Word Choice

I just put the last grade on the last paper, and boy am I spent. Since reading the papers, which are replete with non-sentences and non-words such as "understandance," I have been filled with dread about what to do. I've never been in a position where I've held this much power over someone's life (not that I'm flattering myself to think that it is a lot of power, but yeah, a grade is a big thing). Despite the fact that these papers were pretty bad, I didn't actually fail anyone, which is a decision I am still struggling with. If I'd turned in a paper like this at my undergrad in my freshman comp, I would have failed. On the other hand, I attended a much better school, and also took the version of 101 offered in the honors college.
The school where I teach does not offer a remedial writing class. They don't believe in teaching grammar in the classroom, despite of the fact that my students cannot write in complete sentences, and I don't think they've really determined the goals of the class. In fact, in the class that all 1st year teachers have to take, all we seem to do is discuss what should be taught in English 101. The idea that we just teach with grammar and clarity in mind is really appalling to a lot of the people, and considered "reactionary."
To me, what is "reactionary" is the inability to see connections between sentence structure and reasoning process. The sentence is a logic tool, and it seems to me that the same line of thought that can write a good sentence is the same line of thought that can form clear reasoning. So much in fighting goes on between rhetoric/composition professors that meanwhile, the students get neglected. I think that this probably happens in a lot of academic fields, but with something as important as writing, I think that these people seriously need to get their acts together.
On another note, I think I'd like to go ahead and discuss a word I hate: organic. Unless you are using it to refer to produce that has been grown without pesticides, don't use it. Don't use it until you have looked up the definition and origin of the word, and particularly don't use it if you are going to pronounce the "a" in the soft, mild mannered California pronunciation. After I hearing a poet use the word in a reading today, I just can't keep quiet any more. The first definition that dictionary.com uses for organic is as follows:
noting or pertaining to a class of chemical compounds that formerly comprised only those existing in or derived from plants or animals, but that now includes all other compounds of carbon
When people use this to describe their writing process, I really don't think that's what they mean. I searched the list to see what possibly they do mean, and I think it must be this:
developing in a manner analogous to the natural growth and evolution characteristic of living organisms; arising as a natural outgrowth.
No wonder poets are so fond of this word. Not only is it a metaphor, but its a metaphor that just goes way out of control. But is poetry natural? Is writing natural? Do we just sit down and words just flow out and form thoughts?
After reading these papers, the answer is NO! When we write, we have some sort of model worked out in our mind. Yes, even you, TS Elliot. Even you, Gertrude Stein. And perhaps, even Nicholas Sparks. At the same time, I guess we could say nature has patterns, too. Maybe that's why it annoys me. Because usually, poets and teachers use this describe something that happens randomly, when something that happens organically doesn't necessarily mean naturally. New rule: use a more specific word, and don't say your vowels in an artsy way. It irritates me.

Diagramming the Sentence

When I was in the 2nd grade, my mom was driving my friend and me home from Wednesday Night Supper at church. My friend, a girl considerably lacking in her rhetorical skills, began a story with "We had ate...," to which I replied "I don't understand, what had you done?" She snapped back at me something about me understanding perfectly well what she meant, and she probably didn't talk to me again for the rest of the ride home.
Little did I know that my life would carry on this way. A guy in my 9th grade English class asked me if "the" was a verb. A soon-to-be ex boyfriend said, "I can't believe he did that to him and I." A few months ago, a guy handed me a note and his phone number in a Thai restaurant. I did not call back because he used the incorrect form of "too." I guess you could say I'm a grammar snob.
Wait, wait though -there's more to it than that. I have a highly marketable B.A. in English and Film Studies, and am now pursuing the even more marketable MFA in Creative Writing/Fiction. These things make it ok for me to be obsessed with words, right? On top of it all, I'm a TA for English 101. I don't really know why my job title is "Teaching Assistant," since I have yet to meet the teacher I am assisting. As far as I can tell, I have my own class (listed under my name), and I get to design the syllabus myself. The only thing that I did not get a choice in was the book order, which tragically lacks a grammar book (more on that later).
I am also taking a class in the pedagogy of rhetoric, which appears to be geared towards making me feel inferior, as someone who is earning a mere MFA instead of a PhD. That's right, instead of researching and writing a dissertation over the course of several years, I will be completing a novel. By May. In this class, I am learning that the world of Composition/Rhetoric (and which of these titles is correct- ah, there's the rub!) is much more controversial than I had previously thought it to be. At the school where I got my undergraduate degree,the rhet/comp teachers seemed so happy. Evidently though, the world of rhet/comp is so dark that it has driven faculty members at various universities to do things as devious as putting sugar in other faculty member's gas tanks (I reference rhetorician Sharon Crowley here).
And thus I begin what is to be a series of meditations on words, students, being a student, and the cataclysmic disaster that occurs when all of these forces collide. For now, however, it's off to Happy Nails for my pedicure.