this is weekly 1:
#1: going from donald to another word
donald to corn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincinnati
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Ohio
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maize
i was pretty surprised how quickly i got from donald to corn, honestly. this first time doing this type of exercise made me really hone down on what my end goal encompassed. after seeing cincinnati around family history for donald, i decided to make that leap of faith to follow it down a path of economies surrounding agriculture. at this point, i searched up "corn," but all that came up was "cornerstone" on the cincinnati page. i was a little wishful. however, this derivé only contained four links, and we needed five to complete this weekly, so i attempted another wikipedia adventure, this time sourcing a topic from one of my classmates. he suggested lightning.
donald to lightning
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Beach,_Florida
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precipitation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning
this one was interesting. given the previous exercise, i was really focusing on the relationships between donald and geography, so i was very intent on finding a link for just "florida," but i couldn't. i was really wishing for florida in order to look at hurricanes and then lightning, but instead, i had a pretty decently short path by going thru palm beach, where donald's maralago estate is, then to precipitation in the little climate box that wikipedia seems to have standard in many climate sections of cities around the world, then to lightning. seeing as this again didn't meet the requirements of five links, i tried again, but this time remembering that people did this activity starting with a random wikipedia article.
#2: random wikipedia article to donald
attempt #1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jotun_Hein
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump
once i saw that jotun hein resided in the UK, i pounced on that link, as i have done so with other geographical links, as the link to donald trump always seemed pretty clear from that sense. and it was -- united states was undoubtably going to be found on the united kingdom's wikipedia page, and donald was going to be on the united states page. maybe i was just given a person that was too easy with just the right information for me to fail yet again in finishing this assignment... so i tried, again.
attempt #2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Ceiba_Carnival
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honduras
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Congress
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_the_United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump
after doing that first attempt, i was surprised at how many links i had to go through before getting to donald. starting from the carnival, and my past experiences regarding geography within these derivés, i gravitated towards honduras. also: because the US has stuck itself in far too many international issues, i was pretty sure i would again find the united states, then donald... however, surprisingly, there was NO link for the united states on the honduras page; only the united states CONGRESS. so i decided to go that route, and again, surprisingly, there was no direct link to donald, but rather only to the president of the US. this last attempt fulfilled the five links.
#3: reflection
my attempt at a derivé was an interesting experience. it was a highly directed approach with a goal in mind, but i very clearly did not know where i was going, as i had to guess the links in between the two subjects. the last attempt fulfilled the five link requirement only because wikipedia article authors chose not to include the links to the united states, otherwise the connections regarding the last attempt are quite close regarding the honduras, the us, and then eventually donald. doing this exercise with a subject that is far more obscure and from an equally obscure, random article probably would have been a more complex journey, but i'm pretty content with the journey that i did have. i was also tremendously interested in how interconnected donald was with the spheres within wikipedia, and i think this gave me a tiny sense of what that was, simply by traversing around the topics just 4 to 5 degrees away from his own article.