Improving My Writing

Hey everyone. My name is Mallory Gayer (Etheridge). I just got married in August so the double name thing might be a bit confusing, but I promise to always include both my maiden name and my married name.

I am an English major at Oakland University and plan to graduate in May. (Keep your fingers crossed for me!) I first decided to take this class for the simple fact that I need to fulfill all my elective credits and it fit into my schedule nicely.

Now that the first class is under our belts and I am pretty aware of what is to come for the semester, I hope to not only improve my writing skills, but hopefully become more creative with my ideas. I generally have A LOT to say and I have many opinions, so expressing my ideas and opinions won't be difficult. However, I seem to have lost those opinions a little bit only because nearly every class, whether it be English or Math, all professors want their students to leave their opinions out of it. I guess that is because you aren't technically supposed to write in first person. And even though that is okay for the majority of courses, getting back into expressing how I feel might take me a little time. I need to get used to it again!

The theme I am choosing is fairly simple, so I hope that it works. I would like to be able to examine my writing, my revision process, and etc. to go a few steps further. I know that my language, grammar, etc. are in good shape, so I want to mostly look at exactly what topics and etc. are being written about. I would also like to follow and be able to discuss these topics in a manner so that everyone understands what I am talking about, be able to relate to that topic(s) on a personal level, and hopefully get my readers to get a reaction so that they want to know more about the topic at hand.

I suppose that my number one goal for the blog is to write more. Again, I have somewhat lost interest in this type of writing specifically for this course because it seems that all of my other classes want to get people away from writing like this; which, by the way, is no fun at all for me or for anyone. I remember taking a creative writing class in high school and it was probably the most fun I had because I did not feel restricted when I was writing. I just sat down, grabbed pen and paper and wrote whatever it was that came to my mind. Granted, I wrote some pretty weird things, but I think that is what makes writing fun. I want to be able to get back into that state of mind and just have fun and not worry about if my professor or my audience is going to give me a bad grade.

I have high expectations for the course, so hopefully I can reach them while at the same time let loose and have a great time! I also look forward to reading other people's work because I think it helps me sometimes to read their opinions because everyone's opinions are different!

Everyone have a great weekend and I hope to hear from everyone soon! See you Monday!