Word Choice

This quarter in school I am taking Composition 101. Most people aren't to fond of Comp (including most of the people in my class). It involves a lot of writing, including essays. I, however, absolutely love it. Writing has always been a passion of mine (I mean come on, I have a blog), and even the essays don't bother me, because I find them very easy to do.

In class this week we had an exercise to help us use more varying word choice. I myself just like using fancy words, so this was exciting for me. I have also been in a poetic mood lately, so most of my writing has been reflecting that. Our first assignment was to write a 6 sentence paragraph, but you were not allowed to repeat any word (this includes I, the, a, etc). Also, it had to make at least some sort of sense. Mine is as follows.


Six sentences stumble though our minds. Confusion lingers over the task at hand. Quiet students jot down phrases. Pencils touching paper echos off dim, yellow walls. Patience runs thin. Words draw near as ends meet.

The second assignment we did was far more difficult. We were to write a 4 to 6 sentence paragraph. The problem, however, is that we were giving a list of the 100 most used words (link to the list here), and while we could repeat words, we could not use any on the list.

Joseph sells inspiration. Bushels, towers, ideas galore. Thoughts overflowing stacks lining walls. Writers block attacking creativity. Thus inspiration withers, crumbling beneath heavy loads.

I found both exercises very fun, and a great way to play around with word choice. Feel free to try either (or both) of these out, and let me know what you come up with in the comments!

Goals

When I was little, I never made goals, I never even thought of them. I’m not even sure if I knew what goals were. Over time, school taught me (or attempted to), that I should make goals, telling me how important they were. I always found this part of the class to be utterly stupid. I would always write some bullshit answer about getting good grades (which, by the way, I did get. You can even ask my mom.)

Now that I am growing into adulthood (I know Mom, I’ll always be your little girl), I find that goals have become a necessary part of my life. I have to get through college to get me degree, so that I can start a career. I have to budget my money to save up to my goal of eventually moving. The more that I think about it, the more that I realize that by achieving these goals, I simply create another goal to do something greater. It seems as though the rest of my life is an eternal process of making goals so that I can go on to make more goals. It makes me wonder what is the point, what is the final goal to end all goals?

This could go two ways really. One way to think about it is that life is a constant, overwhelming struggle. However, you can flip that and consider it a good thing, because you always have something to look forward to, a reason to keep going. I’m not really sure which is the proper way to think of it, or if both are true and right.

But all of this leads me to another, more important question: Is life about the end, or the journey to get to the end. Everything that I know makes me believe that all of the experiences in this thing called life are far more important than the achievement of any final goal.