Big Words

It is so irritating when I have a whole afternoon free and am exceedingly motivated to write a blog about some incredible event, full of wit and insight on life's greatest secrets, then start blogging only to delete intro paragraph after intro paragraph.  It is somewhat intimidating to think that what I write could potentially be read by total strangers (I have noticed on the traffic sources link that I have a few readers from Ukraine and Russia.... By the way, who are you guys?).  It is possibly even more intimidating to think that this could be read by mere acquaintances (you know, those people you shared a bench with in orgo lab or those friends of friends you met briefly at a concert you went to years ago that you're still friends with on Facebook who you actually haven't seen or talked to in five to ten years but see no reason to de-friend?).  Sometimes when I write, I don't really think: I just type whatever my brain communicates to my fingers.  My high school English teachers would probably be disappointed (and might be reading this, because we probably have mutual friends on facebook... Oh no!).  I hope they'll excuse the occasional sentence fragment and run-on sentence.  I tend to blog the way I would talk, excluding the occasional big word I feel the need to throw in, mostly to prove to myself that I haven't forgotten its meaning.

Speaking of big words.  (sentence fragment!)  One of my favorite books of all time is To Kill a Mockingbird.  I know what you're thinking: "How lame, everyone and her sister was at one point in time assigned that book in a middle school or high school English class."  I've read this book three times; the first time was as assigned reading my sophomore year of high school.  But, what's interesting is this: while reading this book in high school, we were responsible for learning the meaning to certain words from its pages deemed "vocabulary words."  Using the words in the context of the story, it was an easier and a more practical way to derive the meanings.  Now, To Kill a Mockingbird is by no means the most verbose novel in the world, but to this day I still associate certain "big words" with its story.  I still recall that Alexandra married a taciturn man, the precise definition of tenet, as given in my vocabulary notebook: "principle, axiom, dogma," as well as associate words like "umbrage," "temerity," and "chiffarobe" to its pages.  It's strange (or should I say uncanny/perplexing/idiosyncratic/atypical) that things like this can stick for so long.

Anyway, I guess today's blog started as a frustrated rant and ended with some thoughts on vocabulary.  I can only hope that my audience in Russia will appreciate my efforts, those long-lost acquaintances may want to be re-acquainted, and my high school English teachers won't be too offended.