Lauren Wozny's Introductory Blog Post.

I’m Lauren Wozny and I am first year Professional Writing student. Previous to this program I had been taking my BSc. In Pre-Pharmacy; the multitudes of painful chemistry, bio and calculus courses only made me realize not to take the things you actually enjoy doing for granted. After dropping out only a year into my program I decided to take a year off and re-evaluate. During that time I decided to return to school and capitalize on my earlier idea of not taking things I enjoy for granted, writing being one of them, so here I am.

During my short stint in the BSc. program I was able to take a few English classes. We scratched the surface of grammar and composition and I felt at that time I had learnt a lot but, unfortunately, I took a year off between that program and this one and so much of what I learnt feels lost. I’m hoping this class can jog my memory and get me back to a comfortable and confident level in writing; I don’t want to have to second guess my sentence structure every time I find myself writing something.

After watching Steven Pinker’s speech on language and thought I have to say I agree with his belief that dictionaries have become obsolete. So much of today’s culture is based on and through technology. Cell phones, Skype and facebook have become so much a part of everyday life that what we do with those utilities and applications is second nature. These programs, and many others, have been developed to create a fast paced means of communications in a fast paced world. So the slang and abbreviations associated with them only compliments the goal of quicker communication we are trying to reach.

Ultimately this language, like its parenting technology, will keep evolving. As everyday tasks, like talking to a friend half way across the world, become easier, so will our language; we are always looking for shortcuts. It is unfortunate, because so much of culture lies in language, that we are losing aspects of the “standard” English language but at the rate we are progressing it has become the norm to leave it behind. Links on the Internet such as urbandictionary.com and netlingo.com have even made it their soul purpose to identify all of these slang words on an ever-growing database.

That said I have to admit that I would still rather type a conversation in “you” ‘s instead if “u” ‘s. I find it almost horrifying when my own mother, who is 45, insists on text messaging me “ sup’?” every afternoon around 4:00. I don’t promote the use of words like that but I will put up with because they are impossible to escape; sometimes you just have to admit defeat. And maybe that’s why I’m feeling so uncomfortable with writing lately. After a year of working with power line journeymen via the local electrical company I have been thrown, not dipped, into a pool of incorrect language, rough speech and unimaginable amounts of cursing. For me the lines of wrong and right in terms of language have been blurred after that kind of exposure. Taking the grammar test today made my heart skip a few beats but the posters the class made last week (http://prow100.blogspot.com/2009/09/lecture-1-parts-of-speech-group.html) made life a little easier. This might be the beginning of getting things back on track for me.