Woot!

I hate it when I slow down to turn and people tear around me on the shoulder of the road. It irritates me. I'm not really sure why. I guess because I feel like I'm being snubbed as a nuisance. "How dare you get in my way and make me drive on the shoulder of the road like this!" I feel like they're saying. "I hope you know your sluggishness made me break a law!"

I also hate it when people act like jerks and then strut around because they're proud of themselves because they think they're funny. And then they turn to me and expect me to praise them, and I would kind of rather slap them and say, "Seriously, where did you learn to treat people?"

Despite my whining, I'm actually in a pretty fantastic mood. I managed to finish all my papers this weekend. I was working pretty much every minute I had starting last Tuesday, but I'm finally caught up. I had a terrifying moment in class when I thought my teacher wouldn't accept one of the papers I spent all weekend working on, but it turned out all right. I'm pretty confident that if I didn't totally ace the papers, I at least did my best. It's really weird, though. All my teachers are actually requiring I start using a formal register for my papers. This is probably the first time my teachers haven't let me get away with being a little snot in writing. I'm discovering I'm actually reasonably good at writing formal research papers. "Reasonably good."

I finished writing my two research papers around eight last night, and the Writing Center was still open. I thought the conclusion of one was a little choppy, and I didn't feel like the papers were quite focused enough, so I thought, "Meh, I have a little time, and some of the tutors in the Writing Center are pretty good. It can't really hurt to bring it in." I went to the Writing Center a few times last year because I was required to for a class. Both times, I got the same tutor, and he was absolutely fantastic. He actually explained to me for the first time in a way I could understand why your conclusion is just a repeat of your introduction, gave me outstanding substantive advice, and didn't nitpick my grammar because I occasionally intentionally go against the "rule" for emphasis. (For example, I occasionally start a sentence with a conjunction, but I do it on purpose to draw attention to the sentence.)

This time, I have to say, I was not impressed. At all. I told the girl I was a senior in linguistics and that all I was concerned about was whether it was focused enough and whether the conclusion was too choppy. First she spent about ten minutes nitpicking my header. Then she proceeded to go through my paper line by line, reading (about as smoothly as a third-grader) each sentence and changing things that did not want or need changing. She tried to put in two spaces after periods (which you only do if you're using a typewriter), she changed the word "that" to "which," ignored the comma that needed to be inserted, and then rolled her eyes when the computer, predictably, pointed out the grammatical error and told it to ignore it. She made fun of my "weak word choice" and said that I need to "grow out of that," and never got around to telling me how my focus was. Then she pointed to a quote that was just under three lines long.

"Why is that not in block quote format?" she asked.

"Because it's not a block quote."

"You DO know the rules for block quotes, don't you? A block quote is--"

"Yes, a block quote is a quote that's four lines or longer. I know."

"Then why isn't this a block quote?"

"Because it's not four lines long."

"Yes, it is. See, one, two, three, four."

The block quote started as the last word on one lined, filled the next two lines, and then finished as the first word on the fourth line. I tried to explain it to her. "Look, you start here. Go down one line at a time. One line. Two lines. And there we're in the middle of the next sentence. It's not even three lines."

"No, that doesn't matter. It's four lines," she said stubbornly.

I rolled my eyes. "That's right. English majors can't count."

"EXCUSE ME??? It's not that I'm too STUPID to realize that YOU don't think it's four lines, but YOUR argument doesn't MATTER in this case!"

Okay, in retrospect, I shouldn't have been rude. I almost felt bad for her, since if she got that defensive that quick, she's obviously either got an inferiority complex or she's been made fun of before. But my gosh, she was being obnoxious. I am definitely convinced that I know more than she, and I don't say that very often.

On a completely different note, I got a phone call from the girl who's in charge of the church choir. Apparently, their pianist is out of town, the back-up pianist can't play the song they're singing, and the choir is supposed to be performing this Sunday, so can't I please please please help because they're desperate? Yay. I get to don a dress and go to church this Sunday. Oh well, at least I get to play the piano. That makes up for it, I suppose.

Kitty really likes taking showers. He sits under the spray and drinks a bit, and then closes his eyes and falls asleep. It's kind of cute.

Hope that's enough of an update, because I'm definitely tired now. Toodles!