I would have ruled this world too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!
Thursday, September 28, 2006
I AM LOST

Brendalove@gmail.com

Let me fix you a cup of tea. Relax yourself and try to understand all of this.....I really want to communicate with you.

I worked and slaved all weekend over the rough draft of my very first essay in English class. I tried really hard and I wanted it to be great, because as you all know I haven't had to do any real formal writing in years. On the blog its like...anything goes, any way I want to say it. And concert reviews in a 'zine encourage you to bring any schizophrenia you might possess to the forefront.

My subject is an article by Mark Twain called "Running for President", which is very funny in that 19th century way that no one seems to find funny anymore. So I sat down and thought. I thought real hard. I wrote and rewrote and used quotes. I tried to be clear and concise. What I ended up is with a rough draft which I was about 92% happy with, this was something I felt okay about bringing to class with me.

So in class we covered some tips and tricks of the trade that helped me realize ways I could improve, so now I was feeling confident of a rewrite. And then......the Prof. asked us to trade papers with another member of the class so we could do a peer critique. I turned my paper over and got someone else's and went to work. It was a really good paper I was looking at, but like mine, it needed a bit of tightening up. I pointed out several strong sentences within the piece and recommended incorporating them into her thesis for a clearer understanding of the subject content. I also pointed out one "tuna fish" as we call them....a sentence which is just kind of hanging there and doesn't seem to belong with the subject of the paragraph. And all of this was done according to the accepted Southern Belle Guidelines....you know, when you just absolutely, positively have to criticize. I felt good about it all and couldn't wait to get my paper back.

So here it comes passed back to me. I take it and my heart is beating a little excitedly, I had really put in an effort here and I was ready to gauge what I thought I had done compared with someone else's perception of what it truly was. There was only a one sentence critique:

"I am lost."

This means (just in case you haven't understood a word I've written thus far) that my paper is so hopelessly hopeless that its just hopeless to even try to critique it as being hopeleess. Kind of like reading Ted Kaczinsky's Unabomer manifesto....you're like, you should probably read it, but it is so jumbled and erratic, why even bother? The dude's in jail anyway.

So you know what all this means? TOTAL REWRITE! Just like the people who brought us the Joey TV Series should have done, I am ditching the whole thing and starting from scratch. I am going to have to join the real world here. I am going to have to learn English. Its been fun joking around but I guess I'd better buckle down and learn my native language because no one understand WTF I'm talking about. See you "later" (Merriam Webster, 628).
(Later:
Function: adverb: at some time subsequent to a given time : SUBSEQUENTLY, AFTERWARD -- often used with on )