Sunday, September 30, 2012

Week 7!

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This weekend at home was a nice little break from the hectic school life. Even though most of my life now revolves around the Pullman atmosphere, it was nice to see old faces and reconnect with old friends. Despite the long 5-hour drive, through barren wheat fields and smoky skies, the short visit to my hometown of Federal Way, WA proved to be worth the trip. AS THE DRIVE CAME TO AN END, I became more and more excited not only to get out and finally stretch my legs that had been cramped up for 5 hours, but also to finally see my family, my dog, and the friends I had left behind. As so as I walked in the door I was instantly tackled by a 10-month 100lbs German Shepard, who decided to bark and run circles around me until finally I gave him a little love.

AS SOON AS I ESCAPED, I made my way to Hilltop--sketchy I know—for my best friends 21st birthday. I did not tell Caitlin that I was going to be there, she thought I wasn’t able to come since I am in Pullman, which led to me being tackled and attacked for the second time that night, this time by someone who had a full drink in their hand. I guess it was only Karma BECAUSE I always tend to spill on at least one person when I go out.  SINCE THIS IS ALWAYS THE CASE, I really wasn’t in any position to be angry with her, especially since it was her birthday after all. After we recovered we were given a tour of her house, a cute townhouse in Tacoma, and then began to catch up on each other’s lives.

Saturday day was a quite eventful day. I WENT TO THE DOCTORS, THE HAIRDRESSER, AND TO THE PLU HOMECOMING GAME. (I wasn’t totally sure if this was parallelism or not but figured I’d throw it in there.) The PLU Homecoming game has become a tradition in my family. My dad went to school there, twice, and my aunt and uncles have also gone to school there. Personally, I felt as if PLU was a little to close to home, hence why I chose WSU, in state tuition but still 5 hours away, plenty of room away from the parents to breathe. Even thought the PLU game as a disappointment, it was good to see my family from California and to see my friends from high school, a few who were playing in the game.

Overall, this weekend was a success. It was a nice break from the hectic school life of Pullman, but I would say that I am happy to be back to real life at Wazzu.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Week 6

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I don’t know if it’s just me, BUT does having to submit a post by Noon on Sundays throw anyone else off? I am always finding myself freaking out at the last minute when I remember at 11:30am on Sunday afternoons that I have a blog to do. Remembering to blog every week is definitely going to be a challenge for me this semester. I know that this class in itself is going to be a challenge for me, mainly because I have trouble paying attention to my writing enough to notice things like comma splices, coordinating conjunctions and FANBOYS. To be honest, I never really knew what a comma splice was either. SO far this class has proved to be much different than I originally expected.

This past week of class proved to be especially out of the box AND overall showed that our class, and probably most of the English majors at WSU, has very interested almost twisted minds. The exercise we did in class with the magnetic poetry letters was a little uncomfortable at first, FOR I had the box of ‘Romance Novel Words’. Our letters proved to be dirty, to say the least, BUT overall I will admit that it did help my writing and my understanding of the 3 sentence patterns. HOWEVER, I still have a little trouble with all of the different aspects within these patterns, BUT I am confident that by the end of the semester I will fully understand them.

One thing though that I still am a little hazy about is the concept of FAULTY PARALLELISM. We were given the example “That’s what you do when you’re out of touch, out of ides, and running out of time”.  When I look at this sentence all I really see is a sentence that has a lot of repetition. I’m assuming that this  is a concept that I just need to spend some time wrapping my brain around to understand, SO I’ll just need to spend some more time on it throughout this semester.

If there are any grammatical mistakes or weird sentences that make no sense at all, feel free to correct away.

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Week 4

 
So far throughout this course, the few short weeks we’ve had it, I can say that I have learned a few new things about grammar. Before joining this class, I did not really know too much about grammar. I knew about punctuations, correct their and there’s and things like that, but now going more in-depth with ideas such as apostrophes and comma placements. I will admit that I was one of those writers that thought that apostrophes are meant to be used to show possession, but now as we have discussed in class, I can easily refer to our chart and figure out the proper use of apostrophes when it comes to plurality and contractions as well. My grammar skills are still a bit limited, unlike those WHOSE are much more extensive than mine, but I feel as if I am learning quickly enough. AS A STUDENT, IN HIGH SCHOOL I DIDN’T REALLY PAY MUCH ATTENTION TO PROPER GRAMMAR WHEN I WOULD HALF-ASS ESSAYS; AS A WRITER NOW IN COLLEGE, I AM BEGINNING TO UNDERSTAND THE IMPORTANCE OF GRAMMAR, PROPER PUNCTUATION, AND SYNTAX [parallel sentences conjoined by semicolon, with introductory phrases, with comma after the phrase].  

As we read more and more about the imaginary student Dora, I have begun to attempt to think back to how I learned to write and I can honestly say I have no idea in hell how I was taught to write. This lack of memory probably contributes to my writing style. 

When I write, words pretty much just come spilling out. No structure, not much punctuation, and sometimes no point at all. That is one of the things I hope to get out of this class, sentence structure and over all more precise meaning when I write. So far I like to think that I have gotten a little better, feel free to let me know otherwise. 

Overall, this class has begun to teach me that grammar is much more important than I thought I was before. I now find myself re-analyzing my texts before I send them, facebook status’, tumblr posts, anywhere I write now where I may have a tendency to be lazy and use bad grammar or shortened words, I double check myself. I know this new habit will continue throughout the class and I hope that it only helps me improve my writing and my grammar skills!