Before starting this technical writing course, I stated in our class discussion board on bolt how writing has always been a major weakness of mine. For as long as I can remember writing has always been my least successful subject in school. I’ve always had a hard time translating my thoughts from my head, to on paper. In addition to that, I have never been good with grammar. Due to all of these facts, I have developed a special respect for professional writers. 

            Hunter S. Thompson was born in 1937, and died in 2005. He had a long, and successful career as an author, and journalist. Hunter had a unique way of looking at life. He loved the idea of the American dream, and actually based a lot of his work on this topic. Hunter also had an interesting way with words. I have never been able to put my finger on it, but the way Hunter writes just grab’s the audience’s attention. You can tell that he is super passionate when writing. I’ve always thought it to be his unbeatable honesty, his improper slang, and relevant topic choice. I have always thought writing was a boring career choice, that is until I started reading Hunter S. Thompson’s work. 

            The first book I read by Hunter S. Thompson was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. This book is about the American dream. In Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson writes about a trip to Las Vegas with his manager, in which their main goal of the trip was to find the American dream, and prove that it is still alive. Although finding the American dream is the main plot of this story, Hunter S. Thompson does a superb job of fitting in little side plot stories. What you take away from his story is left up to you. Hunter S. Thompson did a great job of making his audience think outside of the box, and also to think about the deeper meaning in things. 

            Besides his interesting style of writing, what fascinates me most about Hunter S. Thompson was his unbreakable honesty. He told it how it was. Hunter S. Thompson did not sugar coat things. This is why I believe Hunter was so obsessed with the American dream. The American dream was sold as something picture perfect, and as much as Hunter S. Thompson wanted that to be true, he knew that there must be a harsh reality in there somewhere. 

            Taking this technical writing course has caused me to think about Hunter S. Thompson, and how technical his writing actually was. Reading Hunter’s work, it appears he can write just like he talks. The words seem to have flowed right out of his mouth, and onto the paper. He produces such a smooth flow of words when writing, making his work very easy to follow. Was he able to do this naturally? Knowing what I know about Hunter S. Thompson, I find it very difficult to believe that he took all the necessary steps to produce a good piece of technical writing. Hunter lived life in the fast lane. I picture Hunter writing things once, with little to no break in his flow. That cannot be the reality though. This course has made me realize that for Hunter S. Thompson to write at the level he did, he most defiantly considered different aspects of technical writing, and also took the time to become informed about proper writing. 

During my sophomore year of high school, I weighed 160 pounds. Now, I am a junior in college, and I barley weigh 130 pounds soaking wet. I had started working out a lot after my sophomore year in high school, and ended up starting college freshman year weighing 145 pounds. My lowest college weight was during my sophomore year, and that was 118 pounds. I remember thinking that this was the lightest I have been since 7^th, or 8^thgrade. 

            Considering the pattern of my weight, it is clear to me that I am a victim of college campus hunger. Living on campus freshman year, I did not have a huge problem getting enough food. I was always eating at commons with a group of people, or taking a 3-minute walk to husky, or subway. However, moving off campus for my second year of college made me really start to appreciate my mother’s home cooking. I now had to walk to campus, or cook myself something every time I was hungry. A lot of times I ended up just snacking on something unsatisfying, or not eating anything at all. Getting food became more of a chore, and less of something I looked forward to. On top of that, when I did decide to walk to campus for food, I would normally end up getting something relatable to fast food. On the other hand, when I decided to cook for myself I would end up spending a lot of money at the store, eating half of the food I prepared, and then I would be left with a huge mess to clean up. Eating food had got increasingly more difficult. My grades from sophomore year were not as high as my grades from freshman year, and now reading into college hunger, I am beginning to question how much my diet played a role in this pattern. Had eating less food directly caused me to do not as well in the classroom? 

            My troubles with eating properly while at school followed me to my first semester of junior year. Knowing what to expect this semester, I had told myself before I moved in that I was going to make a better effort to eat more by preparing myself more meals, and eating on campus at least once a day. This plan didn’t stick for long. I quickly remember that I don’t usually have the time to cook for myself, and when I do have enough time, I am too tired to start cooking. I remembered how cold Bloomsburg gets, causing me to second guess making that walk onto campus for dinner. I came to a realization this fall semester that college campuses are just a place for poor nutrition. 

            I found the readings about college campus hunger this winter term for technical writing very interesting, and relatable. I had no idea that college campus hunger was such an issue for so many people. Clearly I realized that I was not eating properly while at school, but I just figured it was because I was no longer eating my mother’s cooking and she is a top notch cook. I am amazed by all the research that has been done for college campus hunger, and all of the programs in place to stop it. Bloomsburg Universities program to help eliminate college campus hunger is called “Helping Hungry Huskies”. To have such a program is truly revolutionary, and I plan to use the online cookbook this coming semester to help myself eliminate college campus hunger from my own life. 

Playing Ice hockey has been a huge part of my life since the 4^thgrade. I officially started playing Ice hockey in 5^thgrade for a local in-house team out of Hershey, PA. As I got older, my hockey skills improved greatly, opening new opportunities for me in my hockey career. In middle school I began playing travel hockey out of Harrisburg, PA. Travel hockey is a step up from in-house hockey because in travel you try out for a team, rather than just signing up. This allows you to play with other kids with similar skill levels to yourself, and eliminates the kids who love hockey, but just have not quite mastered the skills part. I played travel hockey all the way through my senior year of high school, and when I graduated I began playing for Bloomsburg University. 

            In 2014 I was 16 years old, and the hockey team I was playing for at the time was a Bantam A team called the Capital City Vipers. Being an above average team for our division, we decided to register for well-known hockey tournament in Lake Placid, NY. This is an annually run hockey tournament, and it attracts teams from every part of the nation, as well as teams from across Canada. We knew the competition would be high. We ended up losing in the semi-finals, which in my opinion, was due to the fact we were unaware of a few technicalities until the tournament had already started. Was this due to poor technical writing? Shouldn’t have we been informed of these changes in game play before we started? 

            Two major differences in the game play of this tournament smothered my teams chance of winning. First, when playing a Canadian team, checking was considered a penalty. This was due to the fact that in Canada, checking is not allowed in Bantam aged hockey leagues. Second, overtime was played out in a way I had never seen before in my life. It started 4 v 4 for five minutes, 3 v 3 for five minutes, 2 v 2 for five minutes, and finally ended with a full-ice 1 v 1 until a team had scored. To say that this overtime strategy was odd would be an understatement. My team had previously relied on the skill of checking as a very helpful strategy to win games. Without checking, our defense was off, we couldn’t fore check properly, and our whole strategy had been thrown out. The reason the change in overtime play hurt my team so bad was because this overtime ended up being more about who had the best player, not who had the best team. My team was so successful in the past not because we were a bunch of all-stars, but because we were good at working as a team. 

            This leaves me to question, did the technical set-up of this tournament truly effect my team’s chances of winning? If we had been presented a document that emphasized these changes in game play we could have planned, and practiced accordingly. Lake Placid being an American town, we expected the tournament rules to be geared towards American teams. However, once we arrived we realized that the majority of teams registered were Canadian. This tournament did a poor job of recognizing all potential audiences.  

After completing all of the readings for Technical Writing in the textbook, in addition to what was on BOLT for week one, I am remembering one particular topic that stuck with me. This is a topic that has been on my mind since freshman year, and now, being a junior, I have a different perspective when considering this topic. Although I was unable to go back and find the specific text that stuck in my mind, I remember reading about how the Bloomsburg University website is a piece of technical writing. Understanding how the GEP’s work along with core major classes is something you can read about through Bloomsburg University’s website; however, I found it not to be useful. This reminded me of my freshman year at Bloomsburg, and also brought back into my head an idea that annoyed me most about freshman year. Understanding what your major’s “goals” are, and understanding how to incorporate these goals into your schedule alongside your major classes was something that hit me hard and fast freshman year. 

            My first semester at Bloomsburg I took classes that I did not specifically choose, however I never complained about my first semesters schedule. It was about half way through that first semester, and we were already expected to pick out our classes for next semester. Just the thought of doing this overwhelmed me. So I decided to do what everybody was recommending: meet with my advisor. This didn’t help. I remember leaving that first meeting with my advisor and having more uncertainty about how scheduling my college classes worked, and more importantly, how I was going to manage to graduate in four years. Being on a four year- completely paid scholarship, I felt that graduating in four years was extremely important to me. I didn’t want to have the opportunity to graduate debt-free, yet still somehow graduate with debt to my name. I realized this huge opportunity in front of me, yet when it was time to schedule our first set of classes, I quickly realized that graduating from Bloomsburg in four years was not as simple as passing every class. Rather, there are many variables, plus a dash of luck, that go into being able to graduate in the “standard” four years.

 Will you have taken every class required for your major in four years? Will all your “goals” on myhusky be met after four years? Is that course even offered in the spring/ fall? Will that class already be full when it is my day to schedule? Is graduating in four years actually standard? These are all questions I remember being uncertain about during my freshman year. I also remember questioning, how am I ever going to pick a class I want, rather than a class I need. I thought I would be so busy trying to satisfy the first set of questions that I would never have the opportunity to just sit back and think about what classes truly interest me. Part of the reason for me taking this course, this winter, was actually in hopes that my senior year will be more open in terms of what I need to take, freeing up spaces for class I want to take. 

Still unsatisfied when I left my advisors office for the first time, I quickly realized that being able to understand how this whole college thing works is going to need some serious planning. I found that the University’s website wasn’t much help. The author of the University’s website, I felt had gotten the audience of their writing all wrong. The writing seemed more geared towards seniors, and less so freshman. I ended up getting a solid understanding of how scheduling works through talking to older peers, and even then there was still uncertainty. 

I ended up questioning whether or not this confusion was actually part of the University’s plan. I figured that Bloomsburg could anticipate this confusion, and they just thought that students smart enough to figure it out will graduate in four years, and students that don’t graduate in four years will just end up spending more money at the University. It is a win-win situation for the University. The thought of this use to make me very angry; however, now being a junior, my four-year plan is coming together better than I had thought. In my head, the only question I still have regarding this topic is; were my misunderstandings as a freshman due to me being part of a larger plan, or were they just due to the fact that whoever wrote documents explaining this topic had poor technical writing skills? 

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton