Two words
I like words. How they sound, how they feel rolling off your tongue and lips. I like avuncular and laconic and phlegmatic. I like it when words I didn’t even know I knew come tumbling out during a conversation. I usually surprise myself when I dip into my subconscious lexicon, as small as it is. (I am certainly no William Buckley.)
The other day as I was driving to my university to drag the often uninterested through issues surrounding the usually unread textbook chapters when I passed a group of inmates picking up the trash along the roadside. The warning sign said, “Prisoners Working.”
Suddenly my over-burdened mind hit upon a question that bugged me the rest of the day. Prisons and jails are both places where criminals are incarcerated, right? So why are “prisoners” the inmates, but “jailers” run the jails? Ah, the English language.
I like words too. I like chimney and proprietress and hogwash. Those aren’t necessarily my favorites, but for me, choosing a favorite word would be like choosing a favorite taste-bud.
I’m one of the “uninterested” and your newspaper design class would be a lot more interesting if it were a sports reporting class. You have experience covering sports and I feel like your expertise in that field of journalism is muffled by your design accolades.
Our school does very little to prepare an aspiring sports journalist. You could teach a sports reporting class that would captivate some of the less captivated design students. I’ve decided to come in and talk sports writing with you during office hours. (Hopefully that’ll get me to class early). But for the future of our university, a class devoted to sports writing could be a great thing to look into.