Week six

At this particular point, I do not have a “paper” due for another class, per se, but I am taking English 325 (Young Adult Literature), and our final assignment is to write the first chapter of our own young adult novel. I have been told to over-analyze my own writing less and free write more, since I'm road-blocking myself, so I suppose I'll kill two birds with one stone and do some free-writing here.

I didn't ask to be the leader of our group. I never laid in bed at night praying to some faceless force in the universe, a great reckoner of high school fortune, to make me suddenly important. I was about as invested in that as I was in extracurricular activities (I wasn't). That said, I sure as hell never complained about it, either. I've always had kind of a thing for power (not that having two other nerds kowtow to me and one girl constantly try to one-up me really constitutes “power,” I suppose, but hey – we're in high school.) And, at any rate, power is only convenient when it's convenient—your friends don't want to see the new kung-fu movie, but you do? Well, they're going now. Unfortunately, stuff like that is the only benefit to this kind of social set-up: stupid petty stuff that doesn't matter are the things on which people are the most likely to defer to you.

I'm not making myself sound exactly likable, am I? I don't care. I tried for likable. I tried for likable for sixteen years. It went nowhere. No, I didn't get dumped, “friend-zoned,” or locked away in some metaphorical ivory tower to pine for my beloved. Nothing like that happened, which I suppose makes this unlike every other story in the universe. No, you know what happened? She died. That's what happened. So you'll have to excuse me if I don't feel like being particularly “likable” at the moment, because there isn't exactly anything to like.

Week five

It came as news to me that one is not supposed to ever put a comma after “although”. I just created a split infinitive there, but I'm going to go ahead and leave it, since this is supposed to be a learning experience.

I am definitely learning a lot about punctuation. I think that I tend to over-comma (is that a compound verb?) (is that even a thing?) because I am afraid of my sentences sounding like they're running on and on and going out of control kind of like this one is but then again this is a bad sentence for a variety of reasons so I suppose I should end it now. On the other hand, when I use commas excessively, as I tend to do, I end up pausing my writing so much that it sounds as if it could be read by William Shatner.

It is interesting to learn that I do not have the handle on things that I thought I did, as I have considered myself a champion of grammar for a long time now. I realize that this sounds conceited, but (at the risk of sounding like I'm passing the buck) it can be easy to feel that way when you spend more than five minutes a day on the Internet and see what passes for decent in that realm (i.e., “at least” being considered one word). At any rate, it is interesting to learn so many new things that I can tuck away into the recesses of my mind, until such a date that I will be able to share my newfound grammatical knowledge and truly get a handle on it.

However, these things take a lot of practice. I read once (like, four years ago) that using the word “lots” was not technically grammatically correct, and I still have to actively work to keep it out of my speaking and writing. These are not the kinds of things for which one can just make flash cards, nor can you truly effectively use things like worksheets or memory drills. I feel that, at least for myself, I must learn these things organically, or they will never really take root in my head. For instance, I have been attempting to use absolutely no parenthetical thoughts or dashes in my writing these last few weeks, yet today I decided I would allow them to creep back in, and they have, once again, taken over. As it turns out, anyway, I have found new ways to interrupt myself, like the overuse of commas that seems to be the hallmark of this particular blog entry. The sentence either sounds like it's getting away from me, or it sounds as if I need to take a breath every other word, so what am I to do? I could use the Internet for information, but it isn't necessarily reliable. I could read Nitty-Gritty Grammar from cover to cover, for I believe that would be the source. I suppose all I can do is keep working at it!

Week four

I've been enjoying getting into more advanced concepts, such as syntax. Although, I will admit, I took a linguistics class last fall and, between you (all) and me, I did very poorly, so I am hoping that I can pull myself through this unit a little better and improve my track record.

I have always considered my grammar to be very good, though not impeccable, and I have wanted to work on making it as close to perfect as possible for some time. I don't want to be the person who slips up on “lay”/”lie” or says “you and I” when I mean “you and me,” so I am looking forward to learning even more about things like intransitive verbs and other related concepts so that I can always know that I am using the right form. As an English major, I find that people frequently look for opportunities to nitpick and correct my grammar, which would not bother me if said people did not seem so self-congratulatory, as they frequently do in such instances. Generally, I like to respond to such people with a joke I once heard: “I'm an English major, not a speakin' major.” That said, I would like to be able to refine both my spoken and written grammar to the point where such things no longer occur.

To that end, I have largely been working on interrupting myself less in my writing. In my first blog post, I made note of my overuse of dashes and parenthetical thoughts. I have been actively attempting not to use them at all for now; after I get used to writing without them, and saying what I need to say in more of a straight flow of ideas rather than constantly interrupting myself, I will attempt to work up to using them sparingly. That said, it is a little tricky to get used to the way my writing sounds in my head without them. It sounds somewhat clipped and abrupt, though I suppose that, as I become more accustomed to not using them, it will start to sound more natural. I've also been working on really paring down and dividing sentences where necessary to avoid the dreaded run-on. I mean, I got through this whole post without one parenthesis or dash appearing, so I think I would call that progress.

Week three

For me, a semester really has to get into full swing before I feel like I'm “learning” anything. For the first month or so, I'm always caught in this bizarre transition period where I'm caught between summer and school. I'm thinking, “I have to read this article and write 500 words and also finish Beowulf and read the Bible and I'm already thinking about finals?! Two weeks ago, I was at the zoo!” There is, of course, a chance that I am making it harder on myself than it really needs to be.

However, despite my nostalgia for that day at the zoo, and my lingering summer (mental) fog, I am learning things. (I'm kind of making it sound like I'm learning against my will.) For instance, I was fascinated the other day to hear that long sentences are not necessarily a bad thing in writing, so long as they contribute to sentence variety. One of the issues I see in my own writing (and this could just be me) is that I do not really have enough sentence variety. My sentences are long, my paragraphs are long, my papers are long. I suppose that no one has ever really complained about it, but it's something I am trying to work on nonetheless. As a high school student, my stuff was too long; as a college student, it's way too long. I can only imagine what will happen when I get into grad school.

In another vein, I also appreciate how much we emphasize ways to work around having to use worksheets and drills with students. I would like to implement these practices on my future classroom, since I have yet to meet someone who was helped by worksheets. For example, I tutored a young girl last year whose teacher's biggest learning aids were worksheets. I helped her work through these, and she learned basically nothing from them. Unfortunately, the organization for which I was working also relied heavily on worksheets, which I felt was indicative of their lack of creativity. For the most part, the worksheets were not even theirs; they had been pulled from workbooks and off of the internet.

I look forward to moving further into theoretical and more complex concepts later in the semester; for example, the work we're going to be doing in October looks to be quite interesting, particularly because I am not terribly well-versed in things like noun absolutes. I also look forward to continuing to learn things I can bring to my future classroom, though I do hope that, as I intend to teach high school, students will know how to correctly use apostrophes by then. I suppose if they don't, then I will have a whole arsenal of things with which to teach them. I also plan to continue with my original goals of not interrupting myself so much in writing. For instance: I was going to previously put a dash after the word “writing” and start talking about the excessive amount of parentheses in this post, but I stopped myself!