It was the first day of my sophomore year, the beginning of my Journalism minor and the first class lined up happened to be my “Grammar For Journalists” class. The last specific grammar class I took was in 7th grade so,  I didn’t know what to expect. But, I was up for the challenge!

Wasting no time with silly introductions, the teacher immediately divulged into her lesson plan for the semester beginning with the seven key grammar terms: nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections. Rapidly taking notes in my Mead notebook, I allowed my mind to drift off. However, I immediately returned to the present state when she said this: “To help, think about nouns as actors in a play. The adjectives would be the fans of the nouns since they describe them. The adverbs are the nosy mothers of the actors asking the How? When? Where? To What Extent?…” and so on, and so on.

Deciding the idea of theater production was a tired concept for me, I changed it around by using the philosophy of ‘Street King’, 50 cent. Turning my boredom into creativity, I took a page out his G-Unit hierarchy and constructed the given grammar terms into a formulated sequence:

If 50 Cent is a noun, then G-Unit Records is his verb. Lloyd Banks, Tony Yayo, etc. are his adjectives. Groupies are his adverbs. His management team are his conjunctions (conjunctions connect nouns and clauses) and Money is his preposition (prepositions describe relationships between nouns).

Needless to say, I stopped before I got to interjections, but you get the gist, right?

The bell buzzed after what seemed the longest first class of the century and I couldn’t wait to share my creativity with my friends! They laughed of course and called my new learning device “silly”. But, I didn’t care. I’d like to see them tell that to the ‘A‘ I received on my first quiz. ;) Always dare to be different! -Ty