Verbal Advantage

My sister is studying for the GMAT. I flipped through her study books, checked out the vocabulary section, saw the math section and wanted to throw up, and then thought, "man, I'm getting dumb." Do you ever feel like along with your baby you birthed out your brain? I do. I've only had two kids, and can only imagine how dumb those of you with more than two kids feel. My brother and sister never fail to point out my grammatical errors on my blog. I know. I see them too. In my defense, Isaac is usually sitting on my lap. And as I already said, my brain disappeared with the placenta (two times).

I'd always thought I would go to grad. school. It was one of my marriage stipulations: sure, I'll marry you, but we'd better have a dog by our first anniversary, and you'd better be prepared for me to get my Ph. D , just because I have your children, doesn't mean I'm not going to be a Professor. Oh, and just so you know, I'm never doing your laundry, so good luck with that! Yeah, whatever. I got the dog. Higher education. Not yet, and maybe never. And the laundry thing, well, I like my husband to wear clean clothes, so I do all the laundry. So much for my feminist spirit. I'm sorry Dr. Stevenson (my favorite professor, of British Lit., which became my undergrad "specialty"), I really tried.

That's right, British Literature. Which basically means I should be the snobbiest snob of literature. Don't worry, I'm not. I read The Hunger Games, after all. This also means, I should have an amazing vocabulary. I don't, and I know it. I have really smart friends. My friend, Emily, she uses a lot of big words, and she speaks fluent Spanish, and translates for court cases, and is pretty much amazing. My other friend, Jamie, she teaches a writing course at Kent State University. Man, I'd love to do something like that! Guess what's stopping me, that scary math section on the GRE.

All of that to say, I've decided that I need to something, and a good starting point, in my mind (because math is never a good starting point, in my opinion), is to increase my vocabulary. I often get these ideas in my head, and then it's full speed ahead. These ideas rarely pan out, aside from my photography obsession, which has actually been successful and worthwhile.

"Isabella, why don't you bring your homework over to this table, and you can do homework while I do my homework."
"You don't have homework!"
"What are you talking about, my whole life is homework!"

I bought a book called, Verbal Advantage 10 Easy Steps to a Powerful Vocabulary by Charles Harrington Elster. I do not consider "10 Easy Steps" to take up 459 pages, but, okay. If nothing else, this book is thorough. I had to take a pretest (a test of 100 vocabulary words), and the author wrote, "Here's what you should do: Take the following pretest, calculate your score, and then put it out of your mind." He just might be crazy. How is that supposed to work? I calculate my score, realize I'm dumber than I thought, and then try to forget about it? Sure thing, Charles.

Here's a story for you:

A mouse and a raven were friends. The raven was congenial to the mouse, even though he could have easily snatched him up for dinner. But the mouse had an uncanny ability to entertain the raven. They spent a considerable amount of time discussing in candor how their lives differed, and what challenges they faced. The mouse was the more pragmatic of the two. He was concerned for his life, and knew that many predators would gladly eat him for dinner. But he was also adept at hiding, and protecting himself and his friends.

The raven was often morose and at his worst, sullen. He would admit to the mouse his own misanthropy, and become saturated in his tears with sadness because he could never become as congenial as his friend, mouse.

The mouse was sad for his friend, and tried to tell him that it was ostensible that he wanted to be a kind and good raven. He would often paraphrase his friend's words, so that he may realize he could become a kind and good raven, even sanguine. But the mouse would digress and talk about his own hardships, to the point that the raven became once again, lugubrious. 

The End

Enjoy your Sunday,

Sierra