Saturday, March 29, 2008

to split or not to split: the perils of graduate school

so i get my grades for the semester. very sad day. i made a 'b'. i know, i know. i'm stupid, what am i doing in graduate school...yada, yada, yada.

so the prof that gave me a b said that she would send our papers back to us via e-mail with comments BEFORE monday. i wait. and wait. and wait some more. nada. i text a friend who was in the same class as me. she got comments and a grade. i wait some more. nada.

so grades finally post and i find out about my b. finally i break down and send said prof an e-mail asking if she could please send comments. afterall, if i made a b, i want to know why and how i can prevent it in the future (see what a good graduate student i am?).

she sends me comments. and her e-mail has a slightly condescending tone. it went something like this:

"i've attached your paper again. i used word 2003 so you may want to try to try that. contact me if you still have problems."

first and foremost, i never received an e-mail in the first place, so it would be rather impossible for me to "still" be having problems. this whole debaucle is a "yp" not a "mp" (some of you will know what this means).

secondly, i read the comments. they are, for the most part, fair. i could have pushed the paper harder. but then there were a couple that made smoke come out of my ears. yes, i occasionally will split an infinitive or two for emphasis. this is not a mistake on my part. i mean to do it. it's a style choice that i make. this does not make me a bad person.

i understand that there are certain facets of the academic community who feel that this is like sin numero uno in the grammar world, but come on. can you really call a sentence with a split infinitive "grammatically unsound"?

take a sec and think about it. it would be much different if it was to go boldly and not to boldly go. i'm just saying...

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