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Shortest Update Ever
May. 2nd, 2003 02:12 pm Last night I went to Guadalajara with Kristy and her roommate Courtney. That is all.
May. 2nd, 2003
English Class Revulsions
May. 2nd, 2003 04:32 pm OMG. So pretty much every class day from now on (ie twice a week) we will be "workshopping" three people's stories. Meaning we must read them beforehand (and write a 1/2 to 1 page critique of each) and discuss them for 45 minutes in class. I don't know how I am going to survive 45 minutes of each, but just reading the three for monday right now made me want to retch.
I swear, this livejournal entry is more coherent, better follows the established rules of short story writing, and is better reading than the three stories I just read. I certainly do not feel like I am exagerrating at all to say this entry is more grammatically correct and with better spelling.
After the first story I thought it wasn't very good, right, but I decided to read the other two before a passed any judgement. And a good thing I did, because in comparison it is glorious! The second story proceeded in a manner that... well at least was a thousand times better than the THIRD story, but ended without a point. You've seen the graph of how a plot is supposed to develop right? -where it slowly slowly curves up, reaching its height at the climax near the end and then swiftly falling again to conclusion?- Well this one was more like a straight line descending steadily downward the whole time. After finishing it I felt violated for having the previous ten minutes of my life irretrievably stolen. But then... then I read the third story. First line: "Mom where are my yellow socks!" yelled the teen from down the hall.
Now aside from the missing comma after "mom," and the question-mark that probably should at least be coupled with the exclamation point to form "socks!?" (in fact in comparison to everything else I didn't even note these complaints), I knew without a doubt upon reading that line that the story had been written by a girl. And indeed it had. As you may recall I had mentioned a short time ago that every girl in the class had written about girls feeling neglected. After the fourth such story was read aloud I assumed that by now the unimaginative trend must be obvious to everyone and no more would be written. Once again however, the persistance of foolishness has been shown to us! (Let me qualify that I am not saying every girl is a terrible writer, just that those in the class are entirely those frumpy teacher-to-be aspiring prudes who fancy themselves undiscovered writers while lacking any semblance of skill (and oblivious to that fact) whom I despise most among all people.)
The third story had less of a plot than the previous (whereas the other could be drawn a descending line, this one was a line as flat as a measurement of the mental activity of its writer's brain), more grammatical errors than the previous two put together, and an enragingly idiotic rendering of dialogues. The word "honey" was consistently changed to "hunny," a change which does NOT change the pronuncation of the word, and as such only makes me want to deck someone, and most stupendous of all, and I quote: "com' on you!" -Yes, she eliminated a SILENT freakin E. Passing by that my brain turns several times in an attempt to rationalize the implied pronunciation and then throws up its hands and leaves the building in disgust.
How I am going to survive 45 minutes each of discussing these abominations I truly cannot fathom.
on a brighter note:
THREE EASY STEPS TO BOTHER YOUR TEACHER (without causing grounds for worse grading)
(A) Set your spell check on an alternative form of English. In my case, its firmly set on Irish. Such that when I accidentally type "maneuver" it corrects me with "manoeuvre," and I hadn't even realized that "analyze" is correctly spelt "analyse" over there. Good times. The teacher can't hold it against you if your writing is from an alternative form of English that WILL be backed by any American dictionary as well.
(B) Emphasize the controlled nature of your stories. The teacher would always like to think they are simply benevolently guiding their gifted students in writing their own stories. But you know otherwise: they are tyrannically assigning you to write in very stringent guidelines. As such, either neglect a "normal" title and write like "ENL5F-A06 - Assignment # 7" or something at the top, or if you can't resist a conventional title, at least make it less significantly stated than the officious statement of assignment. (in my example, ENL5F is the class, A06 is a section number, my class doesn't have sections, but if one does have section one should certainly cite it as in the example - if you don't know what I'm talking about just follow this simple rule: any number you have an excuse to throw in, do so)
(C) Identify, anticipate and address the issues you expect the teacher to cite you for. For example a sentence in my final paper for ENL57E last year read "Is one really supposed to write a paper in which the vast majority of sentences are actually questions?" and answered it shortly with "Yet, that is the style of argument favored by the ancient philosopher Socrates. Why, you ask, have we suddenly gone off on this tangent? Many highly affective styles are summarily failed by the Subject A exam." And in the interim between that first sentence and those second several, I even slipped in the phrase "procrustean mold," another entirely legitimate phrase. In my most recent story, The Legend of Boot, I deviously sneak both the phrases "passive voice" and "awkward constructions" into the dialogue. The theory is, that they mark you down for things they allege you are not aware of or carelessly neglected to rectify. If it is quite obvious that you intended to write exactly what you wrote, most English teachers rightiously proud of their recognition of "stylistic" intentions, cannot justify marking you down for it, no matter how much they wish to.
The correct use of these three things will cause your teacher to feel insecure, having presented them with a paper they have a vague urge to mark down but cannot justify themselves in so doing. This will result in a lessening of their usual feeling of utter superiority over students, and one will find the resultant freedom from their predations to be quite pleasant I am sure.
I swear, this livejournal entry is more coherent, better follows the established rules of short story writing, and is better reading than the three stories I just read. I certainly do not feel like I am exagerrating at all to say this entry is more grammatically correct and with better spelling.
After the first story I thought it wasn't very good, right, but I decided to read the other two before a passed any judgement. And a good thing I did, because in comparison it is glorious! The second story proceeded in a manner that... well at least was a thousand times better than the THIRD story, but ended without a point. You've seen the graph of how a plot is supposed to develop right? -where it slowly slowly curves up, reaching its height at the climax near the end and then swiftly falling again to conclusion?- Well this one was more like a straight line descending steadily downward the whole time. After finishing it I felt violated for having the previous ten minutes of my life irretrievably stolen. But then... then I read the third story. First line: "Mom where are my yellow socks!" yelled the teen from down the hall.
Now aside from the missing comma after "mom," and the question-mark that probably should at least be coupled with the exclamation point to form "socks!?" (in fact in comparison to everything else I didn't even note these complaints), I knew without a doubt upon reading that line that the story had been written by a girl. And indeed it had. As you may recall I had mentioned a short time ago that every girl in the class had written about girls feeling neglected. After the fourth such story was read aloud I assumed that by now the unimaginative trend must be obvious to everyone and no more would be written. Once again however, the persistance of foolishness has been shown to us! (Let me qualify that I am not saying every girl is a terrible writer, just that those in the class are entirely those frumpy teacher-to-be aspiring prudes who fancy themselves undiscovered writers while lacking any semblance of skill (and oblivious to that fact) whom I despise most among all people.)
The third story had less of a plot than the previous (whereas the other could be drawn a descending line, this one was a line as flat as a measurement of the mental activity of its writer's brain), more grammatical errors than the previous two put together, and an enragingly idiotic rendering of dialogues. The word "honey" was consistently changed to "hunny," a change which does NOT change the pronuncation of the word, and as such only makes me want to deck someone, and most stupendous of all, and I quote: "com' on you!" -Yes, she eliminated a SILENT freakin E. Passing by that my brain turns several times in an attempt to rationalize the implied pronunciation and then throws up its hands and leaves the building in disgust.
How I am going to survive 45 minutes each of discussing these abominations I truly cannot fathom.
on a brighter note:
THREE EASY STEPS TO BOTHER YOUR TEACHER (without causing grounds for worse grading)
(A) Set your spell check on an alternative form of English. In my case, its firmly set on Irish. Such that when I accidentally type "maneuver" it corrects me with "manoeuvre," and I hadn't even realized that "analyze" is correctly spelt "analyse" over there. Good times. The teacher can't hold it against you if your writing is from an alternative form of English that WILL be backed by any American dictionary as well.
(B) Emphasize the controlled nature of your stories. The teacher would always like to think they are simply benevolently guiding their gifted students in writing their own stories. But you know otherwise: they are tyrannically assigning you to write in very stringent guidelines. As such, either neglect a "normal" title and write like "ENL5F-A06 - Assignment # 7" or something at the top, or if you can't resist a conventional title, at least make it less significantly stated than the officious statement of assignment. (in my example, ENL5F is the class, A06 is a section number, my class doesn't have sections, but if one does have section one should certainly cite it as in the example - if you don't know what I'm talking about just follow this simple rule: any number you have an excuse to throw in, do so)
(C) Identify, anticipate and address the issues you expect the teacher to cite you for. For example a sentence in my final paper for ENL57E last year read "Is one really supposed to write a paper in which the vast majority of sentences are actually questions?" and answered it shortly with "Yet, that is the style of argument favored by the ancient philosopher Socrates. Why, you ask, have we suddenly gone off on this tangent? Many highly affective styles are summarily failed by the Subject A exam." And in the interim between that first sentence and those second several, I even slipped in the phrase "procrustean mold," another entirely legitimate phrase. In my most recent story, The Legend of Boot, I deviously sneak both the phrases "passive voice" and "awkward constructions" into the dialogue. The theory is, that they mark you down for things they allege you are not aware of or carelessly neglected to rectify. If it is quite obvious that you intended to write exactly what you wrote, most English teachers rightiously proud of their recognition of "stylistic" intentions, cannot justify marking you down for it, no matter how much they wish to.
The correct use of these three things will cause your teacher to feel insecure, having presented them with a paper they have a vague urge to mark down but cannot justify themselves in so doing. This will result in a lessening of their usual feeling of utter superiority over students, and one will find the resultant freedom from their predations to be quite pleasant I am sure.
