Extended Defitnion

I tweaked a few things and added a lot more.

Extended Definition of the Word Healthy

            Throughout my life, for as long as I can remember, I have tried to live a healthy lifestyle. When I was younger, I was always active, running around the yard or neighborhood. I ate right, although not necessarily because I wanted to but because it was the food my parents provided. I have since carried these values with me into college; getting a chance to run on the cross country and track teams has given me even more values that I will take with me to continue to be healthy as I grow older. But wait, what exactly is healthy?

            It is a word that we throw around loosely a lot. Everyone has their idea of what healthy is but according to the dictionary, healthy is possessing or enjoying good health or a sound and vigorous mentality. This definition circles around the word health too much. Health in the dictionary is the condition of being sound in body, mind, or spirit; especially free from physical disease or pain. There is more to being healthy than just possessing a sound body, mind, and spirit. I have learned that healthy is all about balance. The saying of too much of a good thing is a bad thing can be applied here.

            Too much exercise or eating too many vegetables, things that we often consider to be healthy, is actually unhealthy. We need rest to recover and other food groups to have a properly functioning body. I have found this out the hard way. As a runner in college, there is more emphasis on higher volume of training along with faster repetitions; all to make us better at what we do: running. However, when our bodies cannot keep up with the amount we stress them, they begin to break down. Running injuries are very common and I have had my fair share of them. I know what is like to be sidelined. Being in that situation gives you a lot of time to think. My biggest complaint about college running is that we take gambles too much with our health by stressing them so much. There is a never medium between training. It is run, run, run, or be sidelined for an extended period of time. This is not healthy, this is not balance.

            The same goes true for those that strive to be healthy by making sure that they exercise everyday, eating only the right foods and cutting out all “bad” ones. It eventually becomes an obsession, or an addiction all the while sacrificing their sanity and the relationships with those around them. In no way is that healthy. Healthy deals with more than just physical health; but instead mental and social health as well. In order to be healthy, someone cannot have one without the others.

Rough Rough Draft of Extended Definition

I changed the topic last minute so here is what I have so far...

Throughout my life, for as long as I can remember, I have tried to live a healthy lifestyle. But wait, what exactly is healthy? It is a word that we throw around loosely a lot. Everyone has their idea of what healthy is but according to the dictionary, healthy is possessing or enjoying good health or a sound and vigorous mentality. This definition circles around the word health too much. Health in the dictionary is the condition of being sound in body, mind, or spirit; especially free from physical disease or pain. There is more to being healthy than just possessing a sound body, mind, and spirit. Healthy is all about balance. The saying of too much of a good thing is a bad thing can be applied here. Too much exercise or eating too many vegetables, things that we often consider to be healthy, is unhealthy. We need rest to recover and other food groups to have a properly functioning body.

Diaz Lunch and Lecture

I really enjoyed having Junot Diaz on our campus last week. He is an incredibly smart man with a lot of insight to many more topics than just writing and art. His story of immigration to the United States and how he and his family made it in America is very interesting. I could listen to the guy for hours. I can't believe that I did not have any idea who he was before this class. He provokes me to think in different ways and see things in new lights. I plan to buy his collection of short stories, "Drown", in the near future.

Part One of "The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao"

Diaz's novel is very innovative. I have never read a novel with such a format, it provides multiple narrators, thus different points of view. The story is good but I also think a big reason he won the Pulitzer Prize is because of his innovation. There is no other novel like it. This would have to be a big strength. Despite the multiple narrators, it is unclear in the first part is exactly who is narrating. It takes away from the story because Yunior is contradicted once Lola narrates. As a reader, we question what Yunior says is legitimate and actually happened. The narrators set up the story for us and give us a lot of background on the characters. With this we can foreshadow what is going to happen. Diaz does not use quotations or italicize the Spanish words which adds more authenticity to the stories being told. Some of his sentences are written differently than others. Some do not have complete subjects or predicates but it works because the reader still understands what is going on.

Walcott's Poem

Derek Walcott's poem prior to Diaz's novel was put in place for a reason. After reading the first part of the book, I have more insight to it's significance. In the novel, Oscar is not well liked. He carries with him his Dominican heritage and seems to be discriminated because of it. Walcott's poem also talks about the different backgrounds of America and that without a nation backing him, he is nothing. Both the poem and Diaz are trying to say that we need to come together and accept each others backgrounds.

My Writing Thus Far...

I think my writing skills for the class are just plain average right now. Like every writer, I have a lot of room for improvement. In order to improve my writing, I first need to spend more time with it. I need to read things over more than once or twice. Another thing I need to work on to improve my writing is to make sure I'm connecting with the reader when I'm writing. I need to make sure that as I read my work, the reader will be able to understand what I'm trying to say. I can't leave them hanging. I can do this by being more descriptive and elaborating more and making sure I have proper pronoun usage. However, more than anything, I just need to simply find more time to sit down, write, and review what I have written.

Editorial Idea

I want to talk about higher education and the high cost of it. Like I talked about on the community blog, I think there are flaws in the system. It seems of more of a business and less like a place to get a good education sometimes. I understand the universities need to make money but both faculty and students get shafted equally. However, I know I can't just complain the whole time throughout the editorial, I need to have an argument and solutions for the high cost of tuition. I haven't narrowed anything down yet. It is important to me though just because I feel there needs to be some kind of overhaul. I wish someone would step in to fix some of the problems. The students don't have any say either. Everyone is affected by the high costs of education, including all the students and staff. I, like mostly everyone else, will leave college with a high debt while at the same time facing a tough job market.

All the Advice I Can Get

I wrote my memoir rough draft in a hurry last week. I didn't even have time to read it over all at once. I guess I hoped that it would just be a good memoir by itself but after the feedback I received I know now I have a lot of work ahead of me. I am going to take all the advice (although limited), and use it to better my paper. I will try to add more details and put all my emotions into it so that it can be more relatable and it will draw the readers in. In addition, I will also be sure to re-read it many times over just to catch all that my peer editors did. Hopefully I will be able to relate to their feedback. Finally, I will be sure to go back over all my grammatical errors as well. I have a long road ahead of me but I know my paper will be much better in the end.

King's "On Writing" to Help My Writing

If Stephen King had a central theme throughout his memoir, it would have to be "keep it simple and basic." Much of his advice that I plan to incorporate into my memoir comes at the beginning of the second half of his own memoir. He references our writing to a toolbox and says the basic tools go on top: vocabulary and grammar. These are the foundations to our writing. He tells us to focus on using the vocabulary that we have and to avoid replacing our own vocabulary with bigger words. Along with using our own vocabulary, King stresses for the reader to get to the point and skip the "bullshit." Although he fails to follow his own advice, I plan to get straight to the point with my reader and avoid any unnecessary words, sentences, or paragraphs.

Possible Memoir Ideas

Like everyone else, I would like to think I have had a pretty typical life free of any fantastic or life changing events. However, I have brainstormed a few ideas and this is what I was able to come up with:

Memoir I - The summer going into my junior year of high school, I found out that my dad decided to take a job in Ohio. My parents pretty much left me with the option of going down with them or staying up in Michigan to finish school with all of my friends. I ultimately made the decision to stay and finish school. As a result, I had a much different experience living with my grandma while my parents were down in Ohio compared to how it would've been had I chosen to go down with them or had my dad never even taken the job.

Memoir II - The summer of 2007 I took up my first real job working in a container board packaging factory. It was my first real job. It was also the same factory that my parents have each worked at for 25+ years each. It was interesting to work there, experiencing first hand what they had done for so many years and learning to have a greater appreciation for it.

At first I was leaning more towards Memoir I but after writing a bit on Memoir II, I think I could have more to say on II. I guess at this point though, I am in the middle of the two. What do you guys think?

Saying More by Using Less

   "Elements of Style" by Strunk and White has a lot of good pointers that every writer can take in order to improve his/her writing. The two rules that the article mentioned, Be clear, and Omit needless words, are great. By following these rules, the reader can see straight through to the writer's point. There will be no chance to misconstrue the writer's words and no need to go back and re-read a sentence or even a whole paragraph.
 
   The reason we write is to get our ideas across to the reader, while at the same time not leaving them with ambiguity, unless of curse it's on purpose. Therefore, the way we write matters. In order for language to be effective, it has to be universal and by following a guide like "Elements of Style", we preserve the basic rules. While there is slang in every language and a growing number of text messages being sent daily, the basic principles of the language are still there. In fact, texting follows the two rules, Be clear and Omit needles words pretty well.

   For whatever the reason: short on time, short on space, or just plain lazy; when we text someone, we get straight to the point. It is almost like cavemen talk; meet me at library? or, where you at?. It may not be grammatically correct, but it gets the writer's idea across to the next person and we all understand. Now, I am not saying that we should implement this type of language into our everyday conversation or even into our own writing, but I think that in a way we follow "Elements of Style" everyday without even thinking about it. It shouldn't be to hard then to transfer these rules into our own writing.

Following Anne Dillard's Advice

   Anne Dillard's article, "Write Till' You Drop", is an interesting piece that will hopefully get me to write more freely as the class progresses. However, at the same time, just sitting here trying to write this blog, I think too much of what I'm going to write next instead of just simply following my thoughts. Throughout most of writing career, from when I was first learned to form sentences, all the way into college and today, the majority of the writing that I have done has been based on strict guidelines and is mostly a response or an essay that reflects another piece of literature we were assigned.
   Most recently, the thoughts of taking a creative writing course here at Oakland University have sparked my interest. With the majority of my writing being based on the work of another writer, I wonder how I would fair taking a course that allows me to start from scratch using my own thoughts. Actually, it wouldn't even have to be a class for me to do this. I could start now, in my room with a pad of paper. Following Anne Dillard's advice, who know the possibilities? She makes a lot of good points that I will be sure to use this for this class and the rest of my writing career....