The timer was set.
The dog it was placed.
Inside it was wet.
Preparing the taste.

I sat down to write.
I focused on that.
When out of my sight,
The dog had gone "splat."

I saw through the fog.
The timer was done.
My exploded hot dog
Was wanting a bun.

And now this great post
Recycled and new
is here to propose,
"Read the blog through and through."

Change

"Actually, in a list of three or more items, a comma is required in between each of the items--even before the 'and,'" said the Writing Coach.

"But that's not the way it was when I went to school before," replied the student.

Change is a fact of life. How many of us have heard that before? It suddenly appears whether we want it to or not. Sometimes change can appear when we've just become comfortable with our routine. We look up from the safe and the normal and say to change, "Hold off a bit. I'm not ready for you." But still it comes. Like a knife slicing through a watermelon, it eventually breaks through all the rinds of resistance.

At the Writing Center, we recently upgraded to a new, online schedule that will enable students to sign up for appointments on their own. This new system will also track all of the information and generate reports when necessary, freeing up the Writing Center staff to do what we do best--coach students in their writing. It's going to be great, but now comes the task of adjusting to this new change and learning how to run the new schedule. At first glance, this looks like an unwelcome shift, but it will be very beneficial and easy to use in the long run--just like it makes sense to have a comma in between each item in a list!