Third blog post for my class

Well, with the second blog post I've officially passed the class, but I'm planning to keep on doing the homework. It's actually pretty interesting to see how they collect content and have peer grading. I got dinged last time for writing only 300 words, but since the assignment said "write a 300 word blog post" I'm not sure I get that. Oh well.

Here's my third and final post for the class:

One of my fondest grammar memories, and yes those exist, occurred on the first day I was in fifth grade.  My teacher drew an upside down “e” on the board and asked for a show of hands for people who knew what it was.

I raised my hand.

Now, I’ve never been a popular kid but that pretty much sealed the deal that I was one of the biggest nerds and possible teacher’s pets ever in the history of the world.

You see my dad, who taught English for several years, had just explained what that symbol meant the previous night at dinner. Less than 24 hours previous to her asking the question.  How could I not raise my hand?

For those of you who don’t know, the upside down e (and I can’t get that symbol to work right now) is called a schwa. According to Merriam-Webster the schwa is “a vowel that has the sound of the first and last vowels of the English word America.

That moment saved me tons of time for the rest of the year. She assumed I knew what was going on most of the time and so I got to do lots of fun things in the room. She had a box of starter sentences. If you needed to write an essay but didn’t have any ideas, you could go pull out a card and finish the topic. I loved that. It was a great idea generator.

Someday I hope that I can write a novel or a series of short stories. When I try to get my thoughts on paper I often catch myself creating first sentences, just like that box, as a way to get started. Helping my own kids get through school limits my time right now, but someday I think I’ll get it done. But, I did manage to do one thing for my kids, just like my dad did for me. They all knew what a schwa was on the day their English teachers asked. 

EDX Post 2

So, the second post is due today and I decided to share my story about proofreading. Publishing it here again just to prove it is my original work (if that ever comes up).

***

As we move through the EDX course I am being reminded about information I learned long ago and am being challenged to improve my writing. Years of being asked for short summaries at work and writing for social media have hampered my creative writing abilities. I am going to try to write more after this course and see what I can create. 

That said, the most valuable thing about this class so far was reading blogs from the class. I do some freelance work and spend time proofreading papers for individuals for whom English is not their first language. I’ve read some really amazing pieces of work and am pleased when I can help turn a phrase or make their meaning clear.  

My favorite example of what I do for those clients came very shortly after I started that job. I was reading a paper from someone whose primary language was Asian.  They were describing some individuals and were trying to portray enthusiasm and exuberance in their account.  As I was reading along a phrase appeared just wasn’t right. They had written “it was above the wall.”

For the life of me I went blank. I knew that wasn’t right but I really struggled to determine the meaning. I ended up flagging the line, finished the chapter and then went back. Upon the second review it dawned on me that what they wanted to say was “it was over the top.”

I finished editing it and believe that I maintained the spirit they wanted to portray. It was an eye-opening experience of how sometimes terms just don’t translate well.  I hope it has made me a better editor and listener in that I want to hear what a person is trying to say even if the words come out jumbled.

EDX update

I scored 9/10 on the blog post. Got some decent feedback and now have to write another one. Debating my schwa story or my favorite example of how hard it is to translate idioms. That post is due Monday so I guess I'll stew about this for a while. Maybe I'll just write both :)

EDX courses

So the Marvel course got me sucked into EDX MOOC courses. I'm loving them. I've done three now.The Marvel course, one on coding and one on HTML5. I'll be honest, I'm mostly doing the homework and tests without watching all of the videos, but I'm learning and applying the skills to my job.  This time around I'm taking an editing course with a focus on grammar. This is the homework for this week. I decided to publish it so that I can claim it as mine in case of any plagiarism. Sad but true. 

As this week’s topic in my EDX class is about verbs, I’ve decided to focus on a news article for my blog post.  If the assignment was allowed about any grammar topic, I was going to write about the schwa, but with this change in topic, that will be a future post. 

According to The Guardian, a British newspaper, there is a new verb being used by German teens. The verb “merkln” appears to be based on the politician Angela Merkel. From the article, ““Merkeln’, which means being indecisive or failing to have an opinion, is topping a poll to choose Germany’s favourite new ‘youth words’” (read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/04/angela-merkels-influence-now-extends-to-german-slang-merkeln).

The most interesting thing to me about this topic is the evolution of words, how new words enter the lexicon and how quickly social media shares these new terms around the globe.  And while newspapers in the traditional sense are dying, they still manage to have a luster and authority with their online posts. I am willing to consider this discussion because it was published by them as an article and not just because I saw a tweet using it.

Also from the article “The competition has been held by Langenscheidt for the past seven years and aims to reflect the evolving nature of the German tongue. On 31 October, a jury will choose 10 winners – ranking the top five – which will be included in an ever-changing e-book.”  Langenscheidt is a publishing company and I love that they are getting people excited about language.  I think that many languages are open to new words, such as English and German, whereas some languages are protected (i.e., French) and others die from a lack of change (i.e. Latin). Every three months the Oxford Dictionary updates a list of new words (read more: http://public.oed.com/the-oed-today/recent-updates-to-the-oed/) 

Cleaning out the basement

Finding all kinds of interesting things.  Like the fact that I freelanced for the University at Buffalo in 1998, long before I ever started working here in 2006.  The assignment for Buffalo Physician was Roswell Park focused, and since I started working at RPCI around this time, I guess I just figured it was a part of that job. Turns out it was not. I found the UB contract over the weekend.  I guess I was meant to be here :)

Here is a PDF file from the Buffalo Physician Winter 1999 issue with my three articles extracted. Kind of a fun weekend. Now I have more sorting, scanning and cleaning to do. But perhaps soon my basement will be organized and the stuff I want to keep will be safe. 

Prepping for the Tri-State Conference

I think I'm done with my presentation, I've gotten my hotel reservation confirmed and my travel plans are set. I'm excited to be speaking at the Tri-State Consortium of Opportunity Programs in Higher Education 25th Anniversary Conference.

While this is not the first time I've ever made a presentation about social media, it is my first workshop. So I'm excited for the give and take with the crowd and hoping that I can learn a few new things along with the information I'll be sharing.

I will be sharing key pieces of the presentation on the blog after the meeting. If you're interested, watch for those updates.

March comes in like a lion

So, who decided that the phrase "March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb" makes any sense?  Lions in savannas which are usually warm. 

Tonight freezing rain is expected. I can't decide if I'm happy about that or not. For it to rain, we have to be up over 32 degrees. It's been over a month since the last time it was that warm around here. Seriously.  But at least this should end soon. It's almost St. Patrick's Day and that is usually when the snow stops for the season. Usually.

When the internet breaks

Over the past six weeks my home phone has been ringing a lot at weird hours.  It appears that some bot scraped my business name, merged it with something else and promptly posted my home phone as a towing company.  With all of the snow and ice issues, there have been many calls for towing.  I'm getting tired.

So far in searching I have been unable to locate which group started this problem for me. I'm not a car enthusiast so that's not any kind of a connection.  I'm really at a loss and getting frustrated trying to search this info out. Anyone have a suggestion for a fix that doesn't involve me dumping my home phone number?

Workshop Scheduled

I am pleased to announce that I will conducting a workshop on Social Media at the Tri-State Conference in April 2015. Details are still being worked out, but I was confirmed as a presenter last night.

I am honored to be chosen and am looking forward to this opportunity.

2015

Not even sure I should be titling this a 2015 blog, but here goes.

I have decided that I am not a blogger. I love twitter, I love facebook but I don't love blogging. I think it is a few reasons:

• I'm too busy
• I am happy to share my opinion when asked, but just putting stuff out into the void seems a bit pretensious
• New tools have already supplanted the reason I relaunched this blog

So, the reasons.  I'm too busy.  I love my job at UB. I work on a computer all day long. I'm not doing a lot of generic computer work in my free time.  I have freelance jobs too, so again, when I don't have to be on a computer, I'm not being there anymore. So blogging fails the free time test.

I'm happy to share my opinion.... but not just being opinionated.  I'll share fun stuff on twitter (follow me at (@cpd623)  and hang out with my friends on facebook, but that stuff is way more personal than what I want to share on a blog. Maybe I'll change my mind again, but maybe not.  I'll keep this active, but more like monthly than weekly or daily.

New tools. I love Pinterest for my book tracking. I managed to pin 52 books last year and I've started the same goal for 2015. I don't need to blog about them anymore cause that is faster.

I'm always open to new ideas, work requests, professional contacts etc. If you'd like to work together, find me on LinkedIn.