Thanks to my mother in 6th grade

Throughout my English classes in high school, I was granted the nickname "Grammar Girl." In all honesty, I loved grammar, and I still do. This semester, I am just learning that I am nowhere nearly as good at it as I thought I was.

When I make mistakes with grammar, it's often because I just go off of what sounds best when I say it in my head. That's why I have found myself to be wrong a lot more than usual recently. My teachers in high school never devoted more than a few hours of the year to grammar and punctuation lessons. Each figured that the last teacher taught us adequately. The only reason I knew the differences between lie and lay before I came here was because my mother was my English teacher in 6th grade. Because she taught English and Spanish for almost twenty years, I had plenty of practice at the dinner table at home or during car rides to church. That's why I was "so good" at it in high school; no one else knew it or had my mother to thank for knowing it.

I think my biggest challenge is going to be to stray away from complete intuition when it comes to picking the right words. There are right answers; I just need to be willing to do the research to find them instead of assuming that what sounds right is good enough. Most of the time, it isn't.