Journal trial

Why I'm here

I received feedback, finally. It was to add something interesting since the journal is very boring. I cannot argue that blatant fact. Honestly, as I think about what I can write that's interesting, I think egads, I'm boring! Taking that fact into account, read anything here with the note that my life is utterly, truly, boring.

I think I'll start, at least, by telling you what I do on a day to day basis. I'm a graduate student at Purdue University, and I spend every day reading through science articles until I start drooling on myself. Then, I shake off the haze, drag my carcass and geletinised brain to my desk where I start working on my thesis for the day. Explanation about the thesis is for another entry, I think.

Anyway, as soon as I sit down at my computer to write my thesis, I find something else to do. I'll log on here to Writing.com and get used to the system -- which I'm doing slowly -- or maybe I'll go read the news. Sometimes, I turn on music and listen for a while before finally peeling my eyes open to look at the screen where I know I need to type the information I just read lest I forget it.

Many times, what I write in my thesis is this horrible stream of unconscious thought, just like this is. It's unstructured, horrid grammar, and quite possibly the worst word salad you've ever seen. I'll pull my self through editing processes until I walk away in frustration at my lack of grasp of one simple concept: commas. I go comma happy, and I know it. By the time I go through it to get the structure right, I'm not sure what I actually was aiming at saying.

Sigh. The trials of a new writer. Which brings me to why I'm here. I had hoped for some true criticism, constructive feedback, and help with writing. I don't aim to be best selling author with hundreds of novels under my belt. My aim is far less grand. I just want my writing to be clear, concise when it needs to, and easy to follow. As in, not this stream of consciousness garble that appears here in this entry. I hope that both my writing and my speech becomes more clear, well rounded, and not horribly dry and boring like the rest of my fellow scientists. On the flip side of that, I need to maintain the standards laid out before me when it comes to writing non-fiction. Oh, the challenges I have...

Will you help?