gracias!

Dean Daniel Borzutzky,

It was extremely nice to have you come to our class today to share some of you experiences and to give advice to us. It was a relief to hear that even a published writer is uncertain about his writing and doesn’t necessarily like everything that he writes. I find that it is hard to have to write different essays and papers for classes in only a week or two. For me, my first draft of writing is usually drastically different from even my second draft. I hate having to turn in papers that I’m not completely done going over and picking apart. I love the grammar aspect of English, in grade school we had to diagram sentences, and I absolutely loved it. People think that I am crazy for liking this, but a grammatically correct paper makes me happy. Do you feel that grammar is an important element of English still? Many people believe that it is a lost cause because of the way we communicate through texting and instant messaging.

In class, you said that when you fee uncomfortable you want to write. Is that just an acquired talent or do you think people can actually learn that. Personally, when I feel uncomfortable I tend to shut down. When I start to write something and don’t know where I am going with it or how to make it better, I usually completely breakdown and have to completely remove myself from the situation. It is so hard for me to have faith in my abilities when what I wrote was a disaster.

I feel like in talking to you, I’m aware that I am definitely not a write. The first thing I do when I get an assignment is to think it through and try to really focus on the topic at hand. I like to write, but I like to write research papers and different papers that you can outline and use notecards. Wow, I sound like such a nerd, but that is the type of writing that I feel that I do best. I think that is why I like math so much. Do you think there is place in English Education for someone who would rather write about facts instead of feelings and explore the structure of writing instead of the content? I feel like I’m in the completely wrong place.
Anyways, do you listen to music when you write? What kind of atmosphere do you find you write the best? When I try to write, it needs to be pretty quite because if I listent to music, I find that all that I can think of are the lyrics to the song.

I hope that you enjoyed our class. I think you helped a lot of peope feel better about writing. Just hearing advice from another individual can make all the difference. Good luck in al that you do and enjoy the time you have with your son. Before you know it, he will be off to college and you will have all the free time in the world to do well whatever you want. Thanks so much.

Sincerely,

Mackenzie Monahan