Burke Blog for Epics of India

The last week before spring break was very stressful, because all of my exams were that week for my grad classes, making for a lot of stressed studying.  Optimization and Optimal Control was an especially hard exam to study for, due to the theoretical nature of the course, with very few examples, but luckily the exam was identical to the study guide, so the exam went very well, and is worth 40% of my grade, so now I am feeling better about the course as a whole.  The Control Theory exam also went fairly well, I do not have my grade back yet but I believe my performance was strong and the professor is a fairly easy grader so all should be fine.  The extra week in this class for spring break was perfect, because it allowed me to push back most of the assignments until this week to give me time to focus on studying.  It also allowed me to give the best performance in all my classes by giving the best performance on both the exams and on my writing in here.  The ext...

I have loved the addition of the Calendar feature to Canvas, it has helped my time management in all my courses.  I have actually created a macro allowing the canvas calendar to be exported to my desktop calendar, so every time I log into Canvas it updates the desktop, allowing me to keep on top of all courses, and make sure that my calendar is always up to date.  So in conclusion, the Canvas Calendar has been a good thing for my overall time-keeping and schedule management. 

For this week's learning challenge, I used the read out loud option, and here are my thoughts on the subjects, as per the notes I took  Personally, I think it slows me down too much in my reading, and actually lowers my comprehension of the text, because I tended to not remember previous information because too much time passed between when I first read it and when I recalled it It also lead to me being distracted more easily, because I needed to keep my train of thought as well as speech working together, so instead of becoming immersed in my head, I ended up staying too much in the real world, meaning that events in the real world threw off my focus.   It did enable me to look at form more easily, and think of how I would write stuff in order to make it more enjoyable for a reader.   For final thoughts, I think I much prefer reading silently, it allows me to be fully immersed in the story rather than be constantly distracted.  Reading, from...

This week, I created the acronym L.E.A.R.N.S., for Living and Experiencing Achieves Remarkable New Success.  I created this acronym in order to document how by just being open to our experiences in our everyday life, we can move forwards and learn through paying attention and having takeaways.  I thought of this through the lessons of the Lockheed Martin Skunk works, who created the single greatest aircraft in history, the SR-71 Blackbird, just by taking the lessons the whole team had learned throughout their career in order to create this masterpiece, pictured below SR-71 Blackbird, from  Wikipedia

This week, I decided to prepare to write a story about The Martial Exhibition Chapter of Krishna Dharma's Mahabharata.  This chapter, with its medieval-like descriptions of the training and combat games, reminded me a lot of some of the gladiators of old, with less lethal consequences.  This led me to research the background of gladiator type games in ancient India, from  Wikipedia , and it turns out that it did briefly become a thing around the last century B.C-first Century A.D.  This led down a trail exploring historical time periods of the Mahabharata and its significance.  However, this Roman influence is too late to be in the original Mahabharata but is definitely something that could influence later renditions and retellings of the chapter, and definitely a theme I can write into my own story.   One final note of this research path is that I didn't realize different parts of the Mahabharata were written in different era's, which actually co...

for this reading, I focused on the story of the Pandava's being sent away, because it would be a break from the previous stories of battle or feasting I have written, and focus on another important portion of D&D lore, the intrigue.  It would give me an opportunity to create a villain like Dhuryodhana who does not act openly for combat, but instead behind the scenes to eliminate our hero.  It also would allow me to highlight typical D&D skills like insight, perception, languages, etc, in order to get the heroes out of the predicament they will find themselves in.  Burning City from  pinterest Bibliography: Krishna Dharma, Mahabharata,  The Pandava's sent away

This week, I focused on  the story about The Martial Exhibition.  I was drawn to this story because of the descriptions of the training, especially Arjuna, because his exploits and skill are definitely the foundation of a story.  The story itsef and the granting of the divine weapon fit in this semester's D&D theme, and the brothers themselves can become the actual adventuring party.  Arjuna will translate well to Luna the Ranger, because bow prowess is the stereotypical ranger expertise.  The jealousy itself can be expanded on, and the final duel could become a blow by blow fantasy narrative, hopefully sometihng done as skilfully as Nate's project story from last week. Ranger, from  pinterest Bibliography: Krishna Dharma,  The Martial Exhibition