Blog 10 (story continued)

I didn't give a damn what the cost was, really.  I mean, I was ill. I was terminally ill. But, in a twisted since of reasoning, at that moment in the doctors office, I was free.  Free from the confines that hold us back day to day. From the bills, the chores, the daily struggle that people call "living" (1. SERIES OF THREE ITEMS WITH ONLY COMMAS). No, I was finally awake. I was alive.

I knew what to do with this new found freedom.  I had to pinpoint it, focus it to something that could make a difference.  I had to leave a mark in this town. I needed to be remembered. Those who lived here -who'd made the daily struggle to survive that much more unbearable- they were my focus.  They forced my hand. The men whom had taken what they'd wanted from those who could not defend themselves. I would come for them. I would be their king.

Don't think me a fool, though.  I knew what I was doing and I knew the risks.  I am a man of logic, after all. But, when policy fails and your left with only your head and your death sentence, logic becomes a burden.  Then, in the vast wasteland of fear-ruling and intimidation, only there can you find out what happens when logic fails. Ruthless, unorthodox, beautiful.

I did not wait long. For the first few weeks I only observed.  Gathering insight to the ways of the black market.  These dumb kids had no idea they were being watched. Or, so I thought at the time. This world was theirs, more than I knew.There was one kid in particular, Davis.  A punk adolescent, maybe 17, I never really asked.  He enjoyed his time within this world (8.Simple Sentence). It was Davis' attitude that eventually got the best of him; I do not tolerate taking more than ones earn...(7. Apostrophe for a noun ending in -s). I think it was his arrogance, really.  He had the audacity to sell to mere children - maybe 14 or so- and we do not sell to children, not ever (10. Complex Sentence).  So I made a promise to the little punk, and he was the first to leave (9. Compound Sentence). Everyone talks big and it's a bad joke, dropped at the first sign of trouble.

It ends up being the sheer power of whose ready to to risk it all over a minor disagreement that is the deciding factor in who will walk away. If it is your instinct that you rely on in a confrontation, than it's yours that may eventually fail you, as mine did. 

Blog 9 (story continued).

         As bad as it looks, as bad as it really is, with the drenched bus ticket and pathetic suitcase,  it’s not as if I had never been through something terrible before. I have. My whole life I had been walked on.  Used and abused, as it were.  So has everyone else in the world, really.  Everyone wants to find the source of the problem in their lives, something that it all leads back to. As if one could really pin point all the crap in some one’s life, all the mistakes, the bad decisions, and tell them with a confident voice that it all began when the mean kids called you names in first grade. Give me a break (7. Long sentence followed by short).  These people with college degrees and fancy houses and white picket fences are so unaware of the world around them it’s almost embarrassing (2.Simple Sentence with Compounded words).  Living in a blissful state of ignorance and reality TV, they never realize that right outside their neighborhood is a whole world beneath the cracked surface that hides in plain sight. 

          As my hat begins to drip the built up rain off its rim I lean back and close my eyes, remembering.  I was one of them, before that damn doctor appointment.   I even had the white picket fence and a family dog.  True, I was happy then, but I hadn’t yet seen the light, the clarity that is brighter than the sun (6. Then and than). So how did it all go down, I am sure you must be wondering. It’s simple really but to answer that you would have to ask yourself, really ask yourself that is, one thing – what is worth it all? (3. Dash for emphasis &  4. Rhetorical question)

 

         This isn’t a story about justification for actions, however, it’s about revenge (8. One sentence paragraph &  1. However).

Blog 8

          As I sit, weak and fatigued, I pondered to myself: how could this be?  Everything I have worked for, everything I have earned. Now, nothing more than fits within a suitcase- a droll, poor amalgamation of a life once lived- sitting beside me on a park bench (APPOSITIVE SET OFF BY DASHES).  Everyone says the same thing, too: “You should have stopped while you were ahead.” But they don’t know. How could they? They’ve never tasted desperate. Never have they felt the power of gaining everything one could want simply because there was nothing to lose.  It’s a sense of accomplishment really. Feeling the cold air brush my face as a single raindrop pattered on my hand, I knew: this was real (PARTICIPIAL PHRASE & APPOSITIVE SET OFF BY a COLON).  

        So I got greedy. I started to interfere with new grounds, new territories. Though, as I have mentioned, the power that comes with this business. No laws could have brought me down. Only the laws set by those in the business, the ones that could be enforced (if you had the manpower, the bite behind the bark), and even then I thought myself to be untouchable (APPOSITIVE SET OFF BY PARENTHESES).  I liberated myself from the mundane repetition that is life.  Sometime things are left to be untouched, though. I was a fool. I know that now.

         And as that damn first rain drop trickles its way off my chin, I look down to see it drop onto my bus ticket, how the ink smudges as downpour slowly begins to blanket the street. The ticket becomes less and less legible. And the all too familiar feeling of what a single drop of liquid can begin to skew a clear message.  That how it all began, really, a drop of liquid, red and dripping down the piece of paper titled “REASON FOR APPOINTMENT” as I coughed in an all but empty waiting room (APPOSITIVE SET OFF BY COMMAS). In that room, in that moment, I was freed. Clarity finally had its day. 

I knew what was inside me. Not the illness, I mean. But the animal, awake after years of slumber. Conscious, faint but growing, was the animal becoming (ADJECTIVES OUT OF ORDER). Everyone says it’s a dog eat dog world.  It was time to bite back.

Blog #7

In all our years in schooling we were taught specific ideas and rules about writing. And almost every year we would be told that what we had previously learned the year(s) before is wrong (or at least not fully correct).  When I decided to sign up for this class, I accepted the notion that a fairly large amount of what I believed I knew about grammar and everything involving the subject would plausibly be incorrect.  I could not have been more intrigued.

            While I have always considered myself a decent writer, I do run into minuscule errors more frequently than I would care for; a run on sentence or two, or using a semicolon incorrectly, etc.  And, like the snow in Pullman, many of these little things would build up and I would end up with something as confusing as Pullman’s weather. So, as far as this semester of class goes, there are definitely a few particulars I would care to fix.

            Because of the voice I have through my writing, run on sentences are a large issue I have.  I enjoy explaining things in great detail and because of that I struggle to form cohesive, shorter, sentences. Instead, I make a sentence anywhere from two to five lines in length. While it may sound correct in my head, often it becomes quite the opposite once on paper. So, a skill I would like to be taught this semester is how to correctly use symbols such as colons, semicolons, dash marks, commas, and so on to help mend my exaggerated sentences. Though this seems like a task I should have mastered well before college, as I have said before, it is hard to really know what is correct with the rules changing so frequently. One professor says it is one way, a different professor says something else, not to mention the computers now having the ability to virtually tell me I am wrong (thank god that little paper-clip dude is no longer with us…).

            There are so many little nitpicked things about writing that I just want to master, the majority of which, though, I have already stated.  It would be ridiculous of me to list every single matter out and explain in detail the problems I have with writing, mostly because that would take too long. Nor do I have the inclination, I do not have the time to explain in detail obviously, and you, as the reader, certainly do not have the patience for it. My point being that what it is I want to learn or take away from this class is the ability to fully understand how grammar works within writing. I want to know all the ins and outs, all the small details, because fixing those small details will add up in a big way.

Blog #6 Compound Sentences

    In all our years in schooling we were taught specific ideas and rules about writing. And almost every year we would be told that what we had previously learned the year(s) before is wrong (or at least not fully correct).  When I decided to sign up for this class, I accepted the notion that a fairly large amount of what I believed I knew about grammar and everything involving the subject would plausibly be incorrect.  I could not have been more intrigued.

            While I have always considered myself a decent writer, I do run into minuscule errors more frequently than I would care for; errors such as a run on sentence or two, or using a semicolon incorrectly, etc.  And, like the snow in Pullman, many of these little things would build up and I would end up with something as confusing as Pullman’s weather. So, as far as this semester of class goes, there are definitely a few particulars I would care to fix. 

 

Apparently run on sentences are a large problem I have.  I enjoy explaining things in great detail and because of that I struggle to form cohesive, shorter, sentences. Instead, I make a sentence anywhere from two to five lines in length. While it may sound correct in my head, often it becomes quite the opposite once on paper. So, a skill I would like to be taught this semester is how to correctly use symbols such as colons, semicolons, dash marks, commas, and so on to help mend my exaggerated sentences. Though this seems like a task I should have mastered well before college, as I have said before, it is hard to really know what is correct with the rules changing so frequently. One professor says it is one way, a different professor says something else, not to mention the computers now having the ability to virtually tell me I am wrong (thank god that little paper-clip dude is no longer with us…).

There are so many little nitpicked things about writing that I just want to master, the majority of which I have already stated.  It would be ridiculous of me to list every single matter out and explain in detail the problems I have with writing, mostly because that would take too long. I do not have the time, nor the inclination, to explain in detail obviously, and you, as the reader, certainly do not have the patience for it. My point being that what it is I want to learn or take away from this class is the ability to fully understand how grammar works within writing. I want to know all the ins and outs, all the small details, because fixing those small details will add up in a big way.

Learn By Doing (Revised(Again)) POW Blog 5

Learn By Doing (Revised)

(I DO NOT BELIEVE I HAVE ANY OF QUESTION NUMBER ONE)

When it comes to schooling, the general public will be quick to blame any lack of understanding from the student on the teacher.  This is very true in some cases, but like anything in this life, there are always two sides. TRUE, SOME PEOPLE SHOULD NOT ENTER THE FIELD, BUT LILE ANUTHING IN LIFE, THERE ARE ALWAYS TWO SIDES.  It seems like everyone considers a teachers job to be one thing: regurgitate some idea or concept to a student or students in a way that allows them to regurgitate that information back to the teacher (but in “their own words”) so that they can remember the answer when it comes up on a test (because apparently that’s how students show “understanding”).  Whomever’s idea it was to generate state level testing is not a well-liked person because (#4) I find this to be missing the point.  The point of school is to learn, and the job of the teacher is to show students how to learn. Instead, most of us will sit down and pretend to understand what some instructor is verbally throwing up so we can cipher through the mess and hope to some deity that we pass the final test in a class, which we will then inevitably forget all about during summer.  It is not a pretty scenario but that doesn’t make it any less true.

            In Cordeiro’s “Dora Learns to Write and in the Process Encounters Punctuation”, Dora was lucky enough to find a rare gem as a teacher instead of the walking textbook that most get dealt.  Learning anything at a young age is difficult, everyone knows that.  Now, throw some sentence structure and punctuation into the mix and add a little dash of their short attention span and these kids may as well be learning the mechanics of Shakespeare (if that is even a thing). Teachers and students alike will stress themselves out in this scenario (#2). What Dora’s teacher does that works so well was she let Dora ponder the ideas of punctuation little by little on her own. When Dora has a question she goes to her peers and they bounce ideas off of one another. Then, when the time comes for Dora to present her writing, her teacher tells her what she has done correctly and then simply adds new information for her to consider. And as time goes on, Dora begins to understand.  She learns what works and what doesn’t through experience. That experience will stick with her longer than anything and much easier than trying to just remember the facts. Learn by doing.

            Of course there are downsides to everything and teaching methods are no exception. Students will revert back to a certain way of thinking if they get to confused or frustrated while attempting to understand any new concept. In Dora’s case, she went back to end-page styled periods when she struggled with the end-line concept. Eventually she would grow back to the end-page method and continue growing from there. Sometimes three steps forward can result in one step back, but in the end she will be more the wiser for it and as previously stated, those concepts will stick with her better because she experienced them instead of having to regurgitate some amount of facts concerning it.