This semester I have been interning at a radio station in downtown Binghamton.

I love it a lot but the hours are insane; usually I have to be there by 8am, and other times by 6. Due to these early mornings, I have gotten into the habit of waking up early on the weekends too. I enjoy the quiet and tranquility of the mornings alone, but that excludes texting...a girl’s gotta talk. My best friend from middle school, Julia, and I have remarkably been texting every day since the eighth grade and for some odd reason she likes to wake up ridiculously early for no reason. She also goes to Columbia while I am here in beautiful Binghamton so it’s not like we could talk in person. Anyway, I have gotten into the habit of waking up and only texting her in the mornings and our conversations are usually pretty dull as we begin our days (I am really not a person until I have had my first cup of coffee). Today’s conversation though...today was different.

Julia and I have a mutual friend, Cathrena, who I live with who woke up early today. She usually sleeps in late on the weekends so I texted Julia remarking that it was different. We began talking about Cathrena, who is in my sorority. Last night was our formal so Julia had inquired if Cathrena’s boyfriend from home came up. I explained that he could not get off of work, and she asked what he does (Julia and Cathrena are new friends). My answer is what inspired this whole article:

I said, “he is a FDNY EMT.” I paused. I looked at the screen. Should it be written as a FDNY EMT or an FDNY emt. In all of my 19 years of living, minus the 2 or 3 before I started speaking correctly, I had always known that you write ‘an’ only before a word or an acronym that starts with a vowel. Yet phonetically, an FDNY EMT sounded correct. So does “I got an F” or “I don’t give an F.” So, I did some googling to quench my thirst for knowledge. That, and it is 8 am on a Saturday and all of my friends are sleeping so I am bored. Low and behold, when referring to the letter F, one does have to use ‘an’ not ‘a’. This is because ‘f’ sounds like ‘eff’ thus making it seem like it starts with a vowel. You would not say “an firefighter” though, because it does not sound like ‘eff’. The same goes for “an herb” because it sounds like it starts with a vowel even though you can see on paper that it does not. I thought this was really interesting and I felt very knowledgeable this morning with my good friend Julia.

However, I would really appreciate it if my friends could just wake up because I am running out of ways to entertain myself.