I admit it. Once in a while, when no one is looking, I leaf through the archives of \u201cJust the Clax.\u201d After 14 years and over 200 columns, there are a lot of leaves to see. Yesterday I came across an entry from April 2008 titled \u201cThese Sentences Should be Sentenced.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was a compilation of bloopers from student essays collected over my first five years teaching at Harding. These were not garden-variety errors of mangled phrasing and creative punctuation. No, they were spectacular goofs \u2014 sentences that go beyond the ordinary into the realm of the delightful. These sentences get put into a file \u2014 anonymously \u2014 to be savored and cherished later. Every writing teacher has one. <\/p>\n
So that you can enjoy the nostalgia with me, here is one paragraph from that column:
\nUnder the category of \u2018good-to-know\u2019: One student wrote that \u2018the most serious problem with a baby is that improper treatment could lead to death, and this is irreversible.\u2019 Or, \u2018Our backyard was, of course, behind the house.\u2019 More informative still: \u2018Near the army base in the Philippines, there are 55,000 prostitutes, which could cause adultery.\u2019 One student, in a paper about media depictions of sexuality, informed me that \u2018Sex isn\u2019t as common as it used to be.\u2019 <\/p>\n
It may give you satisfaction to know that I found two typos of my own in that column. <\/p>\n
Eleven years have passed, and I\u2019ve graded over 6,000 essays since then. I think it\u2019s time to take another peek into the \u201cBad Sentences\u201d file. <\/p>\n
History is not easy to write about. One student lamented that in the Civil War, \u201cmany unnecessary lives were lost.\u201d Another pointed out that \u201cthe people who owned slaves are all dead by now, and if not, they are close.\u201d Did you know that the sinking of the Titanic killed \u201cover 1,522 people\u201d? Even recent history is hard to process. \u201cOverall,\u201d lamented one student, \u201cthe recession did more harm than good.\u201d <\/p>\n
Controversial issues often produce controversial sentences. An essay on free college complained that universities were charging \u201cabsorbent tuition.\u201d I also learned that while athletes are role models, they \u201cshould not be held to a higher standard than humans.\u201d <\/p>\n
Essays about the Harding rules are enlightening. Years before the new policy on shorts, one student vented: \u201cIf I wasn\u2019t thinking about how hot I am or how constricting my pants are, I might be able to listen more in class.\u201d Another young lady admitted the wisdom of not having co-ed dorms: \u201cI never knew that when you\u2019re alone with a person of the opposite sex that your mind can get clouded, and sometimes it\u2019s hard to stay focused on the things of God and not on the things of man.\u201d One summed up his feelings on visitation this way: \u201cEven Batman wanted to see Lois Lane once in a while.\u201d<\/p>\n
Occasionally, mistakes actually reveal truth: \u201cHoward Stern was dropped by Clear Channel Entertainment because he broke their zero-tolerance policy of decency.\u201d <\/p>\n
And then there is spelling \u2014 from the student who described King Kong as \u201ca huge, ferocious orange\u201d to the person who felt that banning texting in the car would prevent \u201cwreckless driving.\u201d One future parent was so worried that \u201cAmerica thrives on sex\u201d that she said, \u201cI will not allow my children to watch movies without my illicit permission.\u201d I even learned that one expert is a \u201ccontributor to \u2018Time\u2019 magazine and regularly writhes for \u2018The New York Times.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
My British literature students sometimes complain that \u201ctranslating Shakespeare into English is not easy.\u201d One wasn\u2019t sure if the 800-year-old poem \u201cBeowulf\u201d should be classified as an epic but decided that \u201conly time will tell.\u201d Sometimes, a writer just needs to reach the five-page limit: \u201cUp to this point and throughout the years ahead, these two literary works will always be two of the greatest literary works ever in the history of literary works.\u201d <\/p>\n
More in the good-to-know category: \u201cThe simple fact is, and this cannot be repeated enough, cannibalism is taboo.\u201d In an essay complaining about cafeteria food, a student lamented that \u201cthe vegetables are so dried up that there is no more moisture in them.\u201d Or this: \u201cWe have all been children at some point, usually near the beginning of our lives.\u201d <\/p>\n
How about this one? \u201cBeing humble just makes you feel good about yourself and like you are above other people.\u201d <\/p>\n
Bible literacy is alive and well. One student discussed \u201cthe towel of Babel\u201d \u2014 a lesser-known artifact than the Shroud of Turin. Another told me that \u201cthe worst fake Christians of all were the Pharisees.\u201d I also learned that as time went on, \u201cEucharism was no longer practiced, but the church continued with communion.\u201d <\/p>\n
Not all the travesties in the file come from student essays. I attended a wedding a few years ago at which the brother of the bride intended to toast his sister by saying, \u201cShe\u2019s one in a million.\u201d What came out was, \u201cShe\u2019s a dime a dozen.\u201d Plus, I kept one campuswide email that apologized for broken air conditioners and asked everyone to \u201cbare\u201d with us.<\/p>\n
The day will come when I am found dead on the floor of my office, and an autopsy will reveal pronouns as the cause of death: \u201cTechnology and social media are being used as a way to make ourselves feel good about themselves.\u201d But at least one student wrote this on an evaluation: \u201cI am thankful that I took an English course, which helped me so much in my writting.\u201d Which was not nearly so good as the speech pathology class evaluation where a student wrote, \u201cTo learn anatomy, I really need hands-on instruction.\u201d\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I admit it. Once in a while, when no one is looking, I leaf through the archives of \u201cJust the Clax.\u201d After 14 years and over 200 columns, there are…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":130,"featured_media":13403,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[78,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-opinions"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/130"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}