Blog 1: Introduction

I am Skylar Wendel, aged 19; a sophomore at the University of Nebraska Lincoln. I am an actuarial science major with an interest in minoring in Japanese and video game design. These short sentences are mere facts about myself, the kind you would likely hear on the first day of class or in an interview. You probably aren't even sure what the person behind this computer screen is like with so little information, but I can remedy that. You can learn quite a bit about a person just by listening to what they have to say, or in this case, reading what they have to write.

You could say that I consider myself a "writer." In high school I took AP Language & Composition (and it was one of my favorite courses of my high school career). Science Fiction Lit was a fun course as well; I got to write a 35-page short fiction story about superhero teens, and that was great. But academic writing is far from my favorite type of writing. Since I was old enough to hold a pencil I have been creating fictional worlds left and write (and abandoning them almost as quickly to replace them with new ideas). I have journals full of messy scrawls about vampires, cyborgs, aliens, and even gods of death. Writing fiction is one of my passions, and I am no stranger to the world of fantasy literature.

For me personally, writing has always been a way to discover and explore worlds that we cannot physically visit. I write to create new life that I might share it with interested readers who also seek to escape their mundane lives. Of course, I do also respect academic and journalistic writing. Since awakening to the world of politics in my high school Government & Politics class, I have used writing to express my views on controversial topics and to try to spread moral rightness in a prejudiced world. Being an eloquent writer on topics such as race, sexuality, and violence is the best way to open the eyes of people who would otherwise turn their backs. I believe that the internet journalism movement often called "social justice" is one of the best uses of writing in this modern-day society. Increasingly I am becoming of the opinion that writing can be used to change the minds of strangers and move a nation.

Writing something so monumental is not something that most people think can be done without careful revision, but I find that my writing process is rarely a "draft, draft, final version" process. I spread my thoughts as they come to me and edit as I go along. If something doesn't seem right as I am writing it, I change it before moving on. I have never understood the academic compulsion of creating a draft that has many issues, only to edit it in its entirety later. As a self-proclaimed-perfectionist, I cannot move onto the next sentence without ensuring that I am satisfied with the one before it. My idea of a "draft" is a final version that has not yet been spell-checked. Rarely do I make large changes to a document after it has been composed. I am a writer who knows what I want to say, and the way I say it the first time is the way it is going to stay. You can't take back the words you speak, so neither do I like to take back the ones I type. You only get one chance in this life to say what you have to say, so I choose to say it as I feel the first time.