beauty. I don't wish to have this while my sister lives happily. I can't stand to see her outside the castle while I am stuck!"

Venus, Goddess of beauty herself, normally didn't answer such prayers. But, she felt jealousy of Psyche and her beauty. She didn't like that the villagers worshiped her for it when Venus was the only one they should be worshiping. So she sent her son, Cupid, to answer Psyche's prayer. However, her plan wasn't to help her, but instead she wanted Cupid to kill her.

During the night, Psyche heard a noise by her window. Startled, she approached the window to peak out. Her room was high in the sky, so it didn't make sense that someone could be there. But when she looked out, she saw something that left her awestruck. It was a winged creature, a boy, carrying a bow. She was shocked by his beauty and knew immediately that he must be a God. The winged boy approached the window and then entered the room.

"Hello, Psyche." he said. "I am Cupid, God of love and desire. I have come to help you. My mother has heard your prayer."

"I never thought my problem would be worthy of a Gods help.. How will you help me?" she asked.

Cupid found himself struggling with his words in sight of this beauty. His intentions were to kill her, but suddenly he couldn't make himself. He knew his mother would be angry, but he now knew that he had to find another way to help Psyche.

By the next morning, Cupid and Psyche had already become great friends. They had talked all night long and Cupid now felt that he knew everything about her. He understood her hatred for her sister and felt that he had the perfect idea to end Psyche's suffering.

Suddenly, he went to the window, and began to fire arrows at the towns people. Arrows began to rain from the sky as every person was struck. At first Psyche was horrified, but then, she noticed that instead of dying; the towns people were love struck. They were suddenly filled with desire, but not for her, for her sister. Her sister was surrounded by everyone in the village and everyone was admitting their love for her. She ran from the streets into the castle.

"Cupid." Psyche whispered. "I'm free."

"Yes." he answered. "You're free to leave this place."

And with that, Cupid flew away back to his home. He never forgot Psyche, though, and visited her often. Their friendship became strong and eventually they were married. Venus, who originally wanted her dead, was still happy to welcome such a beauty into her family and Psyche was granted immortality, to live happily ever after with Cupid. Her sister remained in the castle for all of her life, with her husband and children, too afraid of the towns people to ever leave.

Cupid and Psyche

Author's Note: In the original story of Cupid and Psyche, Psyche is also a beautiful girl and she is doomed to a bad marriage from an oracle. She weds to a strange man who doesn't show his face (Cupid), and although she is happy with him, her sisters get jealous of her wealth and remind her that the oracle said she was doomed. So Psyche plans to kill Cupid, but as she shines a light on him she sees how beautiful he is and she realizes she loves him. While admiring him she accidentally burns him and he leaves her, angry that she betrayed him. The story ends by Psyche being put through difficult tasks by Venus, Cupids mother, who hates Psyche because of her beauty. In the end, Psyche passes all the tasks and is granted immortality with Cupid to be with him forever. In this story, I eliminated the oracle but instead made her feel like she was in her own prison and instead of her sisters being jealous of her, I made her jealous of her sister. This makes Psyche into somewhat of a villain because she wants to plot against her sister. I didn't want to change the love that Cupid and Psyche have because I really like that part of the story, but I wanted it to be an easier love, one where there isn't so much turmoil but instead happiness between the two from beginning to end. I decided to make the sister have a sad ending because it shows that Cupid would rather strike a whole town with arrows than kill Psyche, and it shows a more wicked side of Psyche that the original story did not. 

Original story: Cupid and Psyche by Apuleius 

Reading Notes: Cupid and Psyche, Part B

The first thing I noticed in reading part B is the anger that Venus feels about Cupid falling in love with Psyche. She feels betrayed that her son would do this since she feels that Psyche is her enemy or rival since the people worship her for her beauty, even though Venus is the goddess of beauty. It would be interesting if instead, she related to Psyche and felt empathy for her.

As Venus begins to assign Psyche with tasks, I wonder what would have happened if she could not complete them or had no help to complete them. Would she pass out of exhaustion? Would Venus kill her? This could lead the story in a tragic direction.

Another thing to note is if Psyche was never caught by Venus, and in turn never had to preform these tasks. Maybe Cupid escapes from his confinement, healed, to rescue her and keep her safe or to win his mother over in regards to Psyche.

As Psyche goes to the underworld to preform another task, perhaps she could get stuck down there; not dead, but only trapped until someone can rescue her. Or maybe she has to preform tasks for Hades and this just adds on to her long list.

Psyche in the Underworld

And lastly, as the story ends, I can see several different ways it could go. For one, Psyche could die leaving Cupid in a depression that his wife and child are gone, and he no longer preforms his duties leaving his mother in shambles that she ever tried to get rid of Psyche. Another way would be that Cupid grows tired of Psyche and realizes that his mother is right and lives happily without her. There are other ways that the story could end happily as well, maybe Cupid instead gives up his life to live a mortal life with Psyche, in a Disney's "Hercules" type of ending. The possibilities here are endless. 

Cupid and Psyche by Apuleius, translated by Tony Kline 

Reading Notes: Cupid and Psyche, Part A

One idea that I came up with right off the bat after beginning the story Cupid and Psyche was, wouldn't it be interesting if the roles were flipped? If Psyche was a goddess of love and Cupid was instead the most handsome man in the land. A gender reverse could be interesting. Since women and men had different roles in society at this time, it could be a very different situation as to if Cupid were married or not.

Another idea from "The Oracle of Apollo" is that instead of no one wanting to marry Psyche, if she was already married. That could steer the story into another interesting direction. Or, instead of the oracle saying something negative, it says something positive like "Psyche will marry and have many children." This would prevent a lot of things from happening, or, the same things could happen but for different reasons. This implies that certain things will happen no matter what an oracle says.

My favorite section is "The Mysterious Husband" where Psyche is told not to allow her sisters to know if she is alive, and she is also in a great depression. She is eventually told she is able to see them as long as she doesn't do anything they say. This is an important part of the story. If he had not allowed her to see them, it would have played out much differently; or if when she did see them, she did not create a lavish life for herself but instead kept things private and didn't make her sisters jealous.

Cupid and Psyche

Finally, the last part that grabbed my attention was when the sisters plot against Psyche, and Psyche ends up fearing that she has a monster for her husband and trys to kill him. This could lead to an interesting place if details were changed! It would be interesting if Cupid did not drive her from the place, but instead reacted differently, or perhaps if she never tried to kill him in the first place. 

Cupid and Psyche written by Apuleius, translated by Tony Kline 

Famous Last Words: Orientation Week

Seeing as I haven't officially started classes yet, the only thing I have to reflect on right now is this class. The main thing I have to say is that I'm glad I started early! I would probably have been overwhelmed if I hadn't. The orientation seemed like a lot of work, probably because I was just learning about the class. Now that I mostly have it down, the blogging, the image captions, the storytelling, etc., it should become a lot easier and seem like less. Before I know it it'll be second nature, which is something I look forward to!

I honestly had no idea upon taking this class that there would be so much writing and creativity involved. I think that's great since I love writing anyway and am in the college of journalism, after all. That said, I really feel like I struggle with creativity sometimes. I'm great at cranking out an essay or a report, but I'm lacking in creative writing. Although I usually can come up with something eventually, I do want to get to a point where I can do it quite quickly.

Now that school is really starting on Monday for all of my classes, I'm glad I got a head start on this one. It got me in the mood for learning after having a couple of months off from it. I wanted to get as much done this week since I still have nothing to do, but when school starts up I'm worried that I'll fall back into the regular schedule for this class and not be ahead. I'm really going to try my hardest to keep at least one week ahead, however. I'm looking forward to this semester and this has been a good start!

Image from publicdomainpictures

Tech Tip: Twitter Follow

Twitter is something that I used to use a lot when I was younger, but I have only just been getting back into recently. If someone were to creep through my Twitter, they would find silly tweets from 2011 and a 14 year old me. I still follow some pages that 14 year old girls would follow, and I've been slowly working on cleaning it up, because I don't really want to make a whole new account. So, for this tech tip I decided to follow some OU related pages. I started with The OU Onion, because I do like The Onion, and I thought that would be funny. I also followed OU Campus Corner, Free Shirts at OU, and a few others. Most of the professional pages like OU Daily and David Boren I already follow, but I wanted to get some fun stuff in so I would know activities that are going on around campus.

Tech Tip: Pinterest Board, Embedded

I have been using pinterest for quite some time now, and I've always really liked it. It's a happy place to go to to look at pictures of different things. I have boards about food, fashion, holidays, decor, makeup, etc. It's a great place to be creative. Here is the link to my board for this class.

Thoughts on Growth Mindset

I think growth mindset is very interesting and something that I agree with. Although I haven't heard of this term before, I feel like I have still thought of the same ideas before. I know a lot of people who would think of themselves as stupid or incapable because of grades or test scores. I also know personally that I would often memorize information for a test but instantly forget it almost right afterwards, and have also given up on learning things like history or math because I wasn't getting the grades I wanted.

There are a lot of things where, if I don't do well on it once, I'll say things like "It's not for me" or "I can't do this." I also took a lot of AP classes in high school, and even though they were more challenging and rewarding, I kicked myself for taking them because if I hadn't taken them, I could have had a 4.0 GPA and gotten more scholarships in college. But since I pushed myself and took difficult classes that gave me lower grades, I didn't make the cut. This is teaching kids to take the easy way out, and I often find myself doing that now because of this.

These kinds of thoughts I know are because of a growth-fixed mindset and could be helped if I changed the mindset. It's a very cool idea that I'm happy to look more into. It's important that people know that they are capable of learning anything even if they don't get the letter grade they wanted the first time.

(Cat meme from Growth Mindset Memes blog)

Tips for Starting the Semester

My first tip to help you organize at the start of the semester is to download a calendar app on your phone. I'm not one to buy planners or even physical calendars, but I still need a place to put deadlines or even when and where classes are for the first week. There are a lot of apps that are great for this and help me stay organized.

Another tip is to plan out a specific time or times each week to work on certain classes to help you not get overwhelmed. Don't try to do all your work for the week in one night. Staying organized like this prevents too much stress! 

 

(University of Oklahoma, Wikimedia Commons)

Reading Options

For week 2, I've decided to read the Classical Apuleius's Cupid and Psyche. There's nothing I love more than a good fairy tale or love story, and this seems like something I will really enjoy. I like Classical stories more than Biblical, but I can see myself reading a Biblical one as well out of curiosity.

(Image from Cupid and Psyche )

Unit: Nursery Rhymes

I am interested in this unit because I love nursery rhymes, or rhymes in general. I love the way they sound, but I also love that most of them have a history behind them that you wouldn't have guessed; and some can be quite sinister.

Unit: Europa's Fairy Book

I love Disney fairy tales, but that doesn't mean that I don't also love the original not so kid friendly original versions of the stories. They keep my attention and I actually really enjoy reading stories like these, and I also have an interest in Europe's stories in general. 

Unit: Twenty-Two Goblins

This is definitely not something I'm familiar with, but it's something new that I would probably like. I really like creepy or scary stuff, so that's what got me to choose this. I don't normally read about goblins, so it's something different but also interesting. 

Storybook Favorites

1. The Tales of Garden Creatures
I enjoyed reading through this Storybook, and I thought the topic was cute and interesting and it got my attention. It let me know what the story was about and although I figured it would be about fairies or gnomes, I wasn't entirely sure. It's not something I know a lot about but also not something I'm unfamiliar with. The introduction was creative and well put together, I wasn't confused or anything and it made me want to keep reading. The way the page looks and was put together is what really got my attention aside from the title, it was a good looking page that was easy to navigate.

2. Mermaid Tales of the World
This Storybook, much like the other one, caught my attention because of the title. What girl doesn't like mermaids, right? Especially since there is some speculation that they really exist (not saying I buy that, though.) I thought the introduction was very creatively done, the way it was described as a journal that you've stumbled upon and tells you that mermaids are alive. I definitely wanted to read on. The way the page was setup was a lot like the other one as well, very simple and easy to navigate, I didn't find myself confused at all. The pictures were very nice as well.

(Image from Mermaid Tales of the World)

3. Ghost Tales of a Traveler

Another thing I really have an interest in are ghosts, I love reading ghost stories, watching ghost shows and so on. This page was a bit different because it didn't have a section blatantly labeled "introduction", but it wasn't too hard to figure out what the introduction was meant to be, which is just another creative way of doing it. I liked the approach of it being a diary that someone was writing in, and that just kind of added to the creepy aspect. The page itself looked a lot like the first Storybook, and I really like how it looks. I don't get lost looking for anything or lost in weird color fonts and sizes. 

Introduction to a Mind Changer

Hi everyone!

My name is Toni Phillips, I am a Junior here at the University of Oklahoma and I'm 20 years old. My major is Public Relations with a minor in Spanish. During my senior year of high school, I graduated early at 17 and moved to Los Angeles. I went there with a friend, simply determined to get out of my hometown of Lawton, Oklahoma. I had no real plans, no dreams of becoming an actress, and I really didn't know what I was doing. After a semester spent living there, I realized it was not for me and I moved back in 2014 to begin my freshman year at Oklahoma State University, which I mostly chose because of the scholarships they gave me. I joined a sorority and spent my whole freshman year slightly unhappy, wondering if I had made the right choice.

Eventually, I decided OSU was too country, too agricultural, too conservative, and just not my style. So I decided to make the switch to OU, and it is the best decision I have ever made. I dropped out of the sorority, changed my major, and I immediately fell in love, made friends, and enjoyed every day in Norman. It was one of the first times in my life where I felt like I was where I was supposed to be and wasn't yearning to be somewhere else, and it was and is a really great feeling.

I love going to football and basketball games with my friends, and the fall/winter are my favorite seasons. I love Halloween, Christmas and everything about the weather and atmosphere during the "ber" months. So I'm really excited for this fall semester. My mind is constantly changing on where I want to be and what I want to do with my life, but I think I'm finally getting there. Here's to another great year.

     (Personal photo of myself from a football game, 

Fall 2015)

Week 1 Story: One Too Many Men

Three wise men of Gotham

Went to sea in a bowl:

And if the bowl had been stronger,

My song would have been longer.

(Three Wise Men of Gotham, Wikimedia Commons)

There once were three friends who lived their whole lives in a small town. One day, the men noticed that they were getting older and they still had not left their village to explore other parts of the world. They began to feel like their time was running out and that they needed to find a way to get across the sea to travel the world, but they didn't have the money to buy passage on a ship. 

"Come on men, we are wise. We can figure out a way to get across this ocean," the oldest man said.

"But how? We have no tools to build a boat, no strong legs for swimming, and no money for passage!" one man replied. 

"Hmm...I know," said the youngest man, "We can gather clay and mud from the recent rains, and we will build a bowl for us to float across." 

The men got busy finding clay to form their bowl. After many weeks, they had finally built a bowl big enough for two men to fit in, but they became very tired and eager to get across.

"I feel like I am getting older by the second," the oldest man complained. "I think we can manage to all fit in this bowl if we try."

"Yes, we should. I can't wait any longer to get out of this village," the youngest man replied.

And so the men piled into their small bowl and set out to sea. As they floated out into deep sea, their bowl began to crack from the weight of the three men. The men began to panic, and the two men quickly shoved the youngest man out of the bowl; but it was too late. The bowl cracked and crumbled from the weight, and the men never made it to the other side of the sea. 

Author's Note: It's clear from the rhyme that the bowl the men went to sea in wasn't strong enough and it sank, but I wanted to give a reason why they were in the bowl to begin with, where they were going, and why the bowl didn't hold up. I feel that it gives the rhyme a moral; be patient, don't be too eager.

Bibliography: "Three Wise Men of Gotham" The Nursery Rhyme Book, edited by Andrew Lang 

Saint Thomas, My Favorite Place

St Thomas

I think there are a lot of places that could potentially be my favorite place, but I haven't actually visited them yet. I would love to go out of the country to Europe and visit the places there, but I haven't had the chance. So for now, my favorite place is Saint Thomas, a small island of the US Virgin Islands in the Caribbean. I went here for my brother's wedding and it was the most beautiful place I have ever been. I usually don't like beaches, but here, the water was warm and crystal clear and the waves were gentle. The local people were kind and welcoming and it was just a great experience all around. I would love to go back.

                                                                                   

                                                    (Magen's Bay in Saint Thomas
                                                         Wikimedia Commons)

Tech Tip: Google Site Website

For this tech tip, I created a website. The website is for my Storybook which I will link here. I didn't know it was so easy to make a website, I'm excited to build it more!

Comment Wall

Hi guys! Welcome to my blog!

Here is the link to my Storybook!

Image from DeviantArt