This is a little hybrid post.
1.  Thank you all for your response to fresh abloom.  I have been waiting for the right time to write about depression, so the kind words were affirming.
2.  I just started reading Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, one of my favorite modern authors.  Once I’ve finished I’ll probably blog about food, vegetarianism, animals, God, humanity, or a combination of these.  Be on the lookout for that!  (Disclaimer: I love meat.)
3.  Three weeks is all I have left of my internship at Bethany Christian Services.  The ESL classes just ended, and I will miss my students/friends greatly.  I may post about this as well.
4.  In the mean time, here is a very short essay I used in one of my college applications a while ago:

I am not, by any means, a dictionary-thumping defender of the English language or even a potential English major, but I do have boundaries.  I am more sensitive to certain aspects of spoken language than most of my classmates.  My dad was raised in Virginia, my mother in New York, and my sister and I in Manchester, New Hampshire.  While I lived in New Hampshire, I was endlessly irked by the locals’ tendency to throw r’s onto words like “Asia,” making it “A-zhur.”  Now that I’m in Michigan, I’ve noticed some pronunciation mixups of the Midwest such as,  “He drove acrosst my yard.”  I normally let it slide, but I occasionally feel the need to gently suggest a t-removal procedure.  Since these trifles get under my skin, it makes me happy when a perceptive person hears me speak and asks afterwards, “Where are you from?”

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p.s.  I am now, indeed, an English major.  I blame you, NPR.