Six Word Memoir

To open my second writing seminar discussion, the other seven students and I (I know, big class) were asked to write a six word memoir.  As the story goes, the “original” six word memoir was written by Hemingway: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

I couldn't come up with one to sum up my whole life, but there were a couple that relate to different aspects of my life.  The one that’s starting to become my life, as I move closer to affiliating with Chemical Engineering next fall, was the one I shared.

“Chemical engineering: calculators, spreadsheets, process design.”

Another one I came up with features my clarinet, or any reed instrument, really.

“Broke my reed #ClarinetPlayerFail”

After this exercise, we then moved on to analyzing poetry.  I actually didn't find this that bad, and even almost enjoyed the class.  I know, I’m shocked too.  I think it was a combination of a couple factors.  One is that I came more prepared than usual.  Usually, I show up for English, pull out my folder, and look through my math homework until I find something that doesn't have any numbers or Greek letters on it.  This time, not only did I do all the reading, but I also marked it up.  Let’s see how long I can keep this up.   Also, the class is really small, even for a writing seminar – it’s less than half the size of my writing seminar last semester.

So I’m hoping I can enjoy my last mandatory semester of English ever, though no matter how much I end up liking this class*, I’m still becoming an engineer.

*We’ll reevaluate after this weekend, when I have to mark up eighteen full pages of writing and write a three page essay.