Anyway, today I gave my Style Study presentation and it basically went terribly. Last night when I made all the little edits that I needed to and SAVED THE POWERPOINT EIGHT HUNDRED TIMES it worked perfectly. But, apparently, things can't go well when I need them to. Up in front of the class, of course, it failed to work. Even though I sent the new, saved, completed version to myself, it didn't work. Thank you, technology. But I think it should be okay. Even though I did talk extremely fast (quickly? I don't know the grammar for this situation.) and had to skip some stuff that shouldn't have even been there (because I cut it out for the final presentation in an effort to stick to the 8 minute time limit, but who knows where the final version of my project is?), so I probably looked unprepared and rushed and just bad. The thing is, I actually LOVE public speaking. I would much rather give a presentation than write an essay. But I guess things don't always go the way you want them to.
WOW. I just looked in "My Documents" and guess what's there? Yep. The project. The exact same file that I emailed myself last night. Except its the real version. The one that I wanted to present. The one that I worked for at least five hours on (honestly, that's not an exaggeration. And that 5 hours is only on the powerpoint part of the project. Let's not even get into how long I spent doing the CRJ's.) Okay, done with the rant now. Moving on. It's over and I can't fix it now. In the words of Emerson (Ralph Waldo, that is):
“Finish each day and be done with it.
You have done what you could;
some blunders and absurdities have crept in;
forget them as soon as you can.
Tomorrow is a new day;
you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit
to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”
Imagine if we called Emerson "Ralph". Wouldn't that be weird? Or if we called our teachers by their first names. "Hey, Ashley, I was wondering about the score you gave me on my essay..." We put so much value into names! But I don't really want to get into that right now.
Ever since we started this Style Study project, I've been noticing so much about my own style. I like to use short sentences intermixed with some longer ones. I LOVE commas and dashes, and apparently (I have not spelled that word right once without the help of Spell-Check, though I use it all the time) I also love capitalization and playing with typography (especially color!) It's just fascinating that we can all write in such different ways. I'm simply mind-boggled. If that's even an adjective that makes sense in that context. My mind is boggled. That sounds better.
I just realized how random this blog is. I think that's part of the fun of blogs, though. It's basically just talking to your readers. I suppose I should be directing this at Mrs. Cardona, since she is the required audience. If someone else were to read this, I highly doubt that they would think it was for school. I'm not so much a fan of "formal writing." (I've never understood why the period goes inside the quotes there. I know it's right, but the end of the sentence comes after the quotes, so why does it appear to end prematurely?) I think that blogging is a really easy way to see your own personal style. Since you're allowed to talk naturally and without restraint, you can truly see how your writing looks when you're just allowed to write. I'd like to end with another quote, because I just love them.
“One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon - instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.”
Dale Carnegie
(American writer and lecturer about self-improvement, salesmanship, corporate training, public speaking, and interpersonal skills)
:) Thank you.
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