Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Life's Not Fair





Monday, June 24, 2013

Living Through the Comma Splices

I'm only halfway through my college career, but I feel like I am a decent English major. I've taken all the classes on grammar that I'm going to take and I can write a solid essay under the right circumstances. For me, learning grammar wasn't the desirable part of being an English major. I was interested in finding out how meaning is conveyed in a story. I was interested in learning how authors weave language into emotion. I was not interested in learning about comma splices and semicolons. The professors here taught me smidgens of grammar despite my resistance. I won't be diagramming your sentences anytime soon and if you read this blog you will find typographical and grammatical errors aplenty, but comma splices are a particularly grievous error I attempt to avoid. In the same way that listening to the Pachelbel Rant makes it so you can't unhear Pachelbel's canon in every modern pop song and the Death Star will always look like the AT&T logo after someone points it out, once you know what a comma splice is you will notice every single one. Twitter has comma splices. Best-selling authors have comma splices. Actually, even the Bible has comma splices. Bad grammar is everywhere and totally inappropriate for me to point out in almost all situations.

It's not annoying to me that people don't know that sentences can only have one independent clause; it's annoying to me that I think it. I wish I could watch lap swim without correcting everyone's stroke in my mind just as much as I wish I could enjoy bad writing simply for the ideas and story, but I can't. If authors (even young ones) refuse to learn about comma splices and run-ons then I can't really respect them. I don't really care about grammar; I just want language to be clear and easy to understand. I want to know that people respect the complexity in language. When people who aren't dyslexic and have been speaking a language since birth string together run-ons haphazardly it tells me that they don't think the way we communicate is important. I don't have time for people who aren't willing to admit the miracle that is linguistics. Our languages have astonishingly few lexical gaps, a surprising amount of depth, and an improbable level of nuance. I can live with comma splices, but it's a struggle because I believe so strongly that intelligent discourse hinges on an appreciation for the language you are using.

Please point out my grammar mistakes in comments below. I'm stressed out about it in this particular post.

Monday, June 17, 2013


Today is the start of summer orientation for Simmons College's Class of 2017. We are going to ignore the fact that 2017 sounds like a date out of science fiction and proceed to my strange experience interacting with the almost first-years. My strange experience basically consisted of thinking, "Wow. They're idiots. Was I this much of an idiot?" Yes. I was. They don't know anything about college. Nothing at all. One kid (I've relegated them to children even though I was them two years ago) asked if  we had different classes every semester. That question is so high school. In high school you take English for four years with little change in content or approach. Yawn. How did we survive that monotony? Were our brains so narrow? One freshmen was from Arizona and didn't know what snow boots were. I may have forgotten my snow boots at home for a period of time this year, but at least I know the concept.

It makes me wonder why last year I understood those confused little first years and this year I don't. I don't understand why they're all so nervous. Simmons will take care of them. I don't understand why they are so shy. Don't they know that Simmons is the most empowering place they'll ever experience?  I don't even understand what they don't understand. In just a couple moths their lives are going to be so full of thinking and learning that they will look at their past selves like idiots who make no sense. They can't see it yet. There was no particular class or experience I can attribute to whatever growth separated us, the me that went to Orientation and the me that is now, but a chasm has broken between the person I was then and the person I am now. Slowly, over time I've been brainwashed into thinking college is the best experience a person could have if they are looking to achieve personal growth.

I went to the North End with the beautiful little fools to get pastries and stare at a rainbow. One of these pictures I took today. One I stole from Facebook of the exact same rainbow. My transformation over the last two years was caused by the light of a great institution, the university, coming towards me as a lot of different photons from different people and then reflecting off of a million little moments that were all falling in the entropy of time, but when looked at from far away is partly beautiful and partly magic. The change only makes sense as a sliver of a larger sky, but is a good part of that canvas. I'm happy with the rainbow Simmons has given me in the last year because even if it makes understanding first years difficult and it only exists from certain vantage points it makes my bit of sky a little more interesting.

Thursday, June 6, 2013


I always sort of thought empathy was something you were born with. Well, maybe I knew you weren't born with it, but I at least thought that when kids were two and realized other people had ideas, agendas, opinions, and that you don't always get "your way" they developed empathy for those opinions that other people have. I've learned this summer that empathy grows a lot slower than I first thought. 

I learn a little more about the preschool every week. Last summer I learned to call their students "friends" and when they get resistant that all you have to say is "this is not a choice." This summer I noticed that when the kids kick, splash, hit, take, or generally irritate each other the teachers don't say, "we don't hit. Hitting is wrong," which is my first reaction, but instead they say, "we don't hit. It makes our friend ____ sad." This explanation enforces proper behavior, but also teaches empathy. Most of the kids would still probably qualify as psychopaths when they are five. That might be an offensive way to put it, but at the explanation of "it makes our friend ___ sad" they often tilt their heads to the side and look confused like they'd never thought about the way their actions impacted others. I'm not sure when people get all their empathy. I feel like I have a fair amount now, but I could use a little more.

I don't want to be too empathetic. I don't to feel all the world's problems at once. If I felt each of the 107 deaths of every minute as much as I felt the death of a friend I'd instantly crumple into a ball of sadness and refuse to continue existing in such a terrible world, but I want to remember to be grateful for my life and my health. Empathy gives us the perspective that little kids lack. Sometimes I want just a bit more so I can say (as The Doctor does), "I've never met anybody who wasn't important before." Sometimes when I talk to people I struggle to find why they matter and perhaps, when my empathy grows, I'll be a better human who can really see how special they are. I really hope that my empathy is still growing. It would be fantastic if every person I met taught me what makes them sad so that I could eventually be sensitive to everyone's experience.