What would you say is your greatest talent or skill? How have you developed and demonstrated the talent over time?
My greatest talent is most definitely my writing. It is something that I take great pride in, and am always looking to improve. Since I can write better than I am able to speak, I practice it nearly every day to improve my eloquence and skill. This includes reading new novels and articles; anything that could give me a new perspective to write from is welcome. Anytime I hear a new word or phrase, I immediately look it up to learn what it means (this stems from my curiosity). Kerfuffle and conniptions are two of my favorites, meaning a commotion of fuss, and a fit of hysterics, respectively. Anything new that I see or hear I try to incorporate into my writing, and new books are a treat for me. I try to sample all of the types of writing that I encounter, even if they prove intensely uninteresting: Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina was one endeavour that I stopped shortly after beginning. I had heard it was a literary legend, but it didn’t encapsulate me as I had expected. But, had I never tried that read, then I would never have swapped to Game of Thrones, which is easily one of the best book series that I have had the pleasure of reading. It was actually from those books that I learned the importance of setting a setting; if there are vivid characters, but a stale environment, the story tends to stagnate, and the reader can’t picture the story in their head.
Describe your favorite academic subject and how it has influenced you.
My favorite subject is English; more specifically languages themselves. I have always seen language as curious, because even though it is the medium that hundreds of millions of people use to speak, we use so little of it that we rarely get to experience the language at its fullest ( the average working vocabulary of an American adult is about 3,000 words, out of the 171,476 that exist in the English language.) But the part of it that interests me most isn’t the history of English, where it came from, or how many words are used: I care about the small inconsistencies in communication that we find in it every day, nearly all the time. The words that have multiple meanings, the phrases that can offend or befriend with a single word change or misspelled letter, the weird rules that only half-work on some words but not all words. That’s what I’m interested in, when I talk about language. Despite language being universal, there’s still so many ways to miscommunicate and misunderstand one another that it just boggles my mind. Knowing this has changed my view of language as a whole; I no longer see it as just another human trait that’s been evolved and advanced, I see it as a tool that can be used a countless number of ways, and can be mishandled just as many. I can use language to incite the wrath of a mob at a protest, or soothe the hurts of someone who’s down in the dumps by adding and removing some key phrases or structure to my words. And when you see language as a tool to be customized and used, then that perspective carries over to other parts of you as well. I’ve found this to be very useful in physical exercise, as it helps me to stay motivated to keep at it and not quit out. In short, my favorite subject is language, with all the nuances that come with it.