A friend of mine packs yummy looking sandwiches for his son’s lunch. The bread is square and thick, golden on top, and looks delicious with a little ham, cheese, and lettuce tucked inside. I asked him where he found it. (In our little town, we only have Food Lion and Wal-Mart for grocery shopping, and neither one stocks exotic food.) He said it’s ciabatta bread, and he found it in the Wal-Mart bakery.
Wal-Mart? Who knew!
I’ve had this bread before, at fancier bakeries and restaurants , but I was never sure how to pronounce it. My friend called it “key-a-batta”. I thought it might be “che- batta” or “che-a-batta”. My 14-year-old grew weary of my pondering and said, “Mom, just look it up.”
And so, once again, Merriam-Webster helped me clear up this word nerdy confusion, and I will pass on this knowledge to you!
My bracket is in shambles, and this March is the maddest I can remember. My beloved number one ‘Hoos have earned the spotlight once again, this time for a historic loss after a historically successful season. They are the only number one seed to lose in the first round of the NCAA basketball tournament. 🙁
As Tony Bennett, head coach for the Virginia Cavaliers, pointed out in a press conference after the loss, “Good basketball knows no divisions, no limits. If you play this game, and you step into the arena, this stuff can happen.” And that’s what I love about competition: it shows us, with stark and sometimes painful clarity, what we have mastered and what we still need to work on. If you have the guts to compete, you’d better be prepared to fail, but a good competitor doesn’t let one game or race or match define him or her. A wise competitor embraces every success and failure as a chance to get better.
So, what are the lessons Virginia, UNC, and the other upset teams have learned at the hands of schools like UMBC and Buffalo? Things every good competitor knows: believe in the impossible, show up to play every time, and never give up, no matter how many seconds are on the clock. Sometimes, even the best competitors forget those things, or fail to execute, and get burned. There are lessons in those burns.
Especially during exciting sports events like the NCAA Tournament, people use “battle language” to discuss competition, choosing verbs like beat, destroy, and clobber to describe how athletes perform. But the word “compete” comes from a very different place. Compete derives from the Latin competere, to seek together, which comes from the Latin com- + petere to come together, agree, to go to. Competition in any arena, be it the basketball court or the classroom or the office, affords us the opportunity to strive together, with our teammates and opponents, to become better.
My daughter’s swim coach once told a roomful of parents, “Success and failure in athletics are fleeting, but habits and attitudes last a lifetime.” Our society is obsessed with success and shies away from failure, but in the end, losses teach us much more than wins, and we shouldn’t dwell on either outcome too long. A good competitor, and coach, always thinks about the next thing to work on, the next challenge to overcome. I’m sure Tony Bennett is doing that right now.
Yes, the Madness has been extra crazy this year, but quite frankly, it’s more fun to watch. So, forget the brackets and enjoy the spectacle of the arena, where perseverance is rewarded, adulation is tempered with humility, and everyone strives together toward something better. Let’s go Loyola!
Are you caught up in March Madness? What have you learned this year?
With snow days and daylight savings time, the Word Nerd has had trouble being productive all week. Can you feel my pain? It’s just one hour of time shift… how has it caused this much damage to my energy levels?
To celebrate Friday, here is a fun and interesting Infographic about the quirks of famous authors, brought to you by Jack Milgram of Custom-Writing.org.
Jack Milgram is a writer at Custom-Writing.org. He started his freelance career when he was a student. Jack has been interested in writing since he first took pen and paper in his hands. And he never stopped writing ever after. He loves combining his job with traveling around the world.
In a world increasingly populated by keyboards and touch screens, some people think we don’t need handwriting any more. In fact, according to this Ted Talk by Jake Weidman, 41 out of 50 states no longer have handwriting curriculum in schools. Who needs cursive when you can dictate to Siri?
But hold on a minute! What about hand written notes, fun colored pens, and using paper and ink to scribble out ideas? Handwriting is a tool we need to learn and create, and so is typing. Instead of pitting these two methods of writing against each other, and potentially losing one, let’s appreciate each for the benefits it offers.
The difference between handwriting and typing
Handwriting and typing stimulate different parts of the brain, so really, one cannot replace the other. We still need both! The trick is knowing when to use each one. Clive Thompson writes about technology and its influence on people. In his Inbound talk, “How the way you write changes the way you think”, he cited a study which examined people taking notes via pen and paper versus typing. Turns out, the people who hand wrote notes remembered more from the lecture they heard than people who typed notes. Also, people who doodle while listening to someone speak remember more than those who don’t. (Yeah for all of those flowers in the margins of my notes!)
Why do writing and typing produce different results? Experts offer a number of reasons:
When we write by hand, we slow down, which encourages us to focus
Handwriting requires complicated, subtle muscle movements and activates the motor cortex of the brain.
Handwriting provides more varied tactile feedback than typing, which is a repetitive action with little variation.
Writing in cursive stimulates centers of the brain involved in reasoning
Handwriting notes requires the note taker to synthesize information; when people type notes, they often merely transcribe the information; they don’t interact with it.
Typing has some obvious advantages over writing, including speed and convenience. Typing allows us to express our ideas quickly, with less risk of losing them because our hands can’t keep up with our thoughts. In fact, the faster a person can type, the better his or her writing is. It’s also easier to edit while typing in a word processing program.
In summary, Thompson suggested that if you want to absorb information and brain storm “big picture” ideas, handwriting is the tool you need. However, if you want to produce content, like blog posts, then typing is the way to go.
My writing habits and tools
A friend once teased me for taking three pages of notes during a school board meeting, but I always do because it helps me pay attention and remember what I’ve heard. Even if I never look at those notes again, writing them forces me to interact with, and therefore remember, important information.
If I’m brainstorming about a column, blog post, or novel, I write my notes and ideas by hand. I do a better job of generating and organizing thoughts on paper, and I have notebooks for each of my writing projects. Thanks to Austin Kleon’s blog post “Notebook Turduken”, I now carry a small notepad in my purse to jot down ideas and transfer to relevant notebooks later. For writing and other creative tasks, I use Pilot Precise roller ball pens in fun colors like purple, green, or blue. These pens flow smoothly and don’t smear too badly. They also have a nice fine point, which I prefer. I also like to use Sharpie pens and Paper Mate Flairs for short writing tasks and notes.
Once I have a basic plan for the piece I’m going to write, I type it in Scrivener. This act of transferring my ideas via typing is basically a first round of editing, although, at this stage, I try to write freely, without analyzing my words. (It doesn’t always work.) If I get stumped, I go back to the pens– ideas come more readily when I let ink flow on paper. After I write a first draft, I let it marinate for a while, then I come back and edit, which is much easier while typing.
Scrivener is an excellent tool for collecting and organizing my thoughts for a large project, like a novel. There’s a binder down the left side of the program screen where I create notebooks for the various parts of my project, like background research, themes/motifs, and chapters. For my latest novel, I created chapters based on plot points that I could see in the binder, and then I typed the content of each chapter into the editor. Scrivener allowed me to create freely within an overarching structure, and I wrote the first draft of my second novel so much faster because of this.
I also love Evernote, a digital note keeping app that captures ideas across multiple devices. I can type in original notes or save articles and photos from the Internet into notebooks organized by subject. This tool is great for collecting material for blog posts and columns.
If you want to learn more about handwriting, check out these articles and videos:
English is a tough language. Many words sound or look the same but have very different meanings. Recently, I’ve heard/seen regimen and regiment used interchangeably in conversations and in articles , and I had to clear up the confusion. They come from the same Latin root, which probably contributes to the problem.
Regimen: noun, from the Latin regimen, meaning rule or government; derived from the Latin regere, to lead straight or to rule
A structured plan, such as a diet, exercise routine, or medication, especially one used to improve or maintain someone’s health
A regular course of action, especially rigorous training; example: Olympic athletes follow a strict training regimen
Government, rule
U.S. Army Capt. Joseph Driskell, commander of Company A, 1st Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, describes the actions his paratroopers should take if fired upon by insurgents in their upcoming patrol Aug. 1, 2012, in Ghazni, Afghanistan. The battalion is part of the 82nd Airborne Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team. (U.S. Army photo by Capt. Thomas Cieslak, Task Force 1-82 PAO) US Army via FlickrCC-BY
Regiment: from the Latin regimentum, from regimen
Noun:
A military unit consisting of a number of battalions (battalion = large group, a military company composed of a headquarters and two or more companies)
Archaic: governmental rule
Verb:
To form or assign into a regiment
To organize rigidly for the sake of control
To subject to order or uniformity, example: She carefully regiments her son’s diet.
Word Nerd tip
Regimen is always a noun, and is basically a routine or plan. Regiment either describes a military group or is a verb. For more details, visit Merriam-Webster.
Word Nerd Workout
Choose the right word in the following sentences.
Her coach gave her a training regimen/regiment for her vacation.
The article criticized the school district’s plan to regimen/regiment extracurricular activities.
Sarah has started a new regimen/ regiment to get her blood pressure under control.
Have you struggled with regimen and regiment? What word pairs give you trouble?
My daughter claims that John Green’s books are so good because “he usually has a deep theme he alludes to, but doesn’t hit you over the head with it, and it’s not too cheesy.” I’m in the middle of editing one of my YA novels, and I eagerly read (listened to) Green’s latest release, Turtles All the Way Down, to figure out what makes his work resonate with so many people.
Premise
Turtles All the Way Down is a young adult contemporary story of Aza Holmes, a 16 year old girl trying to solve a mystery while struggling to manage her mental illness. Millionaire Russell Pickett, the father of her childhood friend Davis, has disappeared, and Aza and her best friend Daisy want to find him. However, unlike the detectives in movies and TV who have mental illnesses, Aza’s OCD does not help her solve the mystery. In fact, it very much gets in her way.
What I liked
Like my daughter said, Green includes not just one, but several themes and motifs in his story to deepen the meaning. Here are a few:
Spirals, as in thought spirals, as in the uncontrollable thoughts that hijack Aza’s consciousness and interrupt her daily life. The title of the novel, Turtles all the Way Down, alludes to the futility of trying to find an end to those thought spirals.
The image of looking up through bare tree branches. This imagery takes on special importance late in the novel when a phone screen is shattered, like bare tree branches dividing the sky.
The sky, the stars, the planets and how small we are compared to the vastness of the universe.
The language of pain, and how difficult it is to find words to describe psychic pain
Green’s novels also resonate because he tackles tough issues, like pain, loss, and suffering. Turtles addresses the challenges of mental illness and the loss of important people in our lives. It also touches on how hard it is to watch someone you love suffer.
Usually, Green’s novels don’t end with a tidy, happy conclusion. Often, the characters don’t get what they are looking for, but they do learn something important about the world or themselves. Turtles is no exception.
I love Aza and Davis, two of the main characters in Turtles All the Way Down. Green skillfully brings the reader inside Aza’s head to experience her struggle. She’s a kind girl who trys so hard to cope. Davis is a privileged son of a millionaire, but he’s very thoughtful, posting poems and other musings on life on his secret blog. He’s also very patient with Aza, and I adored him for that.
What I didn’t like
I don’t like a lot of Green’s characters. They are often self-absorbed and difficult. In Turtles All the Way Down, for most of the book I didn’t like Aza’s best friend Daisy. She’s shallow and flippant and surreptitiously includes Aza in the fan fic she writes, and not in a good way.
When I complain about Green’s characters to other readers, many comment, “Oh, they remind me of the people I went to school with.” And by the end of Turtles, I had a revelation. Maybe I don’t like some of Green’s characters because they are too flawed, too real. I want them to be better, but they aren’t, because they are like actual people. My friends were self-absorbed at times too, (weren’t we all as teenagers?), and so I’ve come to appreciate characters like Daisy a little better. I still don’t like her.
A Note on Mental Illness
John Green suffers from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and Turtles All the Way Down attempts to describe his psychic pain. He explains what it’s like to live with OCD in this Vlogbrothers video, (see below) saying that society tends to think of OCD as excessive hand washing and neatness because that’s visible. But there is actually a lot more going on in the mind of a person with OCD, often things that are hard to describe. Green also points out that society tends to stigmatize as well as romanticize mental illness, such as detectives, like the TV character Monk, who are good at solving cases because of their mental illness. For Green, there is nothing romantic about his illness; in fact, it makes it hard for him to think, much less solve problems.
According to the Mayo Clinic, OCD is characterized by obsessions and/or compulsions. Obsessions are repeated, persisted, unwanted thoughts and urges that intrude on a person’s everyday life and cause distress. Some examples include fear of contamination or dirt, needing things orderly, and aggressive thoughts. Compulsions are repetitive behaviors patients feel driven to do to decrease their anxiety. They are not realistically related to the problem they attempt to address and can include things like hand washing, checking, counting, and strict routines/ rituals.
In short, there is a huge difference between perfectionism and OCD, mainly that people with OCD experience worry out of proportion to real problems. I used to think I worried a lot, and I would joke that I had “OCD” tendencies. I will never joke about that again.
Recommendation
Turtles All the Way Down is a great novel for those who love contemporary YA. It’s also good if you know someone with mental illness and want to learn more about what it’s like to live with it. warning: I saw several reviews on Goodreads that said it was hard for people with mental illness to read because it’s too accurate.
Have you read Turtles All the Way Down? What did you think? Can you recommend other books about mental illness?
Turtles All the Way Down is a young adult contemporary story of Aza Holmes, a 16 year old girl trying to solve a mystery while struggling to manage her mental illness. Millionaire Russell Pickett, the father of her childhood friend Davis, has disappeared, and Aza and her best friend Daisy want to find him. However, unlike the detectives in movies and TV who have mental illnesses, Aza’s OCD does not help her solve the mystery. In fact, it very much gets in her way.