0125

Why do writing assignments have a page minimum?

To encourage students to write more than they typically would…to stretch their writing muscles.

To give: bibliophilic professors an evening reprieve, masochistic professors another way to punish their students, and correction crazed professors another excuse to experience the intoxicating power pulsating through their red pens.  (Not to debunk more commonly presented reasons)

Why shouldn’t they?

Results in inefficient space filling to meet requirements. (Promotes circumloquience)

Not contemporary with today’s form of accelerated communication (passé )

Promotes poor word choice is it mauve or a light purplish color (which has more words)

Makes students dread writing (daunting)

Makes reading the essay less interesting even if it’s good because there’s too much (blasé)

Waste of everyone’s time: writer, reader, grader.

Takes the fun out of writing.

Poetry is the compression of language expansion of meaning (note the inverse relationship)

0126

Dear weekends,

I have missed you so much.  On Monday everyone will be talking about how fun their weekend was: all of the exciting adventures they went on , the TV shows they caught up on, the dates, the movies , the parties, the restaurants, the hanging out.  And then there will be me. The only way I know it’s a weekend is that I don’t have class. I still have work though. I work as a clerk at a hotel so on the weekends, I get the overnight shifts. Fridays are always the longest. I wake up at 7 am and am off to school. Then I spend the entire time a school listening to all of the weekend plans. Hearing everyone excitedly proclaim the advent of another weekend…if only they knew.  Once I’m done with school time (I’m usually home by 5p) it’s homework and dinner time. Then I’m off to work ‘til 7am on Saturday morning. Then I get to sleep  while everyone goes out to wherever people go for lunch on weekends then by the time I wake up it’s time for more homework then off to work again ‘til Sunday. Then before I get a chance to take that weekend nap, it’s Monday back to school time.

0122

Not in much of a creative mood today. It’s interesting how much my mood can fluctuate. Sometimes I can’t escape an idea that is playing through my mind and other days, it takes hours just to get to the point where I can begin to formulate an idea. Currently I am at a loss. I’m just sitting on a couch in the Wilk (location X as my wife and I call it) people watching. I’ve found that when I’m out of ideas sometimes my best source is the interactions and the styles I see.

One guy just woke up his sick friend – the sleeping guy is actually carrying a bottle of dayquill with him… it’s okay to take a sick day buddy. And dayquill is a waste of money but I won’t judge. They’re talking now. The sick guy was feeling a little ill for a while then he was late to class and ran up to campus. That made his illness even worse so he decided to take a nap on a weird bench thing which seemed the most precarious option available but I’m sure the dayquill made it look more hospitable. The guy who woke him is from Norway. And sick guy is from somewhere where country music is acceptable for use as a ringtone (so maybe he’s a local).

Someone walked by wearing running shoes with their jeans. Perhaps to some this is an acceptable thing but really…when does that combo actually work? I’m sure if I made a list of most uncomfortable things to wear while running, Jeans would be on the list. So who are they trying to fool by wearing footwear designated only for running while wearing something that they clearly don’t go running in. Unless, they’re running in the cold in which case they should talk to sick guy and perhaps reconsider their running habits. 

0118

Welcome to Utah Valley Regional Medical Center’s Emergency Department. Here we provide medical assistance twenty-four hours a day seven days a week for acute medical and trauma conditions. In order to be admitted for treatment by any of our several qualified healthcare professionals, please choose from one of the following prompts and write a response that is between three and five pages double spaced. Your response must be turned in to one of the front desk secretaries before any evaluation of medical condition can be made.

1)      Please describe the pain you are feeling. Include such things as: specific anatomical location (for a list of common body parts and their location see reference chart 3.2 in your clipboard’s quick reference guide.), potential causes of said pain, a numeric rating of the level of pain you are currently experiencing and, most importantly, your body’s response to the pain you are feeling.

2)      Describe your medical history. Any previous hospitalizations, allergies, chronic diseases, pa-/maternal medical conditions which are known to be hereditary (i.e. Cancer). Try to avoid simply creating a list (the quality of your responses may affect the time it takes for you to be admitted)

As always remember to use proper MLA format when drafting your responses.

We look forward to working with you to provide our state of the art equipment and superior staff support to help you recover from your life threatening ailment.

0115

My mom is a freelance writer who often contributes articles (and the occasional poem) to newspapers and magazines. Much of my writing history comes from her love of the art. She always found ways to integrate her writing and rhyming abilities into daily activities. Even our Saturday morning chore list rhymed (this tactic did not make the chores any more enjoyable). Many of the games we played as a family focused around words. My mom in her love of competition has never let my dad beat her at boggle or more recently, Bananagrams (she always gets him with the short words).

My dad loves the English language as well. Growing up he was never the most social so instead he busied himself perusing the dictionary or world books. He is the one who wins at scrabble when uses polysyllabic words which far surpassed everyone else’s lexical abilities.

I somehow ended up with a medley of my parents English abilities. My mom’s writing and rhyming abilities coupled with my dad’s awesome grasp of both the words and rules comprising to the English language have helped me on numerous occasions throughout my school experience.

One of the lessons that I learned from

0111

“I love school.” When my alarm goes off at 7am I have to repeat that phrase several times to counter the gravitational forces of my bed which always appear stronger when even the sun knows better than to be awake. I can’t argue with the fact that I have learned valuable information and skills as a result of being whisked through the California state education system but I will make the observation that I learned a lot from my non-institutionalized pursuits as well. The new media article promotes this type of extra-institutional learning and self-development which I feel is far more essential to one’s development than memorization of dates associated with momentous events in history or the study of ancient Chinese dogmata.

I agree strongly with the encouragement given in the article to not wait for the educational system’s daily doling of knowledge. Instead it is important for each of us to seek opportunities to expand our knowledge through multiple sources including (and yes grudgingly at times) school.  

0109

Today’s lecture and readings got me thinking about how I treat the reading that I do. I’ll admit I felt a little out of place sitting silent in lecture as everyone pontificated on the proper methods of critical reading. Critical reading has always been difficult for me. My mom writes a lot and I was typically the one who proofed her manuscripts but doing that just trained me to focus on writing techniques, word choice and grammar without paying much attention to themes or biases which were rooted beneath the readily seen layer of the writing. As a result of this (and I’m sure there are some personality elements contributing to this as well) when I read I typically do so envisioning a red pen in my hand. Sometimes I’m able to get past this mind set and actually glean ideas and feel the emotion of different pieces of literature but most of the time I simply read for errors or particularly well formulated sentences and then put the piece down. Delving further into the meaning of someone’s writing is something that has always been a challenge for me. The thing I learned in lecture today was how important the ability to find meaning in writing is. 

Attn World:

In the grand scheme of things my residence just north of down town Provo – a one bedroom apartment with a small living room (which at present is dreadfully cluttered) – might not seem important to you; And even smaller and less important would be me one of the two inhabitants of the aforementioned residence.

That said however, I’ll humor myself by offering a formal introduction though I’m sure that at some time in my twenty two year stint on this planet I must have done something to gain at least some recognition.

It’s important that you know that I did not begin my stay on earth here in Provo. I’m sitting on my couch right now which according to the layout of Provo’s infrastructure means I am facing west. If I were to turn a little more to my left and maintain that direction for about seven hundred miles I would wind up in what will always be my home town. Irvine, California. Southern California (only those from there refuse to use any of its various monikers).  My dad was the reason my family wound up there. Years before my birth, He studied at the University of California in Irvine. Following graduation my parents made the decision to stay because of the wealth of opportunities for my father – a Mechanical Engineer – to progress in his field.

Those from Irvine’s neighboring cities refer to Irvine as “the Bubble.” It is a planned city with thousands of cookie-cutter houses and perfectly kept yards. A city without any dollar stores, Wal-Marts, or homeless people simply because the residents wouldn’t stand for anything of lower class than themselves. A city voted “most fashionable” because of the Irvineite’s intrinsic need to shop at the nicest stores.

It was in Irvine that I met my Rebecca, my wife. Her family moved to my side of Irvine when we were fourteen. I met her on her first Sunday at church and we have been best friends ever since.

Ten days after my nineteenth birthday, I left the beautiful bubble to serve as a missionary in Winnipeg Canada I’ll admit it took some getting used to when the mission car I was driving was the only brand new car at an intersection or when I went to the mall and there was no valet. But with those changes came some more welcomed adjustments as well. The people weren’t plastic. Though I did miss seeing the occasional exotic car or sprawling ocean-front mansion, I did appreciate the added measure of sincerity given to those who by circumstance or choice realized that there was more to life than those things which eventually fall prey to the corrosive ocean spray.

Following my return from the great north, I began courting Rebecca. She had been one of my primary correspondents during my time in Canada so I decided to peruse a relationship. She was at the time living in Provo, Utah. After a few weeks of nightly phone calls, I decided to fully define the relationship.  I called her and asked her out on a date for the following night then hopped in my car and drove the seven hundred miles and as Rebecca and I now say, officlified things. I didn’t realize how terrible this officialification would be until I was heading south on I-15. After a semester at home – alone – I moved to Provo and Rebecca and I got engaged shortly thereafter and were married in October.

We now live just north of the small down town district in Provo in a small one bedroom apartment. We still haven’t invested in a desk so I sit on the couch to do my homework.