Write, right?
By Sara Yacobi-Harris
Written by Sara Yacobi-Harris on behalf of RU Student Life
The scariest thing has happened to me in the past few days. Mind you, when I say scary, this is merely my interpretation of the word “scary”. I am not inferring that you will also find it scary, so you may be bored to tears by what you’re about to read, or you may be sitting on the edge of your seat hanging off my every word, hopefully the latter.
With no further ado, my experience begins with a very seemingly mundane task. I was furiously typing notes in lecture racing to keep up with my professor’s passionate and tireless train of thought and when I looked down at my computer and could not make sense of it. The entire document appeared garbled.
So what’s the big deal, you might be thinking? Welcome to the life of a university student, but wait, there’s more. Once the words weren’t displayed via right click spell check I resorted to spelling it out myself, and here lies the crux of this story: I cannot spell. This first got me hating Microsoft Word—my entire life might as well be in the passive voice; I should consider revising my entire existence.
Secondly and more importantly, simply put, we don’t write anymore, we type. How often do we ever just sit down and write? Not type, write. I’m sure there are plenty of purest writers out there sipping their latte macchiato; pouring their soul onto the pages of their crisp new moleskin journals with elegant cursive using vintage fountain pens, as they express the woes of living in this alienated 21st century, furiously unleashing their disdain for consumer culture.
Spelling is a skill, just like language; if you don’t use it you lose it. To put this realization to the test, I decided to give my overheated MacBook a much-deserved break trading it in for a newly purchased Dollarama notebook (the moleskin seemed like an unnecessary splurge for my experimental purpose). Having a notebook allowed me to put my spelling to the test. The outcome was not as terrible as I thought it would be, but sure enough my spelling has definitely taken a hit.
Alas, the nerd in me did a two-week reflection. I have since made it my mission to be more mindful of the way I write and type. I predict this mindfulness will last about two weeks, maybe three. I decided to change the settings on my Microsoft word so that it does not underline my misspelled words ensuring that I proofread my work carefully from start to finish and crack open a dictionary if I’m having problems spelling it. Yes this is time consuming but it seems like a worthwhile use of time. The more you practice spelling, the better you get. If we know how to spell words and understand their meaning better, we will be able to express ourselves more clearly.
Sara is a 2nd year Arts and Contemporary Studies student. A Cosby Show kid at heart, Sara is passionate about capturing the human experience through writing, art and storytelling. On occasion, she ponders the likelihood of mutants while eating cereal late at night.
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