Painful.

Today, instead of looking at articles from The New York Times and The Washington Post, I've decided to take a look at an article from my town's local newspaper, "The Mclean Connection." The Mclean Connection is your average local newpaper, covering a variety of topics from a new program for stay at home moms in the area, to why our city has not received the bulk of the promised stimulus package money yet. One article in particular that caught my eye was called "Nervous, Excited, Tense" and was written by Susan Belford.

With a title called "Nervous, Excited, Tense," I was anticipating an article that was either exciting or nerve-wracking. Instead, I got the most boring article ever. Not only was it boring, but it was poorly written as well. Now, as a lowly sophomore in college who has never written any articles for a newspaper, I usually feel ridiculous criticizing someone else's article, but in this case I feel no guilt whatsoever. By the second sentence "They were feeling tense, excited and nervous" I knew there would be nothing good coming out of this article.

Before we get to the second sentence, let me explain the first sentence: "five new teachers at Potomac Elementary faced their classes for the very first time on Aug. 31." The rest of the article doesn't really provide anything else. All that is discussed is how these new teachers are working to get through the year. The problems that are mentioned are all generalized, "staying organized", and completely obvious. Everyone has to deal with staying organized or managing his or her time. If this article had provided more specifics that are pertinent to being a new teacher at this moment in time, maybe it wouldn't have been such a struggle to reach the end of the article.

Now! Back to the second sentence. Really? They were feeling tense, excited and nervous. Not only is the sentence structure the most boring sentence structure known to man-kind, it "tells" instead of "shows." Now, I personally learned in second grade the importance of showing instead of telling and if I could figure it out then, it can't be that hard. But no! This article is filled with sentences like" "Steimer feels exhilarated about teaching every morning..." I mean, if you're going to give us a sentence like that the very least you could do is explain why.

Anyway, after reading an article like this, I'm not sure I want to read "The Mclean Connection" ever again.