The smell from Universal burning

[gategrrl]

Universal Studios burned, and it smells AWFUL where I am! Which stinks (in more ways than one) because it's such a gorgeous day out this morning that I was actually considering going out onto our back porch and writing on my Asus Eee.

What I should do now is submit my three chapters of homework that I finished yesterday so I can move onto the quizzes. So far, I figured I'm doing a B+ or A- in the class, which is okay. But I was taking it too easy, thinking that because English was always one of my best subjects that I'd get perfect scores on the quizzes and tests with no studying. On my first exam I got 44/50 possible points.

And now the class is moving out of Superlatives - can you *believe* I actually wrote "Bad:Badder:Baddest" on a Quiz? I can't believe I did that. Talk about a stupid attack. Bad:Worse:Worst. What was I *thinking*! Anyhow, we're out of superlatives and into a really tricky (for me) section dealing with Subject/Verb agreement. Not as easy as you'd think, especially if you've developed bad habits or have lost the 'ear' for proper grammar. I'm talking Indefinite Pronouns, Predictive Nominatives (OUCH!), Appositives and Objective Forms.

Urgh. It IS useful. I keep missing mistakes in the sentences I'm alledgedly proofreading. Clearly, I'm not as good as I thought I was.

Comments

[aizjanika.livejournal.com]

{{{hugs}}} I think it's probably that you're concentrating so much on it, that you're missing the obvious stuff that you know. I can totally understand how that bad/badder/baddest thing could happen on a quiz, because it's out of context and the brain just wants things to be all the same.

In actual writing, I sometimes make the most atrocious mistakes, and if I saw someone else make them in fanfic or something like that, I'd notice (and sometimes be a little horrified *g*), but in my own writing? Sometimes I just can't see it. OTOH, when I'm specifically proofreading, I often miss things I know the first time around for some reason. I'm getting better at it, as lyraeinne sometimes lets me proofread her college papers for typos and spelling and whatever, and usually that's a last-minute thing, so I have to do it quickly.

Something that *might* help is reading it aloud, but...I don't know. *g* Maybe not. For some reason reading aloud makes me slow down enough that I notice things more, though, but that's especially with my own writing, when I'm too close to it so that I know what I meant and it could be the most blatant error ever, and I still won't notice it.

Also, I was reading about the Asus Eee in Computer Shopper the other day, and it sounds so cool. *g* It sucks about the smoke, though. That's a shame, too.