Why Writing is Weird

Writing is a really strange academic. You really just need to convince someone that your writing is good, the way it’s evaluated is completely subjective. Thousands of years ago, you could spell however you wanted, and anyone who has read Shakespeare can tell you that the sentence structure has gone through some changes since then.

Which is why I think it’s a little strange to say that someone is “good at writing”. Because good writing is something different for everyone. What they’re actually good at is writing that suits the reader. Your teacher may not like it when you hand in fanfiction for an assignment, but people online might think that it’s amazing. How you are received depends on your audience.

This all gets multiplied 50x when you’re in college and are doing legit papers for multiple classes. Philosophy writing is totally separate from English writing, which is in a different sphere from Biology writing. So everything is very confusing.

But if all you have to do is convince someone that your writing is what they want, then supposedly you should be able to write a trashy paper and then hypnotize your teacher into thinking that writing “so” repeatedly is genius. Because there literally is no right answer at all!

This is what makes writing completely different from anything else, the closest thing to it is history and even that has some wrong answers in it. Writing is totally subjective, everything is in the eye of the beholder.

And that’s what sets it apart from the rest of the subjects, for once you can completely express yourself academically.

Importance of Freshmen Orientation at College

Orientation just ended a week ago at school, and being a sophomore I noticed some things that the freshmen were missing or that I was missing.

It’s getting you used to a whole new environment for starters. That means different things for different schools, if the administration has no idea what the student body is like, the orientation is going to stink. Look for student run events, those will usually be a better depiction than anything else.

You’re going to be dealing with different issues. I’m guessing this is the justification for the hours and hours of sex/alcohol that freshmen always get shoved down their throats at the beginning of the year. Everyone’s so overloaded with it that a good school will try to make it fun for the students, even if they have to sit through hours of it. But there also has to be a balance with the severity of the conversation, because these are serious subjects, we are kidding around here. Finding that line is super important, because this is their first exposure to the college and how it deals with these issues.

Demonstrating the diversity of the campus is always something that I notice. Sure, you can show off the great LGBTQ community there is, but the straight kids might feel a little left out. I know that it’s usually the opposite, but remember that there are people of all types and there needs to be something welcoming for everyone. The A does stand for ally, among other things.

Putting them into groups that might get along. My group didn’t, I spent all of freshman orientation alone. It’s partially my fault and partially the college’s, they should have realized that groups composed entirely of females aren’t going to hang out together if all the other groups are co-ed. I’m not sure what the solution there would be, but I do know that all of my current friends had an entirely different experience than mine. And they continue to do so since they are still close to their group and I’m not.

Freshmen orientation is one of those things that’s easy to dismiss, but it’s very important for anyone entering a new college. This is your new home, and the administration should make you feel welcome and introduce you to life here.

Why Modern Music Doesn’t Appeal to Me

So I’ve always been a pop music disliker, I can’t stand the stuff on the radio. Part of it is that it gets so overplayed, but that’s a different problem. (That’s more a problem with the radio than anything else, and suggests that I might like it if I wasn’t listening to it all the time. Which I wouldn’t.) The main issue is that most of it just doesn’t appeal to me.

So I decided to think about why that would be. Obviously this music developed out of the stuff that I like, so there has to be some similarities there. And many people do like music that’s popular now, so there has to be something good about it.

And the music I am talking to here is the generic stuff that you hear on the radio or at random events. I’m not talking about everyone who is popular now, but I think that at least one of the reasons why I don’t like this stuff applies to musicians popular now.

I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a few factors put together. First of all, like I mentioned earlier, we are forced to listen to this music all the time. Without any variety. In the supermarket, at a restaurant, with friends, anywhere. It’s different than it being overplayed because it isn’t so much that you get sick of hearing it, it’s that it follows you everywhere! And if you don’t like it, tough for you. I think just the pervasiveness of it causes a sort of knee jerk reaction away from it, and a refusal to accept it.

Similarly, there are so many songs marketed for my demographic, as in young people. There’s all of these songs about the same thing and you know it was created by a bunch of old white men trying to identify with the youth (sounds like the government…). Once again, that jerk away from it just on principle. Not everyone likes the same things, and there’s more to life than partying. Maybe reflect that in songs.

Then the most significant one, I think, is the fact that performers don’t have the same kind of passion anymore. You used to have people who loved it so much that they would struggle through it and turn down other careers for it. Now people are brought up in it, and don’t have to put that much effort into becoming a hit. And people used to get involved in every aspect of music making, now it’s just the voice that you hear that’s known. You can tell the difference between someone who takes pride and care in their work and someone who doesn’t. That has to be the biggest factor to me.

 

So that’s my view, once again, it’s not about everyone. But it’s me, and that has to count for something.