Lady of Language

That's what a student called me and a couple of my teacher friends the other day--Ladies of Language. I was at a KFC eating the first of two fast food meals I've had this week. My thighs thank you fast food gods. It's been a two-fast food meal week, I'll tell you.

So I am a Lady of Language in so many ways (although, I just had to look up the word language to make sure I was spelling it correctly. Doesn't it look wierd?) Anyway, I realized while reading the Pulitzer Prize winning essays I had to slog through this week that if I see the phrases In Conclusion and Last But Not Least ever again, I might just up and lose it for real. Awful. Those words are dead to me. DEAD!

Now, I don't deem myself a brilliant writer. Writing is a royal pain in my ass. It's been both a lover and my sworn enemy my whole life. That's what writing does to you. It's an SOB. I do, however, know that I can string sentences together in a way that makes sense and proves a point. I know now that I take this ability for granted. I think those of us who know how to write do.

It's not easy to stand in front of these kids and tell them that what they are doing is complete crap (I don't use those words, I promise.) The good thing is that they all seem to want to learn especially after one student asked me if they were going to use this stuff in the real world and I got on my soap box. I told him that even if you work as a manager in McDonald's you have to know how to write. Let's say some guy takes a spill in the restaurant and cracks his face open (my exact words), you need to be able to write an incident report that says more than, "Yo, that dude just busted his ass!" I also told him that even a college degree and a decent job won't keep you from owning a car that only has one hubcap and worrying about money all the time. So they better get their act together because a high school diploma doesn't guarantee anything.

Yup, this is going to be interesting.

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