So Jess and I decided to go to the mall today. I rolled her out to my car, which was parked in the ASSAF parking lot, and we thought we would try to put her wheelchair into my trunk instead of the backseat (it was dirty from rolling through the mud). I opened up my trunk (which I haven’t looked into since I moved in), and there was a web spun through half of it, and spider crawling around on it. And not just any spider, no–it was a black widow… I kind of screamed…..a lot.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t just leave it there; I had to do something about it. So I took off my flip flop and held it threateningly over the spider. I was even scared to attempt to kill it, because what if I missed and it disappeared before I could take another shot? I can’t have a black widow running around in my car. But I finally gathered up the nerve to launch my attack, and I smashed it. So there is a black widow smushed carcass in the trunk of my car. Hopefully, it was the only one…

That, paired with the dead locust in my back windshield kind of has me fed up with bugs. All bugs—beware! I will show no mercy!

 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.

So I decided to do laundry today. Seems like a mundane enough chore. I left my laundry innocently in the dryer and my laundry bag innocently in a corner. I come back when I think my things are done drying and lo and behold! someone has stolen my laundry bag…. Who does this? I suppose it might have made more sense to me if they had stolen my clothes (it would have been worse, but it would have made more sense), but a laundry bag? You can get one anywhere! What is the point of stealing someone’s laundry bag? An empty one, no less. Who stoops to this level? I am simply appalled at the pathetic creature this poor person has been reduced to. If you ever by some chance read this, I hope you realize how pitiful this is……………..and I want my laundry bag back.