“You know, it’s an interesting story,” is how most of my tales start out. Sometimes the story is indeed interesting and sometimes, well, it’s not. However, I will say that all of my stories are interesting to me, it is others who find them disenchanting.
So this blog will be interesting too. I was speaking to Meme the other day about one of my papers for English. It was about money and the traditional American dream based on two articles, one “A Lavish Wedding Costs More Than You Think” and the other “Her Body, My Baby”. “A Lavish Wedding” is about how the typical wedding costs are actually much higher because of the money that could have been made if the $17,000 median wedding expenses had been invested. The second article “Her Baby, My Body” was about a woman who had a baby with the help of a surrogate. Both are good articles, one based on numbers, the other on more “matters of the heart”. In my work, I asked the question why people are willing to pay so much for weddings and babies, and if the answer to that is that Americans are trying to spend their way into happiness and/or attempting to buy the American Dream. It was a delightful paper to write, and I sincerely hope that my professor will see it the same way and grade it accordingly (thankfully she is relatively easy graders SO… we will see…).
After Meme proof-read my paper (at which she is almost too good having spent so many years as a secretary; she frequently texts me my grammatical mistakes in my blogs as well) we discussed whether she thought what I said was true. She believed that the large wedding costs in our culture were due to “Keeping up with the Joneses” syndrome. We talked on a bit before I said that it would follow that she would perceive it that way as she and Papa eloped. It suddenly dawned on me that EVERYONE who raised me had eloped. Mom and Dad… Meme Janice and Papa Ted… Meme Jayne and Papa Jack... Effie and Lloyd. Why was my life filled with quickie weddings?? I guess that they were rebels in their time… or cheap… or just in it for the love. Who knows?
So that was my short and interesting story for you BUT! I have a request. I have to write a LARGE information paper and argumentative paper over a topic related to marriage and/or family. SO, if you have an idea, please comment it below, Facebook it to me, email it to me, text it to me, snail mail it to me, or simply call me and tell me what a good thing to research would be. I have a few ideas, but I would love a few more to broaden my perspective before I choose the topic that I will write 45% of my English Writing grade over.
Thanks!
Clott
I like the idea of writing about blended families. It could be from your perspective or you could actually interview people from blended families and do a qualitative study. Maybe you could talk about grandparents raising their grandchildren and the effect it has on their progress in school or how blended families make marriage a concept that is too hard to grasp for those young adults who were raised in that environment.......now I am rambling.........
ReplyDeleteMaybe you could take what you've written here, about your family and weddings, and expound upon it. I don't know exactly, but that does have a personal connection for you. (Connecting personally to your research paper makes it SOOO much easier to do!)
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