"Words that paint a legacy of life"

BUSH WINS! M Go Bush! I liked Kerry's speech though... Edwards' not so much. "This was an historic election" - Cheney. The voters turned out in record numbers, and I was one of those voters. Cheney's speech was ok... I liked Bush's speech. Well, I'm glad that is over.

Good news: I got an A on my Great Books mid-term. On each of the five essays I had to write, I got an A, so I got an A overall. There were various "good"s written throughout my exam and on the front of the first page, she wrote "good exam!" ...so I'm happy. And, I now get to step on the "M" in the diag.

Another good thing that happened today was that my Great Books paper was pushed back another week. It was originally due on October 29th, but because the due date for our first paper was pushed back a week, she moved this one to November 5th. But then today, because she didn't have our other papers to give back to us, she moved the due date back to November 12. It's fine with me.

I'm really sick of my one roommate. She wakes me up at night and she wakes me up in the morning. She got the window stuck open and hasn't taken any action to remedy the situation. She leaves the door open, and so we have a wonderful ice cold breeze blowing through the room. She throws her stuff everywhere and takes up at least 1.5 times more space than either Steph or I do. Her area is disgusting and sometimes it smells. Ok, I'm done complaining now. It could be worse, but it's still not good.

Sometimes I just want to write... not the dumb essay writing but just writing. I hate writing essays or papers. I don't know... I guess writing some types of papers isn't too bad, but I hate writing where I have to analyze literature or something. That is torturous and laborious. But I really do enjoy writing. When I write, my vocabulary expands. For example, I'll be writing along nicely and come to a point where I'll need a word. Sometimes a word will pop into my head and it'll sound right but I always have to check it to make sure I'm not misusing it. Or sometimes I can think of a word but it's not the word that I want to use, so I go to my trusty thesaurus and find some better words. In that way, writing expands my vocabulary. Also when I write, I can improve my writing, grammar, and writing style. It allows me to experiment with different things and then, in general, improve my writing. Practice makes you better, I suppose. I really do enjoy writing, just like I really do enjoy thinking. Writing is like an excuse for me to sit around and think about stuff. When I write, it releases some of my tension, anger, or sadness... not that that's how I feel every time I write or anything.

You'll be happy to know that, according to Microsoft Word, this post is only at a grade level of 5.9. But, when I checked the grade level of this post, it got me to thinking, and I then checked some of the entries from my journal on my computer. One from September of this year was at a grade level of 9.0... not bad considering I don't try to make my writing spectacular when I do journals and stuff. I also checked one from March of 2000, when I was an 8th grader... it was at a grade level of 3.6. Both of them were rather lengthy (I wanted a good sample so it wouldn't be based on two sentences). One from July of 2002 was 7.5. ...makes sense. My first GB paper was somewhere in the 11's and my GB paper that I'm working on now is currently at 12.

...and then after I checked the grade levels of my journal entries, I started reading them. There's a lot of memories in that thing... Krohn, band with Bishop, Loga's reading class, camp (lots of camp), seminar in 9th grade and all the many times I had to stay after class, me having a crush on Kenny, Chemistry and Algebra 2 in 10th grade and my intense fear of Doc, Columbus, trips to Cedar Point, Speech class and all its joys, ACTs (oh yeah! 33!), my situation with silver nitrate, AP classes, knowledge bowl, labs and studying and throwing beakers against the wall, my 3-word "graduation speech", band band and more band (festivals, concerts, solo & ensemble, concert band, jazz band, marching band), me not getting into UM, me getting into UM the next day, M Go Your Mother, AP tests, prom, graduation and my real graduation speech, and then finally stuff from this school year. No matter how many times I read through it, the memories never get old. I'm really glad I took the time to write them down.