I hope I can play with the big kids too. I was a TA in linguistics when I was at university years ago, and more recently, I taught technical writing skills at night at a local college. From time to time, I was also an adult literacy volunteer.
Most of my students were great, and I enjoyed teaching them. But there were a few of the opposite kind who stood out:
[ul]
[li]The university student who couldn’t seem to understand that an “essay question” meant that she was supposed to write an essay as her answer. A single sentence that referred obliquely to the question would not be adequate, which was explained to her after the first test. And if it didn’t work on the first test, it certainly wouldn’t work on the second one, nor on the final exam, but that didn’t stop her trying. The reason she stands out though, is because she not only kept trying this approach, but she appealed it all the way up to the dean! (And of course, the appeal was denied all the way.)[/li]
[li]Another university student who complained that the marks I was giving him would prevent him getting into medical school. My professor, and indeed even the departmental chair, got into the fray on this one, but the kid called in his father–who happened to be a big wheel in the medical school. End result: the kid got into medical school. I remember the kid’s name; I ever have to be a patient of his, I’ll ask for a referral to another physician. After all, if Daddy had to pull strings to help him pass undergraduate courses and get him into medical school, what guarantee do I have that Daddy didn’t pull more strings to guarantee that he graduated as a fully-qualified physician if he didn’t deserve to?[/li]
[li]The literacy student who always showed up in a trench coat, hat, and sunglasses, even at night. It’s okay if you don’t want your friends to see you coming to learn to read and write, but try to do it without disguising yourself as a character in an old spy movie. You couldn’t stand out more if you tried! And if you expect to learn anything, you’re going to have to pay attention instead of nervously glancing at the door every few minutes, and whispering furtively into a cellphone about where to meet your ride: “I’m at the mall.” [Actually, we weren’t, but there was one nearby and this student couldn’t be seen near the building where adult literacy is taught.] “Can you pick me up at the Sears door at about nine?” Do your homework too; I’m sure that sometime during the week, you can find both a safe place and the time to read the half-page, double-spaced, very simple handout that we will discuss in the next class.[/li]
[li]The technical writing student who claimed she had to use a cellphone during the final exam to check on her children. Seemed to be a reasonable request at first; this was a night class and most of my students were working adults. Some had to make childcare arrangements, and occasionally, they were last-minute owing to one parent not being able to cover for the other or the babysitter cancelling. But when I caught her saying such things into the phone as “Okay, how would I create a step-by-step procedure out of this paragraph?” I knew that her children were the least of her concerns that night.[/li]
[li]And all my technical writing students who chose not to give me any credit for intelligence. Folks, there was a reason the first thing we did was a little in-class essay on such scintillating topics as “What I Did On My Vacation,” or “My Favourite Hobbies.” There is also a reason why you did not get them back: because when you hand in something that reads like, “When working with wood, the adage ‘Cut twice, measure once’ holds as true today as it did in Grandfather’s time,” I can check back and see that your first piece of work was something along the lines of, “I realy like woodworking alot its’ something both fun and usefull.” Questions will be asked, and you’d better have a good reason for such an improvement. Plagiarism, incidentally, is not a good reason.[/li][/ul]
Actually, the first person singular should never be used in technical writing, although the first person plural, while extremely rare twenty years ago, has been gaining acceptance. Second person has been fine for a while, but I can remember when it wasn’t welcome either.
And a good thing too, IMHO–technical documents and manuals can be horribly dreary and uninviting, but being able to write things like, “We recommend that you have the following tools handy during this procedure,” makes them a little more readable than “It is recommended that the following tools be readily available during this procedure.”
(FTR, in case anybody is wondering why we did not demand that certain tools be used in the above examples, the reason is that the examples came from a repair manual for field repair personnel who did not necessarily work for the manufacturer. We didn’t know exactly which tools each person had, and we knew that they were often good at making one tool fit another’s job. But we wanted them to know what we felt were the correct tools for the procedure. Hence, we recommended instead of demanded.)
