My grammar notebook is electronicalized!

Note: this post has been edited to prevent revealing the identity of the professor whom it might embarrass. Please note the *censored* edits were installed to remove the disclosure of which department is guilty of these events.



It's interesting that I don't find myself to be a grammar snob when it comes to my mother (who can get away with saying "bellyingist"), yet with my professors I expect a better understanding and usage of Standard English.
I do not have any issues with anyone in my department. All of the English professors are well-versed and actually correct ME quite often.

However, I have a professor in the *censored* department who told me on the first day of class, "I have no use for all you English people!"
And she has spent the entire semester proving that she has no use for the English language, either.

Her vocabulary skills seem to be lacking (she often uses a word out of context) and I often think, "I don't think that word means what you think it means."

 Several people giggled aloud when she misused the word "phallic" in a sentence about class disruptions. Certainly, there was a disruption created, but it wasn't phallic. I'm sure many of us would not belong as future *censored* if our disruptions were repeatedly "phallic."
 From Dictionary.com... in 5 seconds or less....
phal·lic

   [fal-ik] Show IPA

adjective

1.

of, pertaining to, or resembling a phallus.

2.

of or pertaining to phallicism.

3. genital ( def. 2b

dis·rup·tion

 [dis-ruhp-shuhn] Show IPA

noun

1.

forcible separation or division into parts.

2.

a disrupted  condition: The state was in disruption.

  She also made me laugh when she said that students now are very "electronicalized." (This was while presenting a PowerPoint in which this word is actually typed into her NOTES.)
Really? Technologically savvy, maybe? Did she mean that students have embraced the digital age?

I wonder if she's ever seen a Thesaurus or if she knows how to right-click? Surely she does not think this is a word. Does the RED SQUIGGLE under the word mean anything to her?


Another professor in the same *censored* department graded one of my papers exceptionally well. Then, in her closing comments, she had written, "Well written paper. I do not know what the word "obtrusive" means but clearly you do."

ob·tru·sive

 [uhb-troo-siv] Show IPA

adjective

1.

having or showing a disposition to obtrude,  as by imposing oneself or one's opinions on others.

2.

(of a thing) obtruding  itself: an obtrusive error.

3.

protruding; projecting.

All I could think was, "Wow! Don't you have a doctorate degree?" It is disheartening to realize that professors are too lazy to look up a word they do not understand in a student paper.

However, this is not a place to complain about the *censored* department and I certainly am not intending to embarrass anyone. This blog is to state that I find myself extremely grammatically biased against this department because of what I have encountered in it. I can accept my mother's interesting mash of morphemes and hill-country dialect as charming. My grandmother told me that since I am taking this class, I should teach her to speak "good English." (Yes. I said it. I replied, "Yes, Grandmother, I will be happy to teach you to speak English well." She laughed.)

What I mean to say in this blog entry is that I find myself to be a grammar snob when it comes to poor usage from educated people.
I question ANYTHING and EVERYTHING they claim or assert after realizing that they do not have strong grammar skills. If they didn't pick up basic grammar rules or a decent vocabulary, how could they possibly have anything worthwhile to say?

So I will close this blog with something that Matthew Quick said last week in a special event. He said that karate instructors do not teach their students to go out and practice new kicks on every unsuspecting citizen they encounter. So he questions, why is it that when we learn the prescriptive rules of grammar we go out and bang everyone we meet on the head with our new-found "Grammar Bat?"