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I am a PCA major, which stands for Performance and Communication Arts. It was formally called Speech and Theater. My class is the first to go through this new PCA major. Hopefully, after we graduate next year as the guinea pigs the rest will be history as a smooth sailing, concrete major. For my first two years, I was taking courses to fulfill a Psychology major. I had a change of heart and decided to move into Communication classes. The discussion based, free-spirited feeling was more for me. I decided I would rather be on television or reporting the traffic for a radio station than attending grad school for an occupation that changed everyday. I am still uncertain of my future career but I do know what would be fun for me and I am going to do just that. My major fits myself and I enjoy it. I am a PCA.

I am from Castorland, NY. It is only an hour and fifteen minutes south of campus. It is very much like Canton, but smaller. I am a small town girl. I like it.

Aside from writing, what are my interests and hobbies? Well, I need to clarify. I honestly I do not like to write very much. That is not entirely true. Basically, I do not think I am very good at it. I've never blogged, but I think I could do this all day. I like to write my thoughts in a very non-formal way. When it comes to being concise, that is not me. I have too many ideas and the reader is usually confused. This is my first "English" course. I hope to have writing as an interest in the near future. I enjoy athletics. I love to run through the woods for very lengthy periods of time. I am very competitive because of my athletic background. I also enjoy cooking. Sometimes I wish I had gone to culinary school, but instead I watch hours of Top Chef and The Food Channel.

I already introduced the next idea of getting feedback on my work. I have been told that my writing is not concise, or it needs to be "tight." This is not terribly negative but it creates less confidence in my writing skills. Can you be too creative? Sometimes I get too many ideas and try to use all of them. If I only use one of those great ideas, the others may feel left out. I'm sort of kidding.

I won't Google search famous poets to answer the next bullet. I'll be honest. No poet stands out to me when I am asked for my favorite or who I detest. I have read Langston Hughes, Robert Frost and all of those other famous poets. I like some of them. I guess I can say what I like and what I don't and in the future I can attribute these characteristics to specific individuals. I think I like poems that rhyme. I know I like to write rhyming poems over reading them. This makes me wonder if others may not like to read my rhyming poems. I get annoyed with too much meaning. I like to dig into a poem but there is a stopping point. When a poem could mean anything or is very confusing, it frustrates me. I took a poetry class in high school. I don't remember much. I liked it, but it was so long ago. I think once we begin reading and discussing things will come back to me. I do remember one teacher I had saying that poems can be interpreted differently by different individuals and another teacher saying that poems only had one meaning. My classmates would try to guess what the author was trying to say. We would answer, "This is about death. You can tell in line 5..." She would respond with something completely different and explain it was about a wedding. We were so confused and frustrated. Of course, the teacher had the answer key and the poet had explained what his poem meant. Well, I do not like when you need an answer key to find the meaning of a poem.

I think good poetry makes you think. It is like searching into someone's mind and their emotions. Poetry can also be pretty. It sounds lame and hopelessly romantic but reading beautiful poetry makes you jealous of whom it is about or for.

I hope I can find meaning for my writing through this class. By exploring effective, meaningful poetry I might be able to use poet’s examples of effective sense for my writing.