Welcome Back to ΣΝΖΦ. I won’t even bother to apologize this time because I think it will become a common thing for me to get delayed. So I will really only write for the blog when I have free time. This week I had some free time because I didn’t have Math homework, courtesy of the Midterm for this class that was this week too.

At least all my efforts are being worth, I had only good grades until now. Even on my Beatles class Midterm, I that I thought I had done horrible because I forgot some of the names of important people. I’m really very bad with names. Is not that I don’t care about the person, is just that I’m very bad at memorizing at all. If I can make the thing I’m trying to memorize have some sense, it should be ok for me to record it. But names are very hard to give a meaning. Luckily I learned a great technique for memorizing peoples name at my rhetoric class. On one of our first classes our professor made us stand on a circle and we had to say a characteristic that begin with the same first letter of our name. Also we had to repeat the name and characteristic of the people that spoke before us. So, in short, when I meet someone new now, I create an adjective for him/her on my mind.

Now that we are speaking about rhetoric, I think it is important to share my experience with this class, because it’s one of the hardest classes I have and is mandatory for all new first year students. Well, some students already took rhetoric on high school, like most of my friends, so they are pretty comfortable about it. Still, you can find people like me, who didn’t even knew the meaning of rhetoric when I went to my first class. It is the class I did more work so far, not because it is difficult. But because I have to do things I never did before, like these things that professors and students call “papers”. I had never written a paper before in my life. I wrote essays yes, but nothing with the format of a paper, with all its formats exigencies and citation quotes formats. Nevertheless it is a work I’m happy I did. I mean, I recognize its importance and I’m happy I did it. Obviously my paper is full of mistakes, but I’m glad I made them, (as long as they don’t interfere too much with my good grades), because that way I will learn better, which is my main purpose here.

You see, whenever I get an exam back the first thing I do is to go over my mistakes. Usually I find mistakes that I did by distraction. One time I was in a rush and calculated that 5 times 6 was 36, you can imagine my reaction when I saw that after receiving my grade back. Still, sometimes I do find problems that I got wrong because I did a horrible mistake and, when I do, I fell very happy. I guess those are two of many of my guilty pleasures: Understanding the subject being discussed on class, and being able to detect my mistake and learn how to correct it.

I think that’s all I had for today, But I still feel guilty for not being able to post on the blog, and because of that I will put a bonus today, one beginning of a short story I had to write for my Fiction writing class. I hope you enjoy. See you next wee… Whenever am able.

(the story have no name, I’m sorry)

Julia finally took a seat on the kitchen table after preparing breakfast for her daughter and husband. She stared at the empty chair on the other end of the table while playing with her hair. With the other hand, she grabbed her piece of bread with butter and started to eat. They are quite late tod… She was thinking before Tom appeared on the room. “Good morning my darling,” he would usually say. “The food smells good”. But nothing came out of his mouth. He sat on the chair next to her and opened the newspaper, protecting himself behind it. Julia wanted to see the face of her husband and not the picture of a “missing child” on a page of the Chicago Tribune. She waited. Is he not going to say anything?

“How are you darling?” She finally said.

“Good, good” He answered.

“Did something awful happen on today’s news, for you to be so quiet?”

“Not on the news, no” Tom said while closing the paper.

He smiled at her. But something was different on his smile; He smiled like one of Julia’s student’s about to receive a grade when they weren’t sure whether it would be an A or an F. Usually it was a F. She took her cup and noticed she forgot the coffee. “Oh silly me, I forgot the coffee, I will make some more”. Julia said.

“No no no, sit my darling, I will make the coffee”. Tom said.

He put his hand on her shoulder, forcing her to sit down. He got up and started to make the coffee. Julia was amused by how her husband seemed quite unworried about his job this morning; he never had time to do anything before going to work.

All her thoughts went away when she saw a portion of a piece of paper coming out her husband’s pocket. Was it an envelope? Tom came back to the table. “It will take about five minutes for the water to boil”. He said. The same smile was on his face, but that’s not what was concerning her anymore. When Tom mentioned time, Julia looked at the clock and realized that her daughter was late. “Christine!” She shouted. “You are going to be late for school”. Silence was here response. The same silence that had been filling the house the entire morning, silence that was a new guest on the house.

“If she’s not awake by the time the bus arrives,” She said. “I’m not driving her to school”. Tom’s smile vanished from his face when she spoke her daughter’s name. So he got a F, Julia thought. She knew something was different, something was wrong. “What’s the matter?” she said. Tom looked at the table; he got up to finish the coffee. But before doing anything he took the letter out of his pocket, weld back a tear and put the envelope in front of her.