Three Questions, One Blog

In grade school as well as high school I started forming certain images of what grammar was. Now of course, these images were both in English and Spanish since I'm from Puerto Rico making it a little harder and interestingly enough giving me different images of both. I don't remember much from grade school but what I remember was that Spanish was poetry to my ears and English almost seemed alien. I had an image that Spanish was a language of fun, where words flow and come alive with such ease and bring life to the simplest ideas just by speaking or exaggerating certain words and yet they worked. I wrote poetry, sang, and just loved speaking it where I would not stop talking which is not far from my personality today. With English I remember it being work or a mission, something I had to complete and master just because it was there. I did spelling bees, spoke to my mom in English since pre-K and started to feel more comfortable with it as time passed by and as high school came along. In High School, I didn’t really give much thought to these languages, I felt that I learned everything I could from English since I basically knew better English than my own professors and I took Advanced Spanish for my last two years in High School. My image of then was basically was basically of two lifestyles, two genres and ways of expression each with their own significance.

Now, one draws back to my knowing two languages or what I never learned were the rules of grammar. I learned them in school like everyone else but like many people I forgot them and write by instinct and that is sounds right when I read it. I believe that you do need these rules to write, especial if you pursue a profession that requires a good knowledge of writing skills like journalism of writing for the media. At the same time if you write poetry you need those skills but I believe that in a professional setting is where it is necessary to have them. If you write just for your own amusement of you like it doesn’t seem necessary but I say this because some people don’t want to learn or it hard to learn it but I do believe that you need these skills in your everyday life but the fact is not many people do unless they are pursuing a profession that requires it.

Speaking or grammar and the rules there is one factor or phenomena that sweeps our society as we speak where even I am a part of it. That is the misuse of words. These words that do not fit in a normal sentence or cut form the flow of writing and conversation but people use them because it may give them time to think, it breaks the conversation and they can continue when they have something to say or because it has been engraved in their daily lives by imitation of what is popular. Some of these words include: "Like", 'You Know", "I mean", "Yeah", "Sure", "Ok", "I don't know", "that", "and things", " Its just" and probably many more that I can't think of that this time. Its part of the generation that I belong to where these words are being miss-used but at the same time there seems to be a shift to its proper use as we the years pass by which means there is still hope for us yet.

Writing for the Media and Me

Hello, my name is Sean Harty and I am a senior at Manhattanville College. My mayor is Communications with a concentration in Broadcasting and Interpersonal Communication. In addition, I am minoring in Music concentrating in performance and audio engineering. My studies in high school leading up to college consisted of the normal curriculum that one has with the difference that I specialized as much as possible with print and news journalism, school event videos, music composition, performance, and production in either chorus, the school newspaper and news show. Now, in college my skills have advanced a great deal by adding my passion of Theatre and relating it to my field.

Even though as of now I have dropped the minor due to the volume of classes which included acting, voice and speech, directing and many others, these have given me a more complete view of what I want to base my career on. In Broadcast, I have taken many History classes on Television, Radio and Film, directing classes, lighting, sound and other production classes. In my Music minor I have taken similar classes with the distinction of learning psychoacoustics which is the effects of music and sound on the mind and its manipulations.

Check out what psychoacoustics sound like;

This to me will help me a great deal when creating music because I will understand what is popular in the industry and what can really captivate the audience in concern with lyrical content as well as its composition. It’s very easy to see that my future plans consist in the industry of production and interestingly enough more in Music production but I’m also studying Interpersonal Communications as a more personal agenda in my life. What I mean by this is that my skills maybe in production but I do lack some skills in writing and speech, so I have taken this concentration to become more proficient for myself as well as in the production fields of writing, advertising and public relation. That maybe the main reason why I am taking this course along with others including Voice and Speech, Interpersonal and Intercultural classes, to strengthen and in concern to writing really improve and correct on my mistakes.