Family Mission Statement

A Family Mission Statement is "a written statement of what you want your life and family to be and the values by which you will live your life" (Families with a Purpose).

I've been learning about this in my online Parenting class. One of my assignments required me to write one for myself, or with my husband if I was married. Obviously I am. So for Family Home Evening we began work on a rough draft.

A family mission statement involves the whole family in its creation which means that the whole family has a clear knowledge of what the family values and what the family's goal is. Ideally this means the whole family works together for the goal.

Domains of Child Development

This semester I am taking a Child Development class for my Marriage and Family Studies major. I'll be learning a lot in the class and I hope to be able to post some of the more interesting things I've learned.

There are three domains of child development that we have gone over:

1. Biosocial Development – includes all the growth and change that occur in a person's body and the genetic, nutritional and health factors that affect growth and change.
2. Cognitive Development – includes all the mental processes that a person uses to obtain knowledge or to think about the environment (perception, imagination, judgment, memory, language).
3. Psychosocial Development – includes development of emotions, temperament and social skills.

Two Lessons for a Writer

My Creative Writing professor gave two parting lessons to those who wish to become published writers.

Write for an hour each day. Thinking about writing isn't writing. Talking about writing isn't writing. Only writing is writing. Schedule a time everyday were you simply write. Block out all distractions. Find a secluded spot and drop your phone in a potted plant on your way there (you can pick it up on the way back). It's best if you go to a spot where it's impossible to have internet access. If your spot does have internet access, turn it off. Be protective of your writing time. Let no one and nothing interfere. Schedule the time. Be protective of it. Be religious about it.

Give yourself permission to write bad. When you have an hour of time sitting in front of your computer, you have to allow yourself to write horribly. Elsewise nothing would be written. You'd think of something to write but you wouldn't write it because it isn't great. You don't like it. But you have to allow yourself to actually write it down. At the end of the hour you may have an hour's worth of junk. You hit the "Control" and "A" keys on your keyboard and then press delete. It just means you'll write better tomorrow. Nothing is perfect the first time. The second time. The third. Give yourself permission to write horrid. You just need to write.

Poetry Meters

I've always had a difficult time with poetry. Not only because I didn't understand what it was supposed to mean and represent, but because I didn't know how to figure out the feet and meters even though I've been taught over and over again. However, I finally got it this past semester.

Trochee    / ˘     as in "ugly"
Iamb         ˘ /     as in "because"
Anapest    ˘ ˘ /   as in "intervene"
Dactyl      / ˘ ˘    as in "butterfly"
Spondee  / /      as in "fast paced"
Pyrrhus   ˘ ˘      as in "at the"

Each of those are a foot. Think of / as the sound DUM and ˘ as the sound da.

Point of View

When analyzing a work of literature, or trying to figure out your own story, it's helpful to ask yourself four questions:

1. Who Speaks?
2. To Whom?
3. In What Form?
4. At What Distance?

Characterization

Characterization is the formation and presentation of a character.

There are two ways an author presents a character: directly or indirectly.

Four methods used for Direct Characterization:

1. Action
2. Appearance
3. Thought
4. Dialogue

Six Word Stories

There's a lot in stories that don't need to be written. An author's most used key is the deletion button.

Writing books is a great goal, but begin perfecting yourself with short stories. Ernest Hemingway's colleagues bet he couldn't write a short story in just six words. He came back the next day with:

For sale: baby shoes, never used.

They paid up. Write your stories and condense everything to it's purest, strongest form. Imagine the process of creating perfume. It takes time to discover just the right combination of concentrated oils. You want to perfect your concentration skills before continuing. If the concentration is not perfected, then nothing you do will make it any better. Practice writing short stories. It's hard to write a good one.

Fictional Time

As a writer you control time.

Time.

You control it.

There are four types of fictional time:

1. Scene
2. Summary
3. Flashback
4. Slow Motion

Ten Rules of Good Writing

Brother Josh Allen is my Creative Writing teacher during my Winter semester at BYU-Idaho. I've learned a lot from him that I want to share with those that  have hopes and aspirations to be a writer. He made a list of Ten Rules he believes will make a story much better. If you have all ten of them, you are definitely on the right track.

1. Good writing is about desire. A character is someone who wants. Only people who want are interesting. People who want nothing mean nothing.
2. Good writing is about trouble. Perfect lives are boring and so are perfect people. The only interesting events that ever come to humanity do so because of trouble and human flaw. Therefore, good literature makes use of antagonists.
3. Good writing is carefully structured. Our work should generally adhere to some version of Conflict → Climax → Resolution.
4. Good writing earns its climaxes. Our stories and poems must "reap what they sow." They must build to a climax, avoid the dreaded dues ex machina, and bestow grace or punishment upon our characters only when doing so is warranted.
5. Good writing doesn't happen to characters – it happens because of characters. Good writing is about transformation, so we should avoid the stagnant. We must end our works either 1) in a new emotional place or 2) in the same emotional place but with greater emotional intensity.
6. Good writing "belongs" to somebody. Our works should be about a specific character and that character's struggles. Everything we include should relate perfectly to that character's development.
7. Good writing presents at least one round character. Preferably, characters will not be revealed through summary but through their speech, appearances, names, gestures, actions, and reactions to others. To make a character round, we can set one of these characteristics against the others.
8. Good writing presents at least one dynamic character. Good writing is about transformation, so we should avoid the stagnant. Also, interesting characters learn. They move from Point A to Point B.
9. Good writing communicates emotion through concerete images, not abstractions. "There are no ideas but in things," said William Carlos Williams. Communicate through the 5 senses that humans used to explore and learn about their world when they were only babies. 
10. Good writing avoids clichés. Cliches are unoriginal and emotionless. Don't use them.

These are basic rules for the beginning writer. When you become better, you can tweak these rules. You could use a cliché just to make fun of it. You could do a lot of things that aren't mentioned in here. But these are good guidelines to get off the ground with.

Uses these rules a basis for critiquing your own and other's work. I've found them to be extremely helpful in my own.

Note: Other posts where I've talk about things I've learned in relation to writing this semester are Two Poems of Mine and Mosiah 11, Alma 30, and Alma 42.

Why Rexburg Hates My Roommate

For the past 12 or so hours, I've only had one roommate still here. All the others have left because their finals are over. This particular roommate's name is Brianne and I'm posting all of this with her full permission, just so you are aware. She was done with school on Wednesday. She hasn't left yet because she is driving a carload of people back to Washington today. Hopefully. If nothing else goes wrong.

Because yesterday was a gloriously beautiful spring day, she washed her car. Washed it, and then was telling us not to get it dirty. We were even teasing her in saying that a flock of birds were going to fly right over her car before she leaves on her trip, messing it up horridly. She couldn't bare thinking about it.

This morning, I'm sitting on our couch with the blinds open letting in the sunlight that reflected off the snow on the ground, the snow falling from the sky and being blown anywhere but down. My roommate wakes up, passes the living room, then comes back, points and says, "AH!!!!!!" I seriously had a vision that a giant animal was in our apartment going to eat us all by her reaction. So I jumped, but didn't see anything. Turns out she was pointing out the window. It was snowing.

Winter... It's Still Here

It's the last day of finals for the Winter Semester. Well, for me. And one thing everyone should be aware of is that Rexburg, ID is absolutely fickle. Or, when using a Thesaurus: capricious, changeable, variable, volatile, mercurial; inconstant, undependable, unsteady, unfaithful, faithless, flighty, giddy, skittish. That's what Rexburg's weather is like.

This entire winter has been extremely mild. It's been pretty fantastic. I'm not aware of any instances when I was out in negative degree weather. First time that's happened in any winter semester I've ever been at here in Rexburg. For the first month, I was just dreading the day when it would snow, and snow, and snow and stay until May. But it never happened. It would snow. Then melt. The wind would come, but only for a day or two and only when it wasn't snowing. It was a blessing.

I've been taking my last few finals. This semester I've had FIVE. But when I think about how I had SEVEN classes, five isn't so bad. When I was taking a few of my finals yesterday, the wonderful real spring weather was making it really hard to concentrate on studying and taking tests. It was soo nice. It felt like May here. Beautiful. Today, I wake up to go take a final that began at 7 AM. I opened the door, and immediately closed it in horror. There was snow. The snow was on the ground and coming from the sky. The wind is also really enjoying playing with the snow and moving it about in a variety of directions that is not down. I'm not exactly sure when it's going to stop.

I'm thinking Rexburg just wants to remind us that it's still winter semester for a day or two more. It's annoying. I've already had my heart set on spring.

Marriage: The Institution of God

Originally for this blog post I was going to type something about social class in relation to families. However, I then stumbled upon the following video and I felt I had to say something about this.

I believe he's on to something. He has some truths in here.

The diagram to the right is something I've learned. When a husband and a wife are both striving for the goal of reaching Heavenly Father, striving to become closer to Him and His son, Jesus Christ, they automatically become closer to each other. Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ is what you should build your foundation on. A husband and a wife are partners.

Devotional with L. Tom Perry

One thing that's so great about attending BYU-Idaho is the wonderful spirit that resides here. Every week on Tuesday at 2:10, we have devotional in our year old BYU-Idaho Center. The speaker could be a faculty member, someone from BYU, or someone from the church. The talk is always centered around spiritual matters and our lives. It used to be that devotional would be held in the Hart building's gymnasium and broadcasted to the Taylor Chapel, the Hinckley Chapel, the Snow building, and the Kirkham building.

The BYU-Idaho Center was in the process of construction when I arrived here for my first semester in Winter 2010. I had never really been on that side of the campus because of all the construction until the following Sophomore year. The BYU-Idaho Center was dedicated December 17, 2010. My brother, who's on his mission right now, was able to attend that dedication. Apparently it was extraordinarily full. But you have to figure that President Henry B. Eyring, first counselor in the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as well as Elder Russell M. Nelson and Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles were all in attendance.

Family Dynamic Theories

There are four types of theories or explanations of how marriage and the family works that my Family Relations class studied in our textbook, Marriage & Family: The Quest for Intimacy.

1. Systems Theory: focuses on social systems and how their interdependent parts maintain order. Or in other words, the different unspoken family rules your family has.
2. Exchange Theory: views social interaction as a cost-benefit analysis in which people try to keep their costs lower than their rewards. Instead of keeping track of exactly what's owed me, I expect to have my investment returned to me in some way in our continuing relationship.
3. Symbolic Interaction Theory: views humans as cognitive creatures who are influenced and shaped by their interaction experiences. Different actions, words mean different things to separate individuals because of the way it was used in your family life; basically a difference in family cultures.
4. Conflict Theory: focuses on contradictory interests, inequalities, and the resulting conflict and change. People want or need different things that sometimes come into conflict, so compromises or arguments could result. 

Hunger for Knowledge

Within the innermost part of your heart, do you love to learn?

Don't just think about book knowledge. Do you love learning about different cultures by visiting them personally? Do you love learning more about the workings of a car to discover how to best improve it? Do you love to learn about your garden, to discover how to best protect it?

I love to learn. I don't ever want to stop.

In my Family Relations class, the teacher cited a Ken Bain quote, "Deepest learning occurs when students have questions that are important, intriguing, or just plain beautiful” (What the Best College Teachers Do).

Do I ask the right questions? Do I write questions that express my desire to learn?

Interestingly enough, in my Advanced Writing and Critical Thinking class, we covered this same idea. This particular teacher told the following story (with my own paraphrasing):

FAML 160: Family Relations Blog

This week has been pretty crazy. Currently, I'm trying to get all of my homework done so that I have an open weekend. One of my classes is FAML 160: Family Relations. For it, I'm supposed to have a blog where I post at least one significant entry each week. According to the assignment, this will be a place where I will share my thoughts, observations, concerns, and impressions regarding readings and discussions in this course. It's to be a blog so that class members, family and friends can all read and learn and hopefully contribute. Off in my list of blogs, I'm to include the blogs of my classmates so that we (and you) can easily check in on, learn from, and contribute to further our learning.

Also in the assignment was a portion talking about how since the blog will have my thoughts, observations, concerns, and impressions regarding the class it will be a bit like a journal. It used a quote given by President Spencer W. Kimball which I think is appropriate anyways, as I've always loved journals:

"Your journal is your autobiography, so it should be kept carefully. You are unique, and there may be incidents in your experience that are more noble and praiseworthy in their way than those recorded in any other life. There may be a flash of illumination here and a story of faithfulness there; you should truthfully record your real self and not what other people may see in you." ("The Angels may quote from it")

As a result of this assignment, since I already use this blog for pretty much everything, I'm using it for this class. I hope you learn as much as I do if not more. We'll learn together, you and I. This semester's going to be fantastical.

Back at School

I love college. I really do. When I was in elementary school, before the No Child Left Behind, I loved school. It was the best thing ever. I was always so excited for it.

After those early years, I lost it. Mostly because everything began to focus on tests, which I didn't think I ever did well at. Plus, it felt like I was never really learning anything. It sometimes seemed like a waste of time. I almost believe that 2 hours could be taken out of every school day because that's how much time was totally wasteful.

But since then, I'm in college and I get excited for the first time I have a class. It makes me so cheerful! I make new friends. I learn things that I never thought about. College really teaches you how to think. How to look at the world around you and figure out what you can do to influence it. I absolutely love college. I really do.

Things I'm Gonna Miss...

Today I'm getting ready to head back to BYU-Idaho via Utah. This means packing: deciding what to bring, what to throw away and what to leave behind. As a result of this process I've been thinking of all the things I'm going to miss for the next 7 months:

Time for Registering!

Wow. It's already time to sign up for my next semester. That's just a bit crazy to me. It was July only a few months ago! And now, it's the week before Thanksgiving and practically a month before Christmas. Then the week after that it's time for me to return to Rexburg, ID and freeze to death.

What Rexburg, ID practically looks like in January

I love Rexburg, don't get me wrong. I really do love the town. It's just the snow that is a little crazy. Oh, and the wind. I'm a Cali girl! Cold means it's 60º outside! Though once I'm there for a month and a half, I start thinking that 34º means it's warm... but that's a whole other issue.

But I'm excited to return. I get to learn some new things. I get to be productive every day (hopefully). I am able to see friends whenever I'd like to (when I'm not crazy busy with homework). I even get to be a Junior this time around. That's the oddest thing. To realize that I'm a Junior. It represents that I've been at school for the past two years. That I graduated high school 2 1/2 years ago. It's odd to look back on my younger self and realize how much I've changed and grown in those years. It makes me so grateful that I have grown, but it's just surprising at how much fast the years are passing me by.

I remember when I was in grade school that every year was so very long. From Christmas to Christmas or birthday to birthday. It was forever. Now? It feels like we just had Christmas. Not that I'm complaining. I absolutely love Christmas. However, they do seem to come more frequently than before. Maybe it's because when I was 8 years old, a year was 1/8 of my life. That's quite significant. Now it's only 1/20 of my life. I expect that Christmas will seem to come closer and closer together as life goes on.

In the next two years, I'll (hopefully) be graduated. My one brother will have returned from his mission to South Carolina and the other will have been out for at least a few months. I plan on using this blog for the both of them. I'm so clever. My sister will be a Senior in high school (that's a scary thought...). And my youngest brother will be in the midst of 8th grade. That's not too bad. Scary. But it wouldn't be high school.

Time. Goes by fast, and slow. and everything in between. "Time is relative." It's true. Albert Einsein was a pretty smart man. Time is time. It's hard to really pin it down. and it's always changing. It never stays constant.

I love it. I've got a lot to look forward to in life!

Home Sweet Home

I'm finally home from school and have several months to relax from school work, though I miss the culture and the people. Though I must say it's been quite fun to spend time with my family and friends and to be creative with all the time I've been blessed with.
Before I even came home, I attended my cousin's wedding! I'm so grateful that my prayers were answered, my schedule cleared up and I was able to find a ride from a dear friend so I could make it. I made it to her baptism and she to mine when we were little. We've grown up together even though we've been in different states. I was certainly going to make it to her wedding. She was and is and always will be awesome.

I arrived home by way of train with my brother and met our family at the station. I'm officially the second shortest person, but not by much. By December I expect to be the shortest.

I watched Captain America with my institute friends.

I've made peanut butter brownies with a friend.
I, of course, have visited the library multiple times and read several books.
My sister and I are planning on how to finish up the room we share. She's spent the summer painting it this warm gold color and now we are working on the details of things.
I've eaten a many a popsicle in the wonderful hot weather of the California Valley.
I've played some frisbee with my siblings in the park.

I've written my missionary friends letters.
For the first time in the year 2011, I've been able to attend my home ward and see everyone that I've missed so much!
This last Monday was the first Family Home Evening with my actually family has had together in all this year. We played Red Light, Green Light, Leap Frog, Hide-and-Seek, and some water games.

It's all just been a bundle of fun with more to come!
This week, my mom, sister and I are having a bunch of girl friends over for a Disney Animation Movie Marathon and I'm so excited for it.
I'm loving being home.