8/25/09 My evolution in writing.

I have made it through another first day of school. As this is my senior year, I assume that this will be my last "first day" of school. Writing a blog for a writing class is an unusual tool, but it is one that I think will be fun to use. This semester I have four poli sci classes. After listening to the professors discuss the green sheets for their classes, I expect this semester to be busy but rewarding.

There will be a lot of writing required for my classes, but that does not scare me. I am a competent writer. When I was younger, I had a real problem with my language skills. I think my first word was 'puppy'; I was not happy to find out that my first word was not 'mommy' or 'daddy'. My parents eventually became concerned with my lack of vocabulary. I was tested by a speech therapist who reported that I had 10% of the vocabulary that other children my age had. When I was three, I started speech therapy at Stanford University.

In elementary school, my writing assignments were very simplistic in structure. They were as simplistic as 'see Spot run' or 'see Spot bark'. At that time, reading and writing were difficult for me. I remember that twice a week six of us would leave our classroom after lunch to go to a dark room. I didn't realize it at that time, but that dark room was speech therapy lab. My classmates and I had private lessons with our teacher, Mr. Stone. We completed many different exercises and activities. These lessons helped me to expand my vocabulary and my language skills.

Over the years, my language skills have improved dramatically. Mom commented about the improvement in my skills between elementary and high school writing assignments. As we cleaned out our garage last summer, she found a short story I wrote in fourth grade. I reread the short story along with a short story I wrote my junior year. I must say, the difference was remarkable. I can't believe how simplistically I wrote.

I think the most important grammatical lesson I learned in elementary school was about the term 'a lot'. The teacher told us that this term was to be two separate words. She threatened us and urged us to never write it as 'alot'; I have never forgotten that lesson. It drives me crazy when I see this term written incorrectly in essays written for college classes. 'Alot' is my number 2 pet peeve. My number 1 pet peeve is the incorrect usage of 'there', 'their', and 'they're'.