Welcome to another month of the Merry-Go-Round Blog tour.\u00a0 Who has influenced you in your life’s work?\u00a0 Who would you like to be compared to?\u00a0 That’s the prompt for this month.\u00a0 I don’t necessarily think they are the same.<\/p>\n
My mother read to me as a toddler.\u00a0 She read to me so much, that I could “read it myself, Mommy” when I was really reciting words I’d memorized and turning the pages in sync.\u00a0 I guess that’s where it started.\u00a0 Apparently, when my mom was younger, she struggled in school, but I never knew that.\u00a0 She believed reading to me when I was younger would help me have an easier time in school.\u00a0 Academically, I did reasonably well.\u00a0 Socially, I was pretty inept. Still am.<\/p>\n
I had several competent English teachers throughout my school years.\u00a0 Mrs. Coacher in seventh or eighth grade (I think it was 7th), was the first memorable one.\u00a0 Our classroom had chalkboards on two walls.\u00a0 I think it was the first day of school.\u00a0 Our class was in the classroom and the word “a” was written on one chalkboard, and the word “lot” was written on the other chalkboard.\u00a0 Her first lesson was to call the distance between the two words to our attention and to emphasize that “a lot” is ALWAYS two words.\u00a0 They are ALWAYS separated by a space.\u00a0 I have never, ever forgotten that powerful visual lesson — and I know many other people who had her for class have not forgotten it either.<\/p>\n
Then, I had Mr. James M. Rose for my junior and senior year college prep English.\u00a0 That man taught the fundamentals of formal writing.\u00a0 He had Rose’s Rules and a reading list with points for each book.\u00a0 To earn an “A” each grading period, we had to read 25 points worth of books from the list (among other things).\u00a0 Rose’s Rules clearly stated the penalty for violation, and people who did not heed lost letter grades as if the Cookie Monster was gobbling them. (“You” was worth 10 points a pop — I’ve failed in this essay; it took me ten years and conscious effort before I allowed myself to use the word “you.”) He was fair. He was firm.\u00a0 He was demanding.\u00a0 I have never taken College English 101 because of him.\u00a0\u00a0 I always tested out of it, and College English 102 was a breeze. (Whatever the appropriate course number was at any one of the myriad of colleges I attended before earning my undergraduate degree.)<\/p>\n
Throughout high school, I wrote a lot of poetry (I’m sure most of it was very bad).\u00a0 I started college as a pre-veterinary medicine major.\u00a0 By the time I finished (12 years and seven institutions later), I earned a bachelor’s degree in professional writing.\u00a0 I have always been a technically sound writer.\u00a0 I’ve frequently doubted my creative and storytelling skills.<\/p>\n
Those have been my influences to date.\u00a0 Who would I like to be compared to?\u00a0 I have no idea.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Welcome to another month of the Merry-Go-Round Blog tour.\u00a0 Who has influenced you in your life’s work?\u00a0 Who would you like to be compared to?\u00a0 That’s the prompt for this month.\u00a0 I don’t necessarily think they are the same. My mother read to me as a toddler.\u00a0 She read to …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-merry-go-round-blog-tour"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5389\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}