So what do you do all day? Or: school stories it is.

All right. Out of the couple hundred of you who read my last post, eight or so said you were interested in school stories, so I'm declaring all of you unanimously in favour of school stories because if you don't say anything I'm not about to guess what you mean. (Feel free to go back now and post a comment to the effect of "please god, no school stories!" I won't be offended, promise.)

Jennifer asked about what it is we're doing, so I'm going to answer that question on the assumption that probably more than one of you is interested, though for all I know it might only be two of you.

It's a writing programme at a university, which means they make you take theory as well as practical stuff, and the theory is loaded into the early courses and the practical stuff into the later ones, so right now it's very theory heavy. Lucky me. This fall I am taking: rhetoric, grammar, research, professional writing and writing for periodicals. Five total. Grammar and rhetoric will be over at christmas and next winter I'll be taking something on literary forms. Because writing for periodicals is actually a later course that I'm taking now due to scheduling issues, it's practical. The rest of them, right now, are theory. Grammar, gods help me, is based on exercises and tests. For the first time in my life I'm being subjected to the joys of diagramming sentences. Chances are you have no idea what that means, but if you are very very good I might scan a few in and post them. Today's exercises included changing active sentences into passive and passive sentences into active; thanks to having worked for the government for the last several years (plus having, you know, a basic grasp of grammar) the construction of passive sentences is no mystery to me. Like this:

The Conservative federal government royally fucked up the economy.

That is an active sentence: it has a subject, a verb, and an object; and there is a clear chain of causality which, in government writing, is strictly forbidden. The passive construction would be:

The economy was royally fucked up.

See? No actor, no culpability! You can optionally add "...by the Conservative federal government," but as anyone who has ever worked in government will tell you, the entire point of the passive voice is to eliminate culpability by removing the actor/subject from the sentence. So in practice you would never do this.

This is a lot more fun than sentence diagramming. Take any sentence you like in which somebody behaves badly, change it to the passive voice, and watch the universe become a place where bad things happen to good people for no particular reason:

Susie told everyone that Maria is a slut.
Everyone was told that Maria is a slut.

Stuart lost the environmental assessment, so you will have to delay your project.
The project will be delayed because the environmental assessment was misplaced.

Roberta distributed an email to the entire company saying that the CEO is a pig.
An email saying that the CEO is a pig was distributed to the entire company.

Fun! You can see why this is so popular when you are working in government and no one ever wants to take any kind of responsibility for any action whatsoever, even one so minor as leaving the copier jammed.

Anyway, that's grammar. Research is about, well, research, unsurprisingly; and I'm waiting for it to include anything I wouldn't consider common sense, but I keep reminding myself that the people I'm in it with were in highschool last year and probably have yet to come face to face with an academic journal. Sometime in the winter term it's supposed to become more specific to journalism and writing for magazines, in terms of finding appropriate information sources. The lab for this class is the one in which I 'met' the young lady with the strong opinions about Americans, who I will call Jetta.

Rhetoric is all about constructing persuasive arguments (as I'm sure most of you know) and this week we were forcefed Socrates, who I loathe (but that would have to be a separate post) (bonus marks: find the passive construction in this sentence and rephrase it in the active voice!).

In any case, theory. Relevant theory. If you're going to write for money, then constructing a persuasive argument, finding evidence and writing it out in correct english are obviously important skills. And because they're courses for future writers most of the assignments include not only writing pieces out but bringing them into class for workshops and peer criticism, but we're not at that point yet. Also the professors so far are working, published writers, with one or two exceptions.

And that's enough about coursework for one day, although I realize that I've only covered three out of five. I feel guilty about making you all wade through several paragraphs of course syllabus, so I'll finish off with a few stories.

1. Asked to come up with three kinds of texts we distrust and why, one girl volunteers her text: "Repetition." Umm, what? "I just really hate repetition." I see. But, the text? "Repetition." (blinking on both sides) I, hmm. What kind of text would you see repetition in? "Oh, newspapers, you know. They put in the same stuff every day." Ah!

(Feel free to decide now that I am exactly the last person you would want in your classes.)

2. Frances has discovered church. She knows people who go to church and has asked me occasionally over the last year what church is; I've always answered "it is a place where some people go to talk to God." She's never shown any curiosity in what exactly God is or why you would have to go to church to talk to her, and I've never volunteered it; but lately, her toys have been going to church.

One day a week or so ago, Frances's three current favourite toys (Littlefoot--a small toy dinosaur; Daddy Puff--a big red dragon that breathes fire; Little Puff or Baby Puff--a small green Little People dragon) were playing together, and then they got in a car so they could go somewhere. Where are they going? I asked Frances. "To church," she replied.

"Oh, I see."

She arranged them on the armrest of the big comfy chair. "Church is fun," she said.

"Hmm. So what are they going to do at church?" I half-pictured a painful hour of answering questions about church and religion.

"Play," she said.

Of course.

Posted by Andrea at September 19, 2008 3:26 PM under The Supposedly Mature Student

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