"Chinese Food, Downtown St. Pete, and Expository Writing" A Narrative

In January of 2007, I attended my first expository writing class at the University of South Florida in St. Petersburg. However, my day started earlier than that. I left Sarasota early for my Wednesday 11 AM class up at USF-St. Pete. I encountered a few hurdles on the way to GEB4890-Strategic Decision Making. First, I had to return home shortly after leaving because I left money for the Sunshine Skyway behind. Now I was behind schedule by at least 20 minutes. Fortunately, there was not too much traffic on I-75 North to 275 West on to exit 22 and a couple miles to campus. The problem was that the only available spots were reserved for the boat club near the business club. Consequently, I ended up parking in a place that was going to definitely make me late for my class. I did not mind the brisk walk to class because it reminded me of the exercise I got walking to class from my house at FSU. Nonetheless, I was late to class and I was unable to find the ideal seat that comes with going to class early. Yada yada yada…Since it was the first day of GEB4890, we only covered the syllabus and then we were dismissed. I was left with about 2.5 hours of free time before expository writing. I decided to venture into downtown St. Pete and the Baywalk area. In the midst of my expedition, I realized I was lost. I decided to pull into a Publix/shopping center. I ended up finding a decent Chinese food place with really good prices. In fact, I got a full meal with bottled water for nearly the price of a Venti Starbucks] coffee. I also found some other places that I might visit with my friends or girlfriend on a weekend sometime. The point is that getting lost is not always a bad thing. I turned 2 hours of free time into an opportunity to explore a place that is not familiar to me. If I did not travel outside of the campus, I would be oblivious to the upbeat St. Pete scene. By 2PM I was back on campus for expository writing. I did not know what to expect because I have not taken any English classes since freshmen year at FSU. I took the basic ENC I and ENC II courses. In fact, the last language/expression course I have taken is Spanish II at USF a couple of years. After being in the English class atmosphere, I started feeling like I was back in English class at Sarasota High or FSU. I do not mind English classes all that much, but ones I have taken before were usually formal. Course content included things like memorizing parts of Hamlet, reading classic literature and writing a report about it, doing grammar drills, and other seemingly arduous tasks. By requirement, USF requires that business majors take an upper-level English class. I opted for expository writing, honestly, because it sounded better than the other choice, professional writing. After Trey did a quick overview of the class, I was both relieved and confused. I was relieved that this class was not going to be the typical formal English class. However, I was confused about exactly what the hell a wiki was and what exactly we needed to do. After the first class, I went home immediately after class and tried to launch the website. Somehow I formed a new wiki. The next class my anxiety was reduced because I realized that my problem was recording the course URL off of the board incorrectly. After that second class, I again went home and launched the correct website. That night I feel like I did when I first made the website for our family business, Elite Electric Fireplaces. I had no idea what was up from down. After a few hours, I felt a little bit more comfortable on the wiki. After the next couple of weeks, I found that the wiki was more user-friendly than not, and a lot easier to work with than Verizon’s. I can say that I have at least a white-belt with black stripes in wiki-ometry, or at least I am getting the website right now. Like the Chinese food restaurant and downtown St. Pete, I learned about the wiki through exploration.