First Blog Entry

I am a Junior here at St. Lawrence and I am majoring in Sociology. I decided to study Sociology because I felt all of the classes involved a wide range of topics on the study of different groups of people and social institutions that affect them. Taking Sociology courses here at St. Lawrence have gotten me interested in possibly working and getting involved with some type of social service after college.

I am from Manhattan in New York City. It is a much different environment compared to here at St. Lawrence. Everything and everyone moves much faster in New York City and in general there is a lot less space to do things and everywhere always seems crowded. I enjoy living in the city because of all the opportunities it has to offer and how there are always chances to meet new people. I still enjoy the outdoors and the country though, which is why I chose to come to a school like St. Lawrence. I am interested in sports including soccer and snowboarding and enjoy reading as well.

I felt much less comfortable giving and receiving feedback in high school but since I have come to college, I have been asked to do it a lot more and have found it to be helpful. I think students that gave me feedback in other classes so far really tried to help out my work and it has been constructive in improving my writing.

I would not say that I have one specific influence in poetry but one of the poets that I do remember from a young age is Shel Silverstein. I had the book Where the Sidewalk Ends and really enjoyed that particular poem as well. I always admired and still do how he was able to make his poetry fun to read and how people both young and old enjoy it. I also enjoy Robert Frost’s poetry and his ability to involve nature and create a story through his descriptions. The best thing about good poetry is how you can almost picture the people or objects in poetry by reading the detailed descriptions. Poems sometimes make me look at situations or objects differently than I might have before and I admire how good poems can say a lot in only a few words.

In this class, I hope to discover more poets’ work that I will enjoy and expand my knowledge about the work they have written. It will be helpful to learn different techniques that are used to write poetry. Since I have not written much poetry since high school, I hope to discover what things in my life I will enjoy writing about and wish to make my writing a little more fluid.