Sentence combining:  Exercise 1

ORIGINAL:  As I walk across the stage today, I am taking with me 10 years of an education that trained my mind to think, create, and reason in a scholarly way.  10 years filled with rich conversations and integrative learning.  But with receiving this education, I also was blessed with the most erudite peers.  Ones who were capable of having scholastic and essential conversations about the purpose of life while still being fun caring friends who enjoyed the simple things in life.  Now as I set off for a new departure, I will remember not just a building, but a community that nurtured me into becoming the woman I am today.

            I walk across the stage.  Today, I take a decade of an education.  It trained my mind.  Trained my mind to think.  Trained my mind to create.  Trained me to think in a scholarly way.  10 years filled with conversation.  10 years filled with integrative learning.  I was blessed with the most erudite peers.  They were capable of having scholastic and essential conversations.  Conversations about the purpose of life.  All the while they were still fun caring friends.  Friends who enjoyed the simple things in life.  Now I set off for a new departure.  I will remember not just a building.  I will remember a community that nurtured me.  A community that nurtured me into becoming a woman.  The woman I am today.

I chose to write exercise 1 because I already write short kernel sentences in my writing.  I really like the concept of it.  I feel as if it captures the readers attention by being short and sweet instead of wordy and long.  I recently just started writing like this, but I've notices it adds emotion and can cause the reader to be more interested.  You are getting to the point, instead of dancing around it.  Yes, some sentences need to be long and you cannot write and entire essay with 3 word sentences, but adding some sentences that are short and to the point definitely make for a better paper.