On Monday, when I sat down in History class, I felt something on my foot.  I looked down, and there was an ant in the square of skin exposed by my maryjjanes.  I just leaned over and squished him.  I think he was suicidal anyways.

I didn’t think anything else about it; I had just walked from the outside and may have just picked up an adventurer.

BUT, yesterday, Thursday, I was in Anthro, and I pulled off a cardigan I had on, as I was folding it over my lap, I spotted another ant struggling on its shoulder.  Ok, I didn’t bring these ants to school with me.  I don’t have ants at my house. 

If anyone else sees any ants, let me know so I can bring in my backpack some Raid?

Thanks so much.

Because Monday was Labor Day and the school was closed, I was going to miss my English 6700 class. We were to turn in a writing assignment and I was eager to hear what my professor thought about my work.  Via phone, she and I arranged a private meeting time in her office on a different day and we had one of the best discussions I’ve had with anyone regarding my writing in a long, long time.  It’s one thing for friends to say “Oh, I loved the article you wrote for the magazine!”  That strokes my ego and keeps me going.  It’s another thing entirely for a professor with a PhD to say “This part is good, leave that part out.  Lead with this, finish with that.”  And then to explain to you why she is making those suggestions.

So when you need help with a writing assignment, schedule a 30 minute session with your professor during their office hours. That’s what they are there for.  That’s tip number one for improving your writing skills.

Here’s tip number two….

In ENGL 6700, we are using a wonderful book as a  reference.  “The Craft of Revision” Fifth Edition, by Donald M. Murray.  It is the most helpful book I’ve ever used with regards to improving my writing skills.

Here are a few topics it covers that I’ve found helpful:  How to Get the Writing Done, Reading for Revision, Rewrite With Focus, Rewrite with Structure.   There are so many great topics and suggestions in this book I could not list them all.  And you don’t have to “start at the beginning and read to the end”.  Pick a topic that  applies to whatever stage you are at in your writing process, read it, and watch the words flow from your brain and onto the blank page.

The book is a bit expensive, 50 something dollars, but it’s a text book and  worth the costs if you plan on doing any type of writing in college or in your career.  You will refer to it as long as you continue to write. And it also makes for entertaining reading.   I bought mine through the website www.ichapters.com.  It came much faster from the website than from the local book stores that I called.

So, make private, 30 minute appointments with your professor to review your writing assignments, and buy the book I suggested.  It’s working for me and it will work for you.

As a writer (of anything and everything), whenever I turn in a piece of writing for a crit or a grade, I always go in with the mindset that the piece needs to be torn apart. (Mind you, I haven’t had this happen since I sought publication for the first time when I was a junior in high school, but it’s still a safe mindset, nonetheless.) I go in with this mindset so I won’t find myself disappointed or upset when I do get a piece back that’s drowning in a sea of red. I was never really the kind of girl that got legitimately upset or angry over criticism, but I remember the first time it happened to me, and boy, was I unpleasantly surprised. It made question if I was cut out to be a fiction writer, and I felt depressed for several days thereafter.

After that experience, I decided it was just best to go in expecting a tough swimming lesson. I have a much thicker shell now, so it bothers me not. I’d rather have a piece drowning in a sea of red because at least I know I’m getting someone who knows what he or she’s talking about–assuming the comments don’t cause eye roll.

In any case, I wasn’t feeling that great today because I felt like my semester was getting off to a shaky start. My stat test was a nightmare, and I don’t even want to talk about comm. I thought these were omens or something.

As I approach my Lit Crit class, one of the students asks if I checked my grade on Georgia View, and I naturally replied I hadn’t. She then commences to tell me several students had failed, students who had made effortless As in 1101 and 1102. This obviously had me panicking. I was a student who made effortless As! If other students who made effortless As didn’t do that great, then what made me think I could be the exception? Needless to say, that didn’t make me feel any better.

Obviously, I was happily proven wrong.

Now I’m questioning if I should allow myself to have more confidence in my own writing: basically, if I should turn a paper in knowing I did well.

I dunno. That’s a gray area for me. I feel like if I have confidence, I’m not going to try as hard. Then again, if I do have confidence, I might not be as stressed. Maybe I’ll just stay neutral. Who knows?

So, despite the fact that this little piece has nothing to do with my being a grad student,

I decided to post it anyway.  It was awfully fun to write.

Enjoy.

I recently purchased an outdoor grill with a rotisserie feature.

Upon finishing my first rotisserie chicken, I found there were a few

Directions the manual forgot to include.

I thought it would be kind of me to share these with the world:

1. Send you family to China
2. Remove all sharp knives and weapons to a secure area
3. Start small.  Perhaps a chicken leg or a thigh would be less traumatic
4. Never remove an empty rotisserie spear from the grill after you have heated it to five thousand degrees
5. Exercise caution when jabbing razor sharp talons into your chicken
6. Keep a tourniquet handy
7. A rotisserie motor requires electricity.  It’s tiny little cord will not stretch across your patio
8. Turn the rotating chicken off before trying to check its temperature
9. Keep a bottle of vodka handy for when you finish the ordeal
10. Hire Martha Stewart.   Only a freak like Martha would  to do something this stupid.

It can be a carthartic experience, to be on the other side, marking off every error on someone else’s paper. But when it comes down to it I feel a little sympathy, having been there too recently to give myself to more sadistic urges. It is difficult to pick between trashing and praising everyone’s essays. A distinction has to be made, and that can be difficult. If I give this one good marks, well that one really doesn’t deserve to be so much lower then? But then it will be ranked higher than this other one which is definitely better. You begin to see that grading papers is not easy.

You also run into another problem, when people have completely different morals, and it is hard to remain neutral. For example, last year there was a glowing “expository” about how wonderful macs are. (Yes, for some people this is a moral and even a religious topic.) Now, if you are a graphic designer, yes, macs are objectively better. But as easy as it would be to make something superior to windows, I have used macs and they don’t excel at exceeding. Objectively I could say this guy was biased and didn’t fully cover the topic, he just wrote an ad, but it was a very well written ad and the writing is what we’re supposed to be judging.

Similarly, an essay was turned down which had a particular stance on a large part of the military. It was nominally turned down because the subject was far too broad to be portrayed in a five-page paper, but some people were not happy with the position it took, and that may have been an influence.

It’s always hard to remain objective. We naturally feel that we are in the right and that if other people disagree with us, they are wrong. But that is something that we are supposed to unlearn in college, that the other person may be right, or that their opinions may be right for them and not for us. Or at the very least, they have a right to be wrong, and we have no right to try to enlighten them.

Toaster pastry prices are inflating out of control.

Now, I am not a communist (sorry Jake). The vending machine provides a service by being there with food, and in exchange for this service I expect to reward it with extra money, to buy whatever it is vending machines covet in their spare time. But capitalism is not a perfect system (no duh, Wall Street), and it requires regulation to curb the hand of the free market from rifling through my wallet.

Toaster pastries, I assumed, came under a constitutional provision that the vending machines must provide some sort of sustenance for a price that, at least compared with the other stuff, seems like a fair shake. Processed sugar is not exactly a meal but it will do for one in emergencies, such as the zombiepocalypse or when I forget to bring or pack or make my lunch.

Last year, for the price of one dollar, I could purchase two pseudopastry envelopes of gooey strawberry (it’s almost always strawberry) and, after a sugar rush for the half-hour, continue my studies with the knowledge that, yes, I had taken several days off of my life, but at least I would not be hungry.

Now, the price has inflated by the staggering rate of 25%, outpacing the national inflation rate by severalfold, and now I am forced to resort to drastic measures, such as remembering to bring or pack or make my own lunch.

Of course, there is the JSAC food court, but that really deserves its own post.

Unlike most girls in the room, I was a sophomore. I did not rush last year because I didn’t really know a lot of girls in sororities and none of my friends showed any interest in joining. My sister was in a sorority in college and loved it, but I was not convinced it was for me. During my freshman year, I met and became friends with several girls in both Panhellenic sororities. This year I decided that I would give rushing a shot and only pledge if I fell in love with one of the sororities.

The open house was where we, future sorority girls, were split up into groups according to last name. Each group was given a Pi Chi. A Pi Chi is a member of one of the sororities which has separated herself from her sorority for the week of recruitment in order give an unbiased opinion and help to the girls in her group. She told us what to wear each day and knew where we needed to be and when we needed to be there.

After we met our Pi Chi, we played ice breaker games and made nametags. The open house only lasted an hour. This was a great start to a week full of excitement, high heels, and sorority songs. I will write more about my experience in my next post.

Ciao for now!

Jaclyn

. Call me a geek, but I do actually crack open my textbooks on the weekends. Sometimes it feels good to be ahead, its something less to worry about and more time I can sleep during the week. On the other hand, if I do something ahead of time I will probably lose it, while if I do it right before class, well then its with me and I don’t have to worry about it. Usually I just skim over what we will be studying next week, or what I should have been studying last week.

. My weekends are rarely as organized as I am about to make them seem, but this is a general picture of what may occur on a weekend without road trips or parties. After class on Friday I head downtown to eat dinner and get drinks afterwards at the Soul Bar, then to Sky City if there’s a good band. On First Fridays I walk up and down Broad just to see the vendors and street people. For one night a month all the interesting people in Augusta come out of their hobbit-holes and go downtown. It’s great fun.

. Saturday I will get up at ten to turn the radio on and spend another hour in bed listening to Car Talk, then I get my coffee and prepare myself for being awake. Afternoons I’ll go mountain-biking or to the aqueduct or Lake Olmstead to work on getting some sort of non-whiteness to my skin. Saturday night is a little more reserved so that on Sunday I can get back into the habit of waking up. Mondays are bad enough as it is without sleep deprivation.

. Sunday I go into the New Moon or Casablanca and read the Times while I pretend to be smart. After that I go to the Book Tavern and talk with David to continue the charade, and then I work on writing- fiction, opinion, whatever I feel like. This way I can convince myself I am intellectually charged and ready for another week of learning stuff, until Monday morning hits and I am looking forward to Friday night.