the point of this blog being...

What it is to Play on Words


Kind of a funny name to start a blog off, I'll admit it. Or maybe it's my wording that's funny. English teachers have given me grief since the playground days because my grammar isn't always technically "correct" and my writing can be a little wordy. But it's the way I love to express my words, so I find ways to turn my weird writing into a grammatically correct piece of prose- like with wordplay. For example, the day I found out about anastrophe was almost life-changing. If you think you have no idea what that is, you do; it's the way Yoda talks in Star Wars, with his words said in an order unconventional, hmm yes? (It's a lot funnier if you read that in a Grover voice, by the way.)


So this blog isn't technically about literary devices, although thanks to how fun they are they'll get used frequently. It's more that writing has always been a passion of mine and the field I want to pursue a career in someday. I hate to do this, but to tell the story right I have to go back to my high school days and to the beginning:
All through high school I was one of the better writers among my peers and loved being the best at rhetoric and analysis in my English classes. I did so well on the A.P. tests that I could have jumped straight into a full-on assault on the writing world here at BYU. But the fact is, my entire freshman year at college I took no English classes- I had no need to, I'd tested out of them. It's one of the biggest mistakes, academically speaking, I've ever made. I struggled writing papers on a collegiate level for all my classes freshman year since I'd never written much more than English class rhetorical analysis papers, and high school ones at that. 


Now my sophomore year it's humbling to go back and take a Freshman writing course, and realize how much I have forgotten of what I had learned. Things I thought I knew I'm now re-learning, to find that maybe I didn't know them as well as I thought I did.


The Epic Conclusion of this very long blog post that has been rather long in coming: this blog may be an assignment for class, but it's also and maybe more importantly one of the ways I'm getting back into writing. It's truly like an online journal in that I have to write consistently (or at least should be.) And there's one of the biggest problems I have come to realize: I have simply gotten out of the habit of writing consistently. I'll try to get back into writing, see if it's still something I love, and if so ...
                                             Well, I guess this blog will explore that too.

Elder Eyring's "A Child of God"

Apparently the students at BYU are looking good these days (which might explain all the rings...). Henry B. Eyring points out though in his talk, "A Child of God" that it might have more to do with the fact that we are survivors. We already survived one spiritual war in heaven, and we are now the future legions for the war that is to come; basically, we are the future of the church.

Empowering statement, right? That was pretty much the tone of this entire talk. There was a lot about the need for us to be humble, but that only promised us even greater blessings if we are. Then Elder Eyring  gave six characteristics that make great learners, and backed every one up with the assurance that this was a thing that a latter-day saint not only knew how to do but gave examples of the way one may have been doing it their whole life. After reading this talk I felt so strong and capable about this next semester at BYU, like I could take 18 credits without batting an eye (to prevent any confusion about my mental prowess, that is not in fact what I am doing).  But end of the story is, I loved this talk, and felt like it was exactly what I needed to start the next few months of school off right.