This will be the last blog I write for Lynn. This is the last semester that I spend at Lynn. After a semester off, I’m starting school at Louisiana State University in Shreveport for the summer semester. I decided this early in the semester, and though I have told many people, I decided not to mention it in my blog until now, when it’s almost time for me to go.  I leave early tomorrow morning.

Attending Lynn University was probably the most life-altering decision I have ever made. I’ve met people I’ll remember for the rest of my life, and I’ve had opportunities that have been extremely beneficial to me. There are many people I want to thank before I leave.

First, I want to thank the entire English department, especially Dr. Morgan. The professors in this department had an immediate and extensive impact on my writing and analytical abilities. They reinforced my love of literature and have opened my mind to new methods of thinking, in addition to providing me with opportunities I would never experience anywhere else, such as sending me to the National Undergraduate Literary Conference last year.

I also want to thank everyone in charge of the blogging. Blogging has been such a unique experience for the past year and a half. I’ve gotten to record many of my college moments, as well as become more recognized throughout campus, which I can almost guarantee I would not have done on my own.

The library staff has been an important part of my life the past three years. I have always enjoyed working in the library, and the people I have worked with have always been wonderful.

Finally, I want to thank everyone who has helped to remain at Lynn when I was not sure if I would be able to return. The Canarelli family especially deserves my thanks, and I will always remember them fondly for everything they have done for me.

I hope I’ll be able to come back and visit some time. I have loved this school, as well as Florida, and I will definitely miss it in many ways.

So I haven’t blogged about this, but I thought it was about time to get down to it since I’m leaving on Wednesday. Dr. Morgan submitted my research paper for American Literature I to the National Undergraduate Literary Conference at Weber University, and it was accepted. This is not something I expected to be doing, but it is an honor nonetheless. The conference lasts from April 2-6, and it is in Salt Lake City, Utah. Brittany B. was also accepted for her poetry, so we both get to go. We will fly out together (at 7:00 in the morning!), stay in a room together, and come back on the next Monday (at 5:30 in the morning!). And Lynn University is paying for everything, which I couldn’t be more grateful for. I would never have had this opportunity if it weren’t for that fact.

As the day approaches, I get more and more excited and more and more nervous.  I’m going to be reading a paper that I wrote to an audience of people that I’ve never met. If that’s not nerveracking, I don’t know what is. And I’m going to meet so many people! I’m not the most social person in the world. In addition to listening to other students from around the nation read their papers, there will be three published authors at the conference who will be guest speakers. They are Geoffrey Wolff, Eleanor Wilner, and Bret Anthony Johnston. I think this is a great opportunity that Lynn has provided me with and I am going to do everything I can to get as much out of it as possible.

The Lynn Magazine is out and the bloggers are in it! Debbie Stern interviewed all of us last semester for an article she planned to write for the magazine and I think she did an amazing job! She said that we’ve created “a living, breathing brochure for Lynn University,” which I thought was an exceptional phrase. She included information we gave her in our interviews and mini bios as well as excerpts from our blogs, which I wasn’t expecting (though I suppose I should have). The entire article is so colorful! The excerpts from our blogs are color coded (I’m green) and in a different font, which makes the whole article more interesting aesthetically. And I have to give Anthony credit; the pictures he took from the beginning of the year are amazing, as well. Good job guys!

I am a very forgetful person. If I’m going to remember something, it’s necessary for me to write it down. That’s why I have the Lynn University planner. I have everything in it: my homework, when assignments are due, when I have to work, when I have events I need to go to, and various other little things that I need to remember. So when I got to my room today and went to pull it out to find which of my many homework assignments I should start on and couldn’t find it, I almost had a break down. I cannot live without that thing; it’s kind of pathetic: some people can’t live without their phones, their dogs, their other half; I can’t live without my planner. I was really really super duper uber worried. Then I realized that I must have left it in one of my classrooms, probably Poetry or Gender/Multiculturalism. I was going to check after dinner, but something more important came up. So, now I can only pray that it is there when I check tomorrow because if I’ve really really lost it, I’m in deep water.

 The iPulse, as I believe Ashlea has mentioned, is Lynn University’s student newspaper. I think a student newspaper is an amazing thing to have on a campus; it’s a way to reach out to students and make them aware of the happenings on campus. It’s recently been reformatted, and that change has improved it so much. However, I do have (quite) a few complaints regarding this publication.

I’ll start out simple: I was reading the tenth issue for this year and there was an article that had a sentence that went something like this: “He is also excepting electronic submission with a cover e-mail.” I don’t feel like this article could have been edited. I think someone should have picked up on the fact that ‘excepting’ should have been ‘accepting’ and ’submission’ needs an ’s’ at the end. I catch things like this all the time in the iPulse.

 In another article, I read that “the following stores will be opening in the next months to come.” Either take out ‘next’ or ‘to come.’ Redundancy is not your friend!

The poor writing style bothers me, as well. I mean, I don’t expect a school publication to be equal to that of the New York Times, but it’s apallingly simple. I suppose I can accept the lack of or misused punctuation, but sometimes, the simplicity of it will just drive me crazy. I don’t want to cite any examples of this, but please believe me, it could use some elevation in diction.

I remember reading last year and noticing that the common way for an article to start was by asking a question. I am so glad they have quit doing this! It is a pretty good technique, yes, but for every article in the paper to begin with a question? It gets a little boring. So that’s an improvement that I’m pleased to acknowledge.

 I read one article in this issue that I thought should have been expanded. It was called “Youth: Do They Care?” It’s a worthy subject to be put in a school paper, yet the article was so lamentably short! The “Movie Review” article was longer. In fact, the movie review article was longer even than the front page article, “National Collegiate Alcohol Awareness Week.” Two of the most worthy subjects to be printed were two of the shortest articles! I think they should have been expanded so that more information could have been added.

Maybe I only notice all of this because I am such a grammar freak. I honestly can’t say whether or not any other students feel similarly. I understand that everyone makes mistakes and that there are going to be errors. This massive number, however, is unnecessary. It irritates me that there are so many blatant errors in this publication. How can they be missed? I can’t stand to read the iPulse because of the numberous errors I see. And please, any newspaper staff, don’t read this as a criticism so much as a critique. I wish the iPulse was better simply so that I have more incentive to read it. It is a worthy pursuit to have a school newspaper, but that newspaper should produce a sense of pride in the students, not a sense of embarrassment. I hope this will lead to some improvement in future issues.

Introductions, to me, are always the hardest parts of any conversation, speech, or paper. How do you make yourself appeal to a wide variety of people so that they will be interested enough to continue listening or reading? A public speaking teacher would say to use an attention grabber, so I will.

I’m a loser. I will not contradict anyone who calls me such, and I’m not offended by it. In fact, I often take pride in it. I’m very different than the average college student (well, at least how I perceive the average college student to be). The number one (and only important) difference is that I love to read. I haven’t met many people who enjoy words as much as I do. I’m actually working on my own miniature library. I actually fell so in love with reading at such an early age that I decided to major in English so that I could teach it. But that’s enough about reading; I don’t want to bore anyone with it on the first blog.

Some other things I enjoy include chocolate (an addiction), softball, writing poetry, history, and hanging out with the best roommate ever. The last one is what I’ll write about most often. Even if I am a loser, things get pretty interesting around me sometimes. My mom, sister, and closest friends are my saving grace and I couldn’t live without them. They make my life interesting and they hold me up when I want to fall.

So I guess my introduction is over. Don’t worry, though-you will get to know me very thoroughly as long as I’m writing this. Happy reading!