Grammar rant, ahoy!

Last week of classes! I'm reading Gaskell's biography of Charlotte Bronte, and Haggard's King Solomon's Mines, which looks like a ton of fun. Apparently he wrote it on a bet with his brother that he could write a better book than Treasure Island. I don't know whether he succeeds or not yet, but I am always up for adventure novels a la Stevenson.

I've also set up a meeting with Dr. Salmon on Friday, which I have to prepare for, so there's much reading to do this week. I also ought to decide what my final paper for my Victorian module should be on--I'm leaning towards A Tale of Two Cities, but it might also be useful to look at the working class poetry in relation to Marx. The latter could probably serve as some preliminary research towards my dissertation, so perhaps I should do that. Then again, there are elements to A Tale of Two Cities that could also be mined for dissertation stuff, so...I'm torn. Time to go and download some critical articles or something.

In other news, I ended up having to help Erin grade some freshman papers because some of her fellow classics scholars bailed on her, and all I have to say is: Who is teaching these people before they get here?? The lack of grammatical coherence in a frightening number of those papers was just reprehensible. With some I couldn't even tell what they were trying to say enough to know what was wrong with it. And just to check that I wasn't being overly judgmental, I went home straight after and reread some of my essays from high school, and while that was a fairly shaming experience, I definitely could at least structure my thoughts more coherently at that point than what I was reading from Erin's kids. Run-on sentences, lack of basic things like apostrophes and even a semblance of effort towards proper citation...I could go on. It was rather distressing, to say the least. I think I liked maybe three out of the ten or so I ended up grading.

Luckily, while I felt like screaming by the time we were done, I also had an overwhelming urge to become a tutor just to prevent these types of things from happening. So, I guess I'm entering into the right profession. Man, I really didn't think I was much of a grammar nazi, because I know I make lots of mistakes myself and do grammar entirely by ear and not by rule. And I'm definitely not picky when it comes to proper formatting and bibliographies, because I know just as everyone else does that getting those things right is a pain, but...jeez. It was out of control. Be prepared to endure further yelling when you actually see me in person.