Blog Post 1

Hello to all of my fellow classmates; my name is Barry Wall. I am a Mississippi native who commutes to campus daily. This will be my first experience with an online class at USA so I am looking forward to that new experience. I am currently a Secondary English Education major, and I am hoping to complete all my pre candidacy requirements this semester. I am astonishingly lucky to have the most amazing wife and daughter anyone could ever ask for; they are my inspiration for all I do. I, like the rest of my family, are huge Mississippi State fans. We were lucky enough to travel to Jacksonville for the Gator Bowl over the vacation; it was my first bowl game and it was great. I currently work at the Rocky Creek Inn in Lucedale, as a front desk clerk, three days a week. I enjoy my job and the downtime it affords me to do homework and waste my time on the internet.

Despite the fact that I have lived in Mississippi for the last 19 years, I was originally born in Fort Worth while my mother was employed at NASA Ames Aviation Systems Division, I attended all of middle school and high school in Mobile. Combine this fact with my family circumstances and USA becomes the best option for my pursuit of higher learning. My biggest passion in life is stories; be it movies or print I enjoy the imaginative and transcendental nature of storytelling. That is perhaps the major driving force behind my desire to teach English. Throughout my education, at least until college, I was never shown the power of literature; poetry and prose have the unique ability to convey ideas that speak volumes to the human condition. Understanding ones self, as well as those around them, can lead to a better tomorrow. “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.” This passage from Whitman’s Leaves of Grass is evidence to the unifying nature of language and the written word.