More on authors I hate

Woolf. Melville. Thoreau.

Boring.

How is it that someone in the distant past decided that these people were worth reading, when they're actually some of the most boring writers in the world? Have you ever tried to actually read Billy Budd or Mrs. Dalloway? It's like letters have organized themselves into a mob with the sole intention of killing your brain cells. Nothing happens. Flip page. Nothing happens. Flip page. Nothing happens. Throw book out window. Watch TV.

Informal as hell

Looking through my blog posts, I've come to the realization that I use a very odd sort of grammar on the Internet. I always put necessary apostrophes and crap where they're supposed to go, but I use a lot more run-ons and a sort of creative writing style. I realize that this whole blog thing is supposed to be an assignment, but who is gonna actually want to read the blog of some Grammar Gestapo guy? (Hint: No one) Isn't the point of this exercise to try new styles of writing in a different medium? I hope so, or Carney's gonna maul my blog.

Connecting...

I just spent 3 days without Internet access. It's like taking fire away from early man. Do you know how little there is to do in this town? Unless I want to go to a strip club or something there isn't anything to do here. I actually had to dig up single player games that I could kill time with. They were fun for a few minutes, and then I got bored again.

Never again.

Class full of Teachers

Listening to the way people talk in class, I get the feeling that the overwhelming majority of people enrolled in Advanced Comp. are intending to be teachers. I always expected to run into that someday, but I honestly expected for it to be sooner.

The Death of English

No, not really, but the English major that most people are going for is pretty dead. No employer gives a rats ass if you can explain the rich metaphors involved in a work of literature. That crap is for hippies. People hiring writers for practical means want to know that you can form a sentence, and sadly, not a sentence to the standard of an English major. My journalism professor once told me that most newspapers aim for a 12th grade reading level when they're writing their stories. At first I couldn't believe it, until I actually paid attention to the way news stories were worded and constructed. Short sentences with easy to follow words. You know what people hate doing? Feeling dumb. Yea, congratulations, you used "nebulous" properly. Guess what? 90% of your classmates, and even some of your professors might not know what that means.

You wanna explore plot and meaning? I hope you're ready to go for a Ph.D, because that's the only way you're finding a job.

About Classics

Hate it. Terrible word. Some smartass decided that people like Woolf were worth reading a long time ago, so these are the books that get brought up in every class ever. Guess what? It's boring. You wanna know why English majors don't get jobs? Because they get crappy novels from boring authors shoved down their throats until they're all little robots that agree that Hemingway was a badass writer. I don't like Hemingway. I especially don't like Melville. They're awful, and you should stop making us read them.

Memoir thoughts

Lame. I don't like talking about myself. There's a reason I don't talk in classes unless I have something that I think is important to say. Maybe it's because I already know how everything turned out, but my life is pretty boring. I'm not a swashbuckler or an international arms dealer, so I figure my memoir would be pretty crappy. However, I can see Carney's point in trying to expose us to other types of writing.

Actually working

I've actually been pretty good about staying up to date with all my work this semester, and in some cases I've been doing it early, even. I guess I actually have classes I give a crap about this semester. God help me, I can't be excited about Renaissance paintings or Biology lectures, but writing for the Collegian is actually pretty enjoyable. Prof. Carney's class is turning out to be pretty good, and Popular Fiction doesn't involve the horrible literature I expected. I swear, the next person to make me read Virginia Woolfe is going to get an earful. What a hack.

On Plagiarism

Yea, same thing as the reflection we did. I don't know a soul who has plagiarized, it's just too risky. One thing I've learned from being an English major is that a smart professor will catch you every time. I suppose it could be an issue in earlier education, but I'd wager that if your assignment is so uninvolved and boring to the student that he feels the need to plagiarize someone else's work in order to complete it, the problem is you, not the student. Some day I'll figure out why schoolwork is so boring. I guess that's why I didn't bother doing any of it before I started college.