What's in a Name?

In High school I had the most awesome AP English teacher, Delmi Cartagena. She had such a love of literature that for our final project she let us pick whatever book we wanted to read, and then do our assignment on that. I absolutely LOVED it! I had really enjoyed reading before her class, and afterwards, started thinking “I could DO this with my life and be happy!” She was the reason I chose to study English in college and 4 years later I graduated with a B.A. in English, with an Emphasis in Writing and Rhetoric. Sounds fancy right?!

According to Merriam-Webster here’s what it is broken down: the study of principles and rules of composition formulated by critics of ancient times.

(I think it still sounds fancy…)

So you’d think I’d be wicked awesome at grammar right??

Wrong… I spent the first 18 years of my life having my grammar corrected by both my Mom and my Great Aunt. In fact I was kind of dismal at it for most of school. Then when I graduated all of a sudden I started noticing things, like printing errors or grammatical contradictions in the books I was reading (books like Harry Potter or Percy Jackson – I was reading for fun at that point! Haha). What do ya know? It sunk in! Goes to show you that you never know what your brain is taking in (and that you really do learn things in school! And to all the Moms, take heart; apparently we DO hear what you say!).

The final connection was made while my husband and I were engaged, his last name is pronounced like a grammatical term, but is spelled slightly different. I had essentially studied grammar for 4 years. Ironic? Yes, I thought so too. And so did one of my friends, who told me that she was going to put my name into her phone as Mrs. Apostrophe (in joking reference to my soon-to-be new last name). It stuck. And so there you have, what’s in a name.

- Mrs. A

(coincidentally, or not, my first name also starts with an A)

p.s. please don’t judge my writing on here for grammatical errors! Haha. I am going to be as thorough as I can, but at the same time it’s for fun, so I plan to write like I speak, instead of what would be considered “proper English” so sometimes my punctuation may reflect that so you really get my “oomph!”