Moments

Yesterday's class inspired my blog entry for today. When we had to write about a specific moment it really got me thinking. Sometimes I forget how much one moment can completely change our lives. It is actually kind of scary to think about how even just a simple decision about what time you leave to go to Chick-fil-a can determine whether you get in a car accident or not. Anyways I started thinking about how little moments have effected me.

In tenth grade I moved schools and didn't know anyone. I was taking chorus and sat next to a girl in my grade. The first week she was really nice, but it was kind of awkward. Then one class our teacher brought up Finding Nemo. The girl, Nicole and I started talking about the fish, Dori and the part where she makes whales noises. We ended up making whale noises the entire class instead of singing and cried laughing when the teacher asked us to stop. If it wasn't for our teacher randomly bringing up Finding Nemo, Nicole and I might have never become best friends.

On a more serious note I started thinking about how I ended up at Florida State. My college applications were already done and I had applied to 7 small schools. Over thanksgiving break my mom decided to tell me that I should have applied to some bigger schools because she doesn't see me at a small one. Of course she freaks me out and I apply to the first big school I can think of. If it wasn't for that one moment where my mom decided to freak me out I would have never ended up at FSU.

Since being at FSU I decided to join a sorority. During rush week we were assigned a rho gam who helps us throughout the whole process. Going through rush the only house I wanted was Delta Zeta. On the last day I told my rho gam I only wanted to write down Delta Zeta and that if I didn't get Delta Zeta I wasn't going to join a sorority. She sat me down and convinced me to at least consider Gamma Phi Beta. I ended up putting down two sororities just to be safe. On bid day I was so upset when I didn't get Delta Zeta. Now it has been about a month and I absolutely love Gamma Phi Beta. I owe it all to my rho gam. If she had not taken that moment to convince me to consider Gamma Phi Beta my college experience would be completely different.

I truly believe everything happens for a reason whether we know the reason or not. It's hard to even comprehend how much little moments and decisions really effect your life. At the same time writing this blog has made me realize there are way too many little moments I stress over. For example writing this blog. At the end of my life I don't think my grade on this one blog will have changed anything.

Perspective

Its crazy to me how someone can tell you a story and then someone can tell you the same EXACT story and it can be completely different. I never understood why the same story could be so different. In this weeks reading about the "sketchy" guy in the alley, I really got to see this. We could debate for hours on who his audience is but we can never truly know unless we ask the author. He could be writing to his own kind or he could be writing to the "scarred white people.” Every reader can have a different view of the story. In class we could not even agree on one audience. I think because of everyone’s past we all view stories differently. When we have our own individual life experiences, we form our own way of thinking. When we hear a story, we unconsciously apply our style of thinking to it by the way we process it in our brain. Someone could here a story about someone who slipped and fell and laugh and then someone can hear the same story and want to cry. I’m exaggerating a bit there but you guys get the idea. When I hear stories about clowns I know I get terrified because I hate clown but some people love them so they interpret it in a more happy and silly way. I don’t understand how, their creepy, ugly, and not funny at all. Anyways, points of view our important. They create a person’s beliefs and help form a person’s idea. If George Washington didn’t have his own views where would our country be today? What is Ms. Ahmeds mugger didn’t have his views of weapons, it could’ve been a lot worse. Out views are our own and they can be as private as we want them to be.

Drenched In Words

I decided to respond to the following quote….

One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment. ~ Hart Crane

When I read this I automatically connected “words” with emotions. Crane is saying that we write best when it is in the moment. Trying to recall last nights distraught feelings and writing about them would be nowhere as good as it would have been writing them the day before. I think it is safe to say that one writes best when they have a million thoughts to scribe. Otherwise we are simply searching our brains for less meaningful ideas and words. I truly believe that we write best and most beautifully when we are filled with deep sentiments. I know that this holds true for me at least. I am not the type of person that finds it easy to express myself especially not in conversation. Writing is most definitely the best way for me to communicate. For whatever reason I have always felt that letting people in was a weakness and so today I struggle with expressing my problems and feelings on a daily basis. I like to keep quiet and bottle my feelings up, which is why I found a love for writing. Whenever I was “drenched” or “soaked” in emotions I wrote because I could not speak. Whenever my mind was a cloudy mess I would write because I could not think. Like this quote is saying, we write best when we are filled with words or emotions. Writing is my therapy and my way to find peace.

Quotes and where they came from.

I doubt most of the class read the tumbler link that was sent out in one of Ms. Ahmed's emails this past week, so here is the link for reference: http://nawasaka.tumblr.com/post/10116519595/fuckyeahmoleskines-nawasaka-tumblr-com-i . This girl scribbled down on a piece of paper, "Things we say today that we owe to Shakespeare", at 3 in the morning. It is a bunch of quotes that we use today that Shakespeare actually created. At first i looked at the post and thought "oh well it's just another girl writing down a bunch of random quotes on a piece of paper". Well, i was very wrong. As i read all of the quotes i was amazed at how many of them i use on a weekly basis and i had no clue that Shakespeare was actually the one who came up with them. I have never been one for Shakespeare as his work is very difficult to read (for me), but these quotes made me realize that not all of his work is the usual old english that everyone knows shakespeare by. I never would have thought that "Knock knock! Who's there?" would have came from Shakespeare, much less "Wild goose chase" or "Too much of a good thing." Well i don't really know how to wrap this up, but i just thought that those quotes were interesting seeing as they came from Shakespeare and we use them on a weekly basis.

Drafting Essays....

So, am I the only one feeling lost about drafting these essays? It would be pretty hard to believe I am. I feel like I put down all my best ideas when I wrote the original copy. Adding to it just seems to be scraping nonsense from my brain and spreading it on my paper, almost like pointless peanut butter onto a purposeful slice of bread. That may have been a weird analogy... But anyways, It almost seems to be watering down my essay, making the points seem less intense and pungent. It almost makes me feel like I really had nothing important to say about my subject at all.

And a disclaimer! It's not because of bad workshopping or notes received from classmates on the days we go over essays, because those are helpful. Its coming up with enough content to fill the requirement but still provide a meaningful expression of thought.

The topic of this blog is ridiculously boring, and I'm very sorry. As the semester seems to kick into gear, my brain seems to be kicking out of it. I think its because, like all of you, Im spending all my time and effort writing essays, doing homework, remembering oxford commas, and trying to catch the bus that my brain seems to be deteriorating. For example, this blog and my essay were late because I lost my PC charger. My fault. But it didnt even register because I was reading for another class. I think there just has to be a happy medium, a balance of sorts, in order to keep track of everything and maintain performance in school. I just need to find that balance...

If anyone could help???!

To Look Inward

Confessions of An Ex-College Freshman highlights the aspects that make up great written work, as well as how the school system has deprived us from learning how to use ourselves as a template for true, original masterpieces.

Is this interesting, meaningful, and/or reflective of my true self? Corny, I know, but these are some of the questions we should ask ourselves before beginning the daunting task of writing of our personal experiences. James Moffett, author of Confessions of An Ex-College Freshman, failed to even ponder one of these questions before working on his first english assignment about his home town. He made the mistake of writing about a place that meant nothing to him, and it reflected in his work. His entire paper was based on borrowed thoughts and ideas, and his professor saw right through it, yet was kind enough to let him redo the assignment. James approached his second version with only himself in mind. It was completely foreign concept to him because the first time around he wrote what he thought his professor wanted to hear, which is exactly what he was taught to do up till that point.

The school system teaches us how to be good writers, writers with minimal talent who borrow rather than steal. It chooses to educate us in the procedural aspects of writing, rather than how to look inward and steal from ourselves, the very aspect that forms great writers. So, on the second time around, James' goal was to reflect on the memories of his home town, and so he stole from himself his true, human, thoughts and emotions, something that was all his own. His paper was therefore original, and raw; it had a purpose, it meant something to him, and reflected his true self.

I believe great writing is based on how much of ourselves we pour into our writing, and thus how much we steal from ourselves. In order for us to do so, we must look inward and find what interests and reflects us, and run away with it. If we do not put ourselves into our writing than it is just an empty and borrowed piece of work, just like the first version of James' disappointing paper.

Stealing isn't too bad

"Good writers borrow, great writers steal." Notice I put the period in the quotations this time ;) When I read this quote, I instantly think of MLA format and citing the sources correctly.

So, I will break this down in my own perspective. "Good writers borrow..." to me means that the writer is opening their essay with a quote and crediting the source. So they are borrowing the quote from another writer. "...Great writers steal" to me means that a writer read what another writer composed and decided to write their own piece based off of the emotions they felt while reading the original writer's work. If that was worded a little too weird, I'll say it differently for you lol. Say a student is trying to write a paper. He decides to read another writer's words to get some inspiration. While reading the writer's piece, the student felt an intense emotion and decided to write his paper based off of that emotion. He felt so strongly about something that someone else wrote down, that he decided to take the writer's words and translate them into his own meaning. So rather than borrowing the source, he stole from it.

That is just what I got out of this quote. I don't in any way mean that great writers plagiarize because that would go against the student ethnics :) But getting inspiration from someone else's words is a powerful thing, especially when one decides to write down their emotions. I believe the most amazing pieces are written when someone is feeling an over-load on a certain emotion. That is why I believe great writers steal rather than just temporarily use a quote and credit it.

THEFT!!

What makes a great writer? Someone who is creative, someone with good grammar skills, someone who can put their thoughts on to paper. When I hear the quote “good writers borrow, great writers steal”, it doesn’t make me think that great writers are plagiarizing of copying ideas from other people. I think that the great writers are stealing their emotions. A good writer can write about how they feel and put their feelings into it but a great writer digs deep down inside and reflects on their emotions and puts that into words. So I like to think that great writers are stealing their emotions from deep inside. It might sound crazy but if you think hard enough about it, it makes sense. It’s almost impossible to judge because you can never tell if how someone feels deep inside only that person can tell. These great authors can write about it. When your reading a story and your teacher explains that the blue scarf represents the authors emotions in his time of depression you think wow what a crazy teacher. I really think that these great writers drop us hints like that, that’s how they make their books so appealing because they put them selves 100% in their work. I admire people like that because showing your emotions to anyone isn’t always easy but publishing your emotions has to be extremely difficult. Revealing yourself to the general public opens you up for judgment. Everyone knows that being judged is awful so imagine everyone judging you, imagine an English class discussing your feelings and writing about it. Your emotions and thoughts are the only thing 100% private and now they’re in the open. I wouldn’t be able to do it so kudos to Shakespeare.

PS: GO NOLES!!!!!!!!!!

Lockdown

Reading Lockdown really got me thinking, but not necessarily in the way anyone would expect.  Not the, “man that guys life sucks!” or the “he deserves it for robbing someone” but really just about one idea found in one paragraph of the story. 

Hopkins talks about how life in prison is just a waiting game, simply determined by what you happen to be waiting for.  He says some people might be waiting for the phone, the TV, or even for parole.  It got me thinking and comparing that life in prison to our ‘freedom’ in life.
            I wake up every morning and wait for my classes to start.  I return to my dorm in the mid afternoon to wait for my friends to go eat, or toss a frisbee, or whatever we happen to be doing.  Then I go back to my dorm again and wait for sleep to consume me.  I guess I really shouldn’t be comparing my life to that of an inmate, but if this is how you think about your life, then it’s strikingly similar.

Just when my mind was being overtaken by these depressing thoughts I changed gears into a more optimistic manner.  Your life can be defined however you define it, so I prefer to think of my day as the things I do rather than the time I wait.  Rather than focusing on the hour in solitude waiting for a tardy friend, focus on the hour you spend with that friend, or the exciting dreams your mind manages to create, or even the mind numbingly dull hour long lecture about the civil war.
            I know that wasn’t really the point of Lockdown but this life altering philosophy is really what stuck with me when I finished reading.  Life is really all about perspective, and about the attitude you live by, the spin you put on situations, and the optimism that can make everything okay.

Fun vs. Mechanics

Everyone prefers to partake in a fun, interesting assignment rather than a boring, factual task. This may be the easier route to take, but it definitely is not the right one. I believe that teaching the formal way, with facts and and doing it the right way, is much more beneficial to the learner than teaching the fun way.

I believe if a teacher promotes their teachings in the formal manner, the student will be able to learn more from the material. Students will also be able to perform better on tasks if they know how to do it the correct way.

Although students will be more engaged in the teachings if it is presented in a fun manner, they really will not benefit from the lessons if they do not know the proper ways of doing so. Once a student does know the proper way of completing the task, he then can transform his task in a way that will allow him to have fun with it. In other words, once he knows how to do the task the correct way, he then can change it so that he enjoys doing the task.

1st blog!

Beginning college is a scary experience for all involved; the worrisome parents, the unorganized teachers, and most of all, the petrified freshman.  It’s a huge change of pace, some seem ready and others don’t and I can’t always figure out where I fit in with that.

Living away from home provides a new adventure every day.  I never really understood all the responsibilities of taking care of a ‘house’!  A snack malfunction made me realize we needed cleaning supplies, and a bathroom shared with three other college guys made me realize we needed air freshener.  A lesson is learned every day.  However, I do enjoy staying up until I’m tired instead of pretending to be asleep to please my parents.

As for class I was shocked the first day entering my American History class of almost 180 students.  It’s so different from my high school classes; capped at 25.  Then I realized my American history class was nothing when I entered my economics class of 500!  I looked at the rest of my schedule and expected more of the same; overstuffed classes with no personality, the majority of students scared to talk to one another.  The next class I head to was archaeology—sounds interesting, right?  Wrong.  It’s pretty boring in the most predictable way.  Dull lectures every Tuesday and Thursday with intermittent breaks brought about by a dry sense of humor from an interestingly small man that enjoys sitting in the front row of class. 

            I’m still not quite sure what to expect out of this English class, but I guess it can’t be anything too bad considering it’s just a class of 20 or so, and our professor responds to ‘hey you!’