And now for desert....

When I walked into class on that first day, I sat down nervously and read the chalkboard: “I am me: writing about women’s autobiography”. Oh great, I thought. I am going to be stuck in a class with a bunch of feminist lunatics. Obviously, this was not the case. And then it began… my discoveries…
So if I am me writing about women’s autobiography, why have I felt so detached from everything I have written this semester? Well, not alllll my papers… I guess when I look back, I can find maybe one that reveals something about me… I am my imagination. Regina Spektor and I have this in common. It’s funny because now that I think about it, my college essay was about my wide ranging imagination and how it will help me succeed in life. When I was writing about Regina Spektor I thought a lot about myself. She came up with the strangest things- just like I have been doing all my life! When I would say certain things, I would find my friends asking me, “why am I even friends with you??” That is to say, you are such a freak, how could I be associated with you? This does nothing to offend my self-esteem. It just reminds me of the fact that I am unique… and well, weird. But, it really did not take my experience in this UW class to learn that. In relation to preparing me to write at the college level, the most important thing that this UW class taught me is that writing is a process. This was something very unfamiliar to me before, as I would spend countless sleepless nights scurrying to write a paper the night before it was due. Not that they would turn out poorly or anything, but they just didn’t leave room for me to thoroughly analyze the content and structure of the paper to make it as close to perfect as possible. After this class, I feel so much more confident with my writing. I mean in high school, it’s not the same. You can write a mediocre paper and still pull off a B+, or sometimes even an A. Now, this is the real deal. You can work your butt off for a paper and still get a C+! This was what happened to me on my first paper. I felt so discouraged. As each paper went by though, I slowly went up the grade scale and was able to achieve my first A- in the class in my research paper. I almost cried of joy. I could not believe my eyes when I read the grade on that little analysis that Dr. Smith always gave us with each of our papers. I finally felt that all my hard work had paid off. In addition, I feel more convinced that I might actually be writing at a college level. Overall, my experience in this class was enjoyable and helpful for my future career as a writer. Although I struggled a lot at first, I ended up gaining a better sense of that process that is writing by the end of this class.
And now is when I realized… this class was the journey to find myself (as a writer), and maybe even a few writing tips on the way.

Enough with the food motif!

So honestly.. a book about cooking did not interest me at all. Although I love everything about food (as you could probably tell by my other blog entries) I cannot stand being in the kitchen cooking something. It is just not me. Anyway, I began to read Julie & Julia and was actually very impressed with Julie Powell's writing style. Even though the content did not really engage me at first, the sarcastic and witty comments really got me into the book. I even wrote a "haha" on one of the pages so I guess I could remember specifically why I thought the book was humorous. It was in the beginning of the book. Julie's mother had come to stay with her and she explained how noisy it had been trying to sleep in a New York "loft". She explains her mother's frustrations in trying to sleep when a truck was "beeping loudly" at five o'clock in the morning "presumably so that none of the bustling pedestrians overflowing the sidewalks of Long Island City at five a.m. would dart out in the middle of the street and get hit by a slow moving two-hundred-foot crane" (50). I actually think I laughed out loud. On another note, I was a bit disappointed by the book. Okay, it is called “Julie & JULIA”. Where was the connection there? Did I just totally miss that? I did think that it was cool, though, how Julia Child’s last diary entry kind of began at the start of her cooking career. It was kind of like Julie’s ending, started with Julia’s beginning (even though in real life it was the other way around- Julia influenced Julie). Powell had an interesting idea there; I just wish she would have gotten more personal with Julia in the diary entries, instead of confuse her audience with Paul’s letters or entries (whatever they were?). Nonetheless, I guess the book did end up impressing me in the end. Although the ending (well, the double ending), is a bit weak, I feel as though it may have been the only way she could have ended such a book. The end. OH, and sometimes second endings are just annoying.