Back to school

by chuckofish

Well, it’s back to school on Monday and I confess that the prospect of all that grading fills me with ennui.

Lowry, Laurence Stephen; Coming Out of School; Tate. I can’t help feeling that this should be about going into school — it’s glum enough.

I turned to my old college papers for inspiration and they did not disappoint.

Consider, for example, this excerpt from the lengthy comment pictured above, on the left:

You have problems of organization, diction and style. Mainly, you repeat the same words and phrases both in the same paragraph and in different parts of the paper. One gets the sense of going around in circles, like a dog looking for a place to sit, as one tries to follow the progression of your argument….The sooner you learn to write a paper, the better off you’ll be and the easier the next three years will be.

Or take this gem from a first semester freshman year English paper:

Nowadays it’s hard to imagine how a student would react to such comments, although back in the late ’70s I took the criticism reasonably well, in the first case because I knew that I had written a bad paper (the 8th poem of Catullus did not inspire) and in the second because I loved and respected the professor. My main problem was that I had not yet developed the habits of good paper writing: (1) master the material; (2) plan thoroughly, and (3) revise, revise, revise. Gradually, through hard work and careful attention to professors’ comments, I taught myself how to write a paper. My efforts paid off and my grades improved dramatically. I still apply what I learned in college about writing, but much remains for me to learn. Despite being an old lady, I keep trying to improve because I find the struggle satisfying.

What if my professors had not been so forthright? We laugh when we see things like this,

because we find them outrageous, but is being honest really so bad? While there’s no excuse for cruelty, maybe our children/students would be better prepared to face life if we spent less time preserving their feelings and more time showing them how to fix their mistakes.

Just some pre-semester thoughts. Have a delightful weekend and edit carefully!