The Joys of Peer Reviews

As you know, I currently do triple duty as a devoted employee, wife and student, which can honestly be overwhelming at times . . . but I'm handling it. I think. But if you're ever wondering what the hell is taking me so long to put up a post . . . cut me some slack, okay? Because I'm probably studying. Or doing homework. Or working on a multi-million dollar presentation. Or doing laundry, or dishes . . . or something else equally as glamorous. Don't be jealous. It's a fantastic juggling act, but somebody's gotta do it.

That said, I'm currently taking one of the most pointless classes I could have possibly ever taken, for the simple reason that I need to fulfill some stupid prerequisite. I'm pretty sure that I can probably write circles around these young Texans. (Especially considering the slanted state of their secondary education curriculae . . . did everyone hear about the whole textbook debate debacle last year?! Uh . . . yeah. 'Nuff said. Oh wait, actually - I feel the need to mention that Fox News [conveniently] left out other changes, including the downplayed role of Thomas Jefferson in the proposed textbooks. Right; you heard me. Thomas. Jefferson.) My theory is supported by cold, hard, facts. We have been working to complete our first essay assignment, which is a critical analysis of a short story. The whole process has been rather lengthy, because we first had to submit a rough draft to obtain two peer reviews, and then incorporate those reviews into our final draft. So, I of course waited until the last minute to turn in my rough draft (don't judge; i'm a juggler, remember?), and I'm pretty sure I ended up with the bottom of the barrel of peer reviewers. Don't believe me? In the spirit of asphinctersayswhat, please have a look-see below for a snippet from one of my reviews:  (Unless you have the eyesight of a hawk, you should probably click on the image to enlarge it. Pay special attention to the comment bubbles on the right; my essay really is inconsequential here.)

*blinkblinkblink* ISSHESERIOUS?! I love how she makes all of these gentle suggestions on how I should re-format my perfectly good sentences to better suit her parameters . . . and her parameters are obviously not something I should be concerned with, considering she corrected my possessive "its" to "it's." Yeah, that's right. I apparently need to change my possessive pronoun (even though I was modifying a noun, but whatever) to a contraction. How could I have overlooked such an error? The funny thing is, this is only a snippet of her review. What you're seeing actually happens to be the FOURTH time she corrected me on this glaringly obvious (sarcasm) error. Perhaps I should point her in the direction of my "5 Ways to Avoid Making Silly Mistakes That Might Make You Look Dumber Than You Are." Although, I'm confident that her silly mistakes don't make her look dumber than she is . . . she probably truly is just that dumb. I also like how she suggested that I change a proper noun to a pronoun, when I go on to use about a million pronouns after that sentence. Oh, okay. So I guess it's not that important to identify who "he" is? Got it. I'll make sure to remember that next time. 

Okay, but my favorite part, the one that really took the cake, was the fourth comment she made regarding my usage of the word "than." Hahahaha! I genuinely laughed out loud when I read it. What a FANTASTIC explanation she gave (and I quote): "This is tricky, if your using than to describe different persons it is correct. If you would like to show the differences of change from when the story began, you would use then. I think than may cause a little more confusion than then." Ummmm . . . first of all, less confusion for whom? Because I wasn't at all confused, thanks. Second of all, I'm fairly certain that if you don't even recognize the need for the contraction version of the word "you're," I probably shouldn't be taking YOUR grammatical advice. Thirdly, whuck?! What? The? Hell? Is? She? Talking? About? If I'm using "than" to describe different persons? I can't even see what she's saying. Hmmm . . . I guess she was trying to say that "than" is used for comparisons . . . which it is; however, I suppose she failed to recognize that I was CLEARLY making a comparison in that sentence? I don't think "than" is actually the word she has problems with. It sounds like she really needs a clearer understanding of what the word "then" means. 

Yikes. Education, shmeducation. These are your tax dollars hard at work, folks. Let's just say that I'm glad I grew up in the Sunshine State, where Thomas Jefferson is known to be one of the principal authors of the Declaration of Independence; the Civil War was not merely a case of sectionalism, but also mostly about ending slavery; America is still a democratic nation; capitalism still exists, and people know the difference between pronouns, contractions, conjunctions and adverbs.*

*No offense to all my Texas readers out there. Maybe it's an accent thing? Like my co-worker from the panhandle, who insists on referring to her heels as "hills." Yeah . . . on second thought, I'm not convinced that's actually an accent thing. I think she might just be country. She also likes "pre-proportioned" meals, because they're better for you and you eat less. *blinkblinkblink*