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"I Judge You When You Use Bad Grammar"

Rae Hamilton's picture
Submitted by Rae Hamilton on Mon, 12/05/2011 - 8:04pm

I recently read in an article in GQ about how regardless of race or class, everyone is kind of pretentious in college. And in everything we do, we show this-- including our writing. I try to sound smart in my writing-- I think everyone does. And because of this, we all come off pretentious. That being said,  in terms of true expression, I think pictures/images are the way to go-- they speak for themselves and say a thousand words. You dont need a college degree to look at a picture and judge it, critique, explain it, discuss, or disagree with it. It has nothing to with the bourgeiosie or the prolertariat. Anyone can talk about a picture, but not everyone could read this sentence. Not everyone would know that a comma shouldnt be used here or that a period means the end of a setnce. Pictures transcend all of that. It transcends time, language, class, and race. 

 

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LJ's picture

I would have to agree with

Submitted by LJ on Mon, 12/05/2011 - 9:14pm.

I would have to agree with your statement that in college everyone "is kind of pretentious". I think that part of this is due to the fact that everyone is competitive. Though at Bryn Mawr we are technically not supposed to discuss grades the competition is still present. It is competition which drives us to sound like a professional author even if we are actually not saying anything at all. Whats the point of writing at all if we do not have a real purpose. Just recently I was peer editing a paper for my biology class and the student who wrote the paper wrote it well but had no point. The actually paper would have been better if it got at a real point. In all fairness, I know that I am just as guilty of this type of writing but the first step in changing it is through recognition. I think Rae is on to something with the pictures; what if we could relate our papers back to one photo? Would that mean more than groups of beautiful words that do not mean anything?

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