Monday, January 21, 2013

When Words - And Lots of Them - Fail.


 Literally. And miserably...

From the March, 1996 History 3383 blue book exam of an, uh...unnamed student at the University of Oklahoma, found while sifting through the dusty, long-forgotten artifacts of a closet.

"My goodness, but you have a great deal of fine rhetoric here! But it has no chronological framework, it is short on data, and it seems to ignore organization altogether. Beyond that, I find no evidence of reading. Now, it is true that you reference to a great many things herein. You mention them in passing, so to speak. Thus, I'm sure you know something, but just how much do you know? I can't tell from your essay, because you don't go into detail on, well, anything. That leaves me up a tree, because I can't give you a grade based on what I think you know: I must be guided by what's in the examination booklet. Which isn't much. D minus."

Hmmm, a great deal of fine rhetoric that, taken as a whole, adds to up to not a helluva lot. Yep, pretty much sums up the freelance writing life.

That unnamed student, by the way, did manage to recover from that stinging - and wholly deserved - rebuke, and made damn sure he was sort of prepared for the next test. Or so I'm told.  


2 comments:

  1. Hmm yes things aren't that much better over here, Another 'nameless' student was rebuked 'His attitude to practical work is nothing short of dangerous'. Hooke's law of recoil action; I still remember the experiment to this day. If only the ex-cop science teacher hadn't been such a dick I would probably have remembered at least one more of his classes
    SBW



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  2. I, I mean he, did pass the class eventually...

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