Style Academy

This place was awesome. The sentence combiner was a really interesting exercise. I had never realized just how flexible writing was. There are 1,000 different ways to express the same idea. It was crazy just putting all of the pieces together and then rearranging them. This will be super helpful as I revise my papers. Whenever something feels clunky. Just take out the main ideas and try combining them differently.

Imitation was also really interesting. I had never thought of imitation in that way with writing. By taking just the structures of their sentences you aren't plagiarizing, but you're still able to take the part of their writing that makes them good. It's pretty genius, and just like with ever other skill the best way to get better is to copy the best until you're able to start making quality work of your own.

Thesis Proposal

Thesis Proposal

Thesis draft: “Video games are really cool. There is no other way to say it. They are extremely entertaining, engaging, and have a powerful ability to allow people to escape from reality. The problem with something being so awesome and so accessible is that It is very easily able to capture you. It becomes your default pass time, all of the other things that you loved to do just do seem as fun, and eventually it can start to become an obsession. The biggest problem with video games is the way that they program your mind. They systematically train you to expect instant rewards for every small achievement. This is fine for a game, but unfortunately this is not the way the real world works. It takes time and patience to be able to accomplish things, and the rewards are sometimes not seen until much later. I am not saying that every video game is evil or that every person who has ever played a video game is addicted to them, but I do think that we should be more careful about which games we play, and how much time we spend playing them. “

My main points are 1. That video games can be an extremely addictive form of entertainment 2. That the way video games are designed can create nasty addictive habbits very quickly. They slowly eat away at your ability to make and keep long term goals and commitments, and eventually can make accomplishing even the tiniest things incredibly difficult. 3. Talk about my experiences, and the experiences of my friends. Try to help people understand what is going on in the mind of someone who is addicted to video games. On the flipside try to say things in a way that maybe people who don’t see anything wrong with it can see what I now see about the negative effects.

To acknowledge the other side I will talk about how amazing video games are. I will also talk about how they can be an amazing tool to keep in touch and have a good time with friends all over the world. They are also extremely useful tools for blowing off steam and unwinding. They really are a fantastic medium of entertainment. The likes of which the world has never really seen before. It combines the best parts of books, movies, and plays into one medium that allows true interactivity with the consumer.

My least favorite movie essay (was I supposed to post this or bring it to class...? I'll do both)

The Sound of Mucus and Why Everyone SHOULD Hate it

Let me make it easy on you and point out the thesis statement of this paper. I HATE The Sound of Music. There are so many things about this movie that I dislike, but I want to start by acknowledging the other side of the argument so I can spend the rest of the paper railing on it. It has two things going for it. #1: Julie Andrews is amazing! You really can’t deny that… she just is. #2: Julie Andrews is amazing. Seriously though, that woman had a gift.

Phew! We got that part over with. To start my tantrum, what the crap is wrong with the person who wrote climb every mountain. I mean seriously, whoever wrote that song should have their composing license taken away. First of all, NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOU MOTHER SUPERIOR. Get off the stage. Second, how did they screw this song up so badly? They had such a good prompt. I mean think about the meaning. It’s great stuff! How did he manage to make a song about something so awesome SO FREAKING BORING!! It just goes on, and on, and on, and on, and then pauses briefly to take a dramatic breath…. And then continues on it's course swiftly sending you into mindless sleep.

My final sentence of the last paragraph is really my overall feeling about the whole show. I have a good rule of thumb for movie making. If your movie needs a 15 minute intermission… it is too long. Even The Lord of the Rings extended edition’s don’t need an intermission and they’re 4 ½ hours long. At least they have the common decency to make 90% of the 4 ½ hours interesting and well paced. I don’t mind a movie taking a long time, but if it is going to go past 2 hours it better do everything in it’s power to convince me that each minute after that is worth staying still. This is the biggest problem with the movie. IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN TWO MOVIES. The first time I watched it, the intermission screen came up and I just figured it was over. The plot resolution had already occurred, and the story had tied together quite nicely. Then my mom told me I was only half way and I just looked at her in astonishment. Then they decided to through in 1 ½ hours of content about Nazi’s ruining the great ending you just spent 1 ½ hours getting to. (Stupid Nazi’s. They ruin everything) By the time the great touching ending about them escaping into the musical hills came around I was bored spitless, and was kind of rooting for the main guy (mr. vandamn?) to get killed. Don’t even get me started on how big of a bland jerk face that guy is. Screw him. Why does he deserve an amazing girl like Julie Andrews? The correct answer is he doesn’t. His kid’s do. He is just the lucky guy who happens to be attached to them.

Anyway, my page is more than up so I guess I’ll have to stop. If you like this movie than you must have accidently taken a nap during intermission and had a dream about them killing the captain at the end, making him a martyr (so we can feel good about it) and leaving the decent people you actually care about to live their happy lives with him just as absent from their lives as he was before. Anyway, if you didn’t notice, I hate this movie.

Write of Freedom (25 minute free write)

What could I write about that I am passionate about? The ALS thing that people mentioned? I honestly don't know much about it since I don't really go on social media at all. Let's see, I could write about people are people too... nah that is just kind of condescending. hmm... I'm not really passionate about any relevant issues right now. That is really terrible. I could write about video game addictions... that actually might be a pretty good idea. Let's expand on that. I used to be incredibly addicted, and most of my good friends still are to some point. Wait, I feel like I could actually write about this. This is pretty relevant. This issue is probably in the beginning stages, but everyone can connect with it. I also have very personal experience from both sides of the issue. There have been points of my life where I spent upwards of 70 hours a week playing video games... Ok, what could I talk about. I think the best way to do this would be to relate my personal story, and do it in a kind of raise awareness/message of hope/i been there so I know kind of way. Yeah, talk about how I slowly allowed them to take control of my life. How it really isn't the video games themselves that are bad (for the most part. There are definitely terrible games out there) it is the time that they are filling up that could be spent doing something productive. I used to see nothing wrong with them in moderation, but now that I am on the other side of it I realize that I would be hard pressed to find an activity that is less productive than most games. Yeah, I think that this could go somewhere. I could also talk about how real the addiction is. It is VERY possible to become addicted to them. The worst part about them is how it trains your mind to only want instant gratification. It wires you to expect rewards automatically for achievements. This is what makes transitioning away from it so hard. Because in real life to see any meaningful change you have to work at things for weeks, months, years, sometimes even decades before you really start to reap the rewards. But one thing that I have learned is that the rewards are a million times more rewarding and fulfilling. I feel a huge sense of accomplishment from finally turning the lights off by throwing a playing card. It's a tiny thing, but I worked pretty hard for it. It probably took a grand total of 10 hours or so over the course of a couple of months. Yeah... this is good. I'm already at the end of my 25 minutes... holy crap! How did that go by so fast? Well, I will have to do some more brainstorming, and try to organize these thoughts a little bit, but I think i'm on the right track. If anyone reads this. I am truly sorry for the mental trauma I have just put you through.

A little about little old me

My name is Adam Michael Leavitt, and I was born and raised in Orem, UT. That is about 5 minutes up the hill from Provo so, unfortunately, i'm not very exotic. This is my 3rd year at BYU, but I still have no idea what I'm majoring in. OK! Now that all of the standard questions are out of the way, let me share some interesting things about myself.

My interests: Up until recently I spent a large majority of my free time playing video games (mostly League of Legends if you care), but I actually had a realization, a little while ago, that they were a complete waste of my life, and have since moved on to MUCH more interesting things ;). Now I fill my time by reading a ton, mostly fantasy but some nonfiction has started sneaking in, playing dodgeball, practicing my card throwing, trying to learn the art of lockpicking, and practicing rolling a quarter on my fingers (i'm pretty terrible at it). I love ultimate frisbee, trampoline dodgeball, laser tag, baseball, hiking, and even the occasional bout of beating people up with foam weapons (it's exactly as nerdy as it sounds, but WAY cooler :D).

I work from home, and do workflow consulting and implementations for large businesses. I spend most of my time at work singing to myself and beating my face against my keyboard as I try to help people run their business's better. I'm pretty excited for this class because I love hearing about other people's view points on issues they're passionate about. It is really interesting to try to see things from their point of view, and watch the gears turn in their head when someone points out something they haven't considered. It will also be a great place to learn better writing and grammar skills (because if you haven't noticed yet mine aren't very spectacular). Basically it should be a lot of fun.

I would now like to take this last line to personally thank anyone who read this post all the way to it's conclusion. I would also like to invite you to mercilessly make fun of me for things I said in this post next time you see me in class. I would love the chance to meet you.