Proper Grammar

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm ready for life as we know it to slow down! We've had something going on almost every day for the past ten days, and I'm getting ready for some quiet down time.

Hubby sees the Dermatology Clinic at the Kansas City VA Hospital every six months, and yesterday was the day for that. We headed up mid-morning and enjoyed lunch at IHOP and a little shopping before going to his appointment. The Clinic was running a little late, then we had to wait at the Pharmacy to pick up a prescription before we could leave the hospital. We decided to stop at Price Chopper to pick up a few things before heading home.

It was a fun day, all things considered, but it was 4 or a little after when we made it home. We seem to go in spurts ordering things on the internet. We won't order for awhile, then it seems like we order a bunch of stuff at once. We got our fun packages on Tuesday, then when we got home yesterday there were three more that had been brought to the apartment. Today one more came in, but that should be it for now. I'm sure the office is glad that we're done – only one package came in the mail, so the office had to deal with the deliveries from UPS and FedEx.

I did a bunch of small chores that had piled up this morning and did the laundry. This afternoon I was listening to a post-class video that had been posted and evaluated five papers from the submissions of final papers. That's part of the deal – instead of the professor or teaching assistants grading all these papers, they are peer assessed. If you want your paper's score, then you agree to evaluate five other's papers. In this class, you are also required to re-evaluate your own paper after you do the other five.

I don't mind doing the evaluations, it's a good opportunity to learn something new or to see something from a completely different perspective. My frustration today was opening up one paper and finding it in Spanish. In spite of the fact that I should have gained enlightenment while studying Buddhism and Modern Psychology, I could not read the paper. (And that was a really bad pun.) I put a post on the class Discussion Forum and hopefully someone will retrieve that paper so it can be evaluated – though in honest part of the class instruction is to submit all papers in english.

The first class that I took last fall admonished us to be compassionate when evaluating the papers and to remember that a large number of students don't speak english as their primary language. I have to tell you it was tough for me to evaluate those papers on the basis of content alone and to ignore all the bad grammar and punctuation! I'm wired to be almost a perfectionist when it comes to those two points.

For this current paper, the professor posed four questions and required us to pick two of the questions to discuss and answer. One paper that was quite obviously from a non-english speaking started out with “Okay, so I decided to do question 1 and 2”. Then the student went on to ramble that we learned Buddhist thought and beliefs in class and there's been scientific research about it........without actually stating the Buddhist beliefs or saying what the scientific research was or what it found. It's probably good for the youth of America that I did not become a teacher. No one would have received an “A” on a paper unless their grammar, punctuation and spelling were correct, regardless of the subject of the paper!

I still am thankful almost on a daily basis for our school principal Mrs. Mosher and her insistence that we all learn proper grammar. It was the best thing she could have ever done for us.