Hmm, where to begin..
It's 2011.. the last time I blogged was September 2010.. Apparently I have had a lot of other stuff going on and haven't quite found time to blog.
I've been inspired by some friends' blogs (and watched Julie&Julia yesterday for the umpteenth time) and think its high time for me to start writing again. That being said however, I'm pretty sure that being in academia for four years has stolen the creative and interesting writing out of my head and has left only boring, research-type writing in its wake. This breaks my heart because in my high school days I was quite the writer. In fact, I dreamed of going to university and being an English major, eventually planning on becoming a writer. This was all well and good until I reached university, took my first English course, wrote my first paper, and received a C+... I couldn't believe it, my "dream" came crashing down around me and I decided that I couldn't be an English major... I spent the rest of my first year as an undeclared (and unprepared) bachelor of arts student.
Eventually I decided that I would be a Theology major. It was interesting and less "explain the symbolism" than English was.. This new major translated into a TON of papers and a TON of reading, this became even more so when I opted for a minor in History. Thus my academic career has consisted of research papers, term papers, position papers, book reviews, source studies and the like. My GPA has reflected that I am fairly adept at these types of papers. Unfortunately this past semester when asked to write a Maclean's-type article for my American Political History class my academic brain drew a blank! I could not for the life of me remember how to write an interesting, yet informative paper and the resultant grade was strong evidence for that.
Don't get me wrong, I love the academic writing I am forced to do, but it breaks my heart a little when I think of my youthful dreams of being a writer. I like to say that university has "sucked the creativity out of me" but I think that I am just as much at fault as my school is. There is a way to write an interesting research paper, but perhaps I just haven't found it yet.
There's my random rambling for the day..
