Letter to the Reader

        Even when you think you know something, the nature of learning and the human brain is that things take practice to truly internalize. Real learning is when you can take new information and connect it to everything else you know and do. For instance, before this year I'd heard of things like structuring, dominant impression, dialogue, and all of the other literary devices that you can use to sculpt your writing into effective communication. But knowing that these things exist and maybe able to point them out in a professional author's essay isn't enough. To incorporate them natural and effectively to improve your writing, you need to be forced to focus on them even when it feels unnatural, just like muscle building by targeting the smallest most isolated place you can. Once you've gone through the motions and written a paper that has explode-a-moments or dialogue throughout, the techniques will find their way into all of your writing when they fit most.
I rewrote a piece that I wrote early in the term to utilize all of the things that I learned. Grandma Sally

Sally Bittker is the most remarkable person I know. She saved my parent’s marriage, battled cancer, lost her husband, and can still crack a joke. She’s my Grandma. She has been through so much hardship, and it has marked her body, but inside her personality and outlook on life has been left untouched. She is never slow to tell someone that things are alright, or change a sorrowful  moment into a humorous one. My grandpa was the epitome of the crotchety old man, but their 40 year marriage was the happiest I’ve ever known of, from the outside it felt like they never had a singular moment of disagreement or a disconnection. When he passed last year, she hardly missed a step and kept up with her life, working at the temple gift shop, having dinner with her friends a few nights a week, swimming at the JCC, playing maj with her “girlies”, and probably visiting the fingerlakes gaming and race tracks a few extra times per year.

She’s someone who’s always dealt with every obstacle thrown at her with the utmost grace, prominently her decades of battle with cancers of her thyroid, breasts, and duodenum. Her right arm has severe lymphedema from a surgery years ago, and ever since I can remember the limb has been swollen and pillowy, it’s been her “snuggle arm”. She once stood tall, almost 6 foot, but now she’s hunched and top-heavy. Her body is marked by struggles, but her character and demeanor are not. Curly pinkish hair has all grown back now, and her cheeks are sagged but the beaming smile and white teeth remain firmly in her face, full of humor and welcoming.

Hardships are only met with smiles by my Grandma, If my Grandpa’s passing comes up she’ll likely start joking about who she’ll marry next. Once, in the back seat of the car with me and my brothers (where she likes to sit when she rides with us) She exclaimed that she’d married for love once and that was enough for her, this time she’ll be marrying for money. (Which meant George Clooney)

She’s extremely caring and it feels like she holds together the entire family. The frequent dinners at her house are always the same, overcrowded and full what feels like half a dozen generations. When there are problems in the family, she’s the one to always remain calm comforting and supportive. When my cousin got into a shotgun engagement, and then later when the fiance went to jail for drug use, my grandma, over everyone else, stayed positive and supportive, and focused on making people feel alright and watching out for Christian her great grandson.

Recently, my grandma has been riding a roller-coaster of alternating re-assuring and harrowing diagnosis on a tumor in her digestive track. She’s undergoing a form of chemotherapy that’s supposed to be very effective, and it’s making it hard for her to eat and keep food down. But even now, she’s staying warm and cheerful, scolding my dad like he’s ten years old again and always kissing us on the cheeks when we arrive and when we leave. I’m amazed and inspired by her courage and I’m proud to be her grandson.