St. Mary's

It had been nearly twelve years since my brother had been baptized, and nearly a two years since I last stepped foot in a church. Things in my hectic life have gotten the best of me, and by the time Sunday rolled around, all I wanted to do was sleep. Since I have been in school however, things have started to become cloudy, and I felt as though going to church to seek some guidance would help. So I enlisted the help of the massive Yellow pages. I came across the nearest Catholic Church I could find, St. Mary’s Catholic Church on 14th and K. A quick ten minute drive across town landed me at one of the most beautiful churches I have ever laid eyes on. With its cathedral style architecture, snowy white bricks, stain-glass windows, and red oak doors, the church was simply a masterpiece.
I walked in to see all the incoming church goers shuffling around trying to find a seat within the pews, greeting each other, some heavy eyed from lack of sleep. Most of which were parents, trying desperately to keep their children from running throughout the sanctuary. Seeing this, I am suddenly reminded of all the Sundays with my grandmother. As I enter the sanctuary, I am greeted with the vocals of the choir singing a hymn, and candles near the pulpit, the warm glow lighting the way to my seat. After receiving a program and sitting down, the thoughts of my grandmother begin to whirl around me. Suddenly, they were interrupted by a swift kicking to the back of my seat. I turned around to find a young boy, of about 7 years old, with a very determined look on his face. His mother deftly grabbing his shoulder, telling him to knock it off, telling him to apologize for being so rude. He replied with a quick “No,” and that is when I saw it. The look. The look that I remember seeing so often, the condescending look that made me feel as though I was a foot tall. His face suddenly changed, he mumbled “sorry,” and immediately folded his arms, defeated. I turned around, with a warm smile on my face, and unexpectedly felt terribly homesick. I felt comfortable at the church, but I did not see any familiar faces, any particularly warm greetings, or hugs.
Soon, it was time for the sermon to begin, promptly at 8:00 everyone had piled into the sanctuary, and it was absolutely packed. My nose is filled with many different scents, but once particular fragrance stuck out to me: Old Spice. This man however, felt the need to bathe in it, rather than just splash it on. Yet the more and more I smell it, the more I realize that that is a fragrance that is all too familiar to me. It is a scent I have not smelled in years, but it is one I hold very dear to me. My grandfather wore it after every shave, and I can almost feel him near me as the scent engulfs me. As I was taking it all in, the priest began his sermon, “Procrastination,” oddly appropriate considering that it was something I had been doing notoriously. I instantly became transfixed upon his words, and found myself reflecting on every word he spoke. “Do we have any procrastinators out there this morning? I don't know about you, but I have been known... on occasion... to procrastinate just a bit.” “By nature I'm a pretty punctual individual, but I have been known to have things that I know I need to get done, and I wait until the last minute to do them. Sometimes it's just fine. They get done with no harm. However, other times it leads to a good deal of unnecessary stress…” he trailed off. I could not help but agree with everything he said.
I began thinking about all the times I have been told that procrastination was a bad thing. I mean, a couple hundred years ago. Benjamin Franklin shared with the world the secret of his success. “Never leave that till tomorrow, he said, “Which you can do today.” This was the man who discovered electricity; you would think more of us would listen to what he had to say. I don’t really know why we put things off, but if I had to guess, I would say it has a lot to do with fear. Fear of pain, fear of rejection, and most importantly fear of failure. Sometimes, the fear is just of making a decision. Because what if you are wrong? What if you are making a mistake you cannot undo? Whatever it is that we’re afraid of, one thing holds true, that by the time the stress of not doing anything, gets worse than the fear of actually doing it, we can feel as though we’re carrying around a giant weight. Something that outweighs us. And for me, that is the weight of my future. Everything that I do from here on out will impact my future, and for someone who has had parents to look to for instruction, that can be a horrible feeling. And many of us will make mistakes along the way, but that is how we learn to not procrastinate. But for me, I need to learn my own lessons, make my own mistakes, and sweep tomorrow’s possibility under tomorrow’s rug until I cannot anymore. Until I finally understand for myself what Benjamin Franklin really meant: that knowing is better than wondering, that waking is better than sleeping, and that the biggest failure, even the worst, most intractable mistake, beats the hell out of never trying. “In the name of the father and of the son and the Holy Spirit. Amen,” he finished. And I was suddenly brought out of my reflective state with a new feeling of enlightenment and understanding. The feeling that I had been searching for since I have been here, while desperately trying to transition from high school to college, and grow up. I am not an extremely religious person, nor do I fully know what I truly believe in, but I feel as though there was a reason I was supposed to go to that church on Sunday. An assignment that I felt was going to be just a time consuming task turned out to really be something that completely changed my perspective on the way I was living my life and I am really very thankful for that.

Fate/Love

In the 9th grade, my English class had to read Romeo and Juliet. Then for extra credit, Mr. Carter made us act out all the parts. And as fate would have it, I was Juliet. All the other girls were jealous. But I had a slightly different take. I told Mr. Carter that Juliet was an idiot. For starters, she falls for the one guy she knows she can't have. And then blames fate for her own bad decisions. Mr. Carter explained to me that sometimes, when fate comes into play, choice sometimes goes out the window. At the ripe old age of fourteen, I was very clear, that love, like life, is about making choices and fate has nothing to do with it. Everyone thinks its so romantic, Romeo and Juliet, true love, how sad. But if Juliet was stupid enough to fall for the enemy, drink a bottle of poison, and go to sleep in a mausoleum, she deserved whatever she got. I mean maybe Romeo and Juliet were fated to be together, but just for a little while, and then their time passed. But if they could have known that beforehand, maybe it all would have been okay. I told Mr. Carter that when I was grown-up, I would take fate into my own hands. I would not let some guy drag me down. Mr. Carter said I'd be lucky if I ever had that kind of passion with someone. And that if I did, we would be together forever. Even now, I still believe that for the most part, love is about choices. Its about putting down the poison and the dagger and making your own happy ending, most of the time. And that sometimes, despite all your best choices, and all your best intentions, fate wins anyway.

Millions of Americans tune in every Thursday to watch the hugely popular medical drama, Grey's Anatomy. The show, centered primarily around five interns, Meredith Grey, Isobel Stevens, Alex Karev, Christina Yang, and George O'Malley, follows each intern through all their trials and tribulations while working at Seattle Grace Hospital in Seattle, Washington. The show begins with the lead character, Meredith Grey having a one-night stand with her soon to be boss, Dr. Derek "McDreamy" Shepherd. We soon find that Derek is in fact married and has been having an affair with Meredith. Addison, Derek's wife, cheated on him with his best friend, Dr. Mark Sloan, who will later show up to stir things up. However, Derek's love for Meredith prevails and he soon divorces Addison and gets back together with Meredith. The show is centered around Derek and Meredith's on again-off again relationship and fans tune in every week to see what's going to happen next. In this season, season 4, Meredith and Derek have especially hot and cold. Derek has been dating a scrub nurse, Rose and Meredith has entered therapy as a result. The season finale left us with Meredith, in a house built of candles on the land where Derek wants to built their dream house. Derek leaves to go tell Rose that their relationship is in fact finished. He doesn't want anything dwelling on his conscience like it did before with his relationship with Meredith. Since the finale, several promos have appeared giving the viewers a little taste of what's to come. Many of them show Derek himself on a stretcher, crashing and Meredith crying, and screaming his name. Another shows Rose informing Derek she is pregnant with his child, and another shows Meredith asking Derek to move in with her. Now the real question, as a fan of the show is, Can Meredith and Derek really be happy together? Can they really have a happily ever after? Whatever the outcome, it is sure to be an exciting start to another fantastic season. If you're not a fan of the show, give it a shot this Thursday at 8. I can almost guarantee you'll be hooked.

Video

I'm gonna be 100% honest here and say that I have no idea what the hell I am doing because I missed class on Thurs due to a lab. I'm sorry.

Blog Post 1

"An essay is a golf swing, an angler's cast, a tennis serve. For example, say, and experience happens to you, one that seems to have literary potential. You wait for it to grow in your mind into a short story, or even just an episode of "Friends," but somehow it doesn't. Then a further experience, or an odd chance, or something a friend says, or something in the newspaper chimes with the first experience, and suddenly you understand you can write about it, and you do. You quit longing for form and write what's there, with whatever serviceable prose comes to hand, for no better reason than the fun and release of saying. That sequence-- that combination of patience with sudden impatience, that eventual yielding to the simple desire to tell-- identifies the essay." (Atwan 23)

-Ian Frazier

I found this quote very appealing because most of my papers are ones that can be related back to something that has happened in my life. I like my papers to be relatable, and as Frazier says, sometimes no matter how great of an experience, sometimes you just can’t write about it yet. Something else has to happen, is yet to happen for us to fully understand it. Frazier talks about how often, we can find things on television, he uses “Friends” as an example to relate back to an experience we’ve had. And if you really think about it, what does make a television show popular? What makes people sit down every week and watch a show? It’s the characters, the experiences that they have that keep people wanting more. Things that make you sit back and go, yeah, that’s happened to me. Or, what would I have done had I been in that position? The same holds true for a good essay.

Body diagram:

Diagrams function in many ways, but the most important function, in my opinion would be to give a deeper understanding of the topic at hand. The diagram I selected is definitely a learning device. Someone who is studying diabetes, for example would find this very useful because if shows the digestive system, from organ to organ. The original context of this diagram is in an article about diabetes, and now that it has been removed from its original context, it has lost much of its meaning. It needs the article that goes along with it to make sense. One without the other is like peanut butter without the jelly. It just doesn’t make sense. As a writer, my responsibility after removing the diagram from its original context is to properly cite it, as well as maybe even hyperlink it to its original text. The details that are important, in my diagram are of course the internal organs of the digestive system. Its labeled with an arrow pointing to each organ. I wouldn’t of labeled them any differently, it seems as though this is the most efficient way. I think that diagrams are a huge part of writing. In a research paper, this would be an extremely valuable tool in presenting information. It is a huge part of writing, to deeper understanding, and to explain things in depth.