Vanity and Vexation of Spirit

A new post, as promised. Though different from what I intended to write.

I was recently asked to proof/edit a senior paper for a girl who lives in my dorm. I often edit papers for friends when asked, but this was only my third senior paper, and I confess to being rather excited about it. There is something about editing that I love-- the finding and polishing of a good paper beneath surfaces of misplaced modifiers and uncertain pronoun usage. It is something I can do, and I love it.

I eagerly awaited the chance to peruse this young lady's work. A senior paper-- to my naive mind-- represented the culmination of approximately four years of arduous effort and scholarly growth. A senior paper was what students worked towards. It was that into which they poured their greatest efforts. And so I loaded the paper onto my ever-so-obliging roommate's computer and opened the file.

Three pages in I called my friend and fellow writer, Kara, to help and commiserate. I took a water break to try to clear my head, and Kara sat at the computer and peered puzzled at the screen.

As I walked to the water fountain I heard her anguished moans begin. When I returned to the room she was collapsed on my bed. She waved feebly at the computer. "I tried to do a paragraph...I couldn't do any more than that."
I nodded my understanding and reseated myself.

Six pages in I was on the phone with my mother, Grammar Nazi (I beg pardon, Grammar Nag) Extraordinaire, thanking her for shoving knowledge of the nominative case down my throat. I thanked her for giving me a good foundation for the capitalization rules, and the comma rules, and the whole issue of subject/verb agreement. I started getting choked up when it came to my understanding of the subjunctive mood. She asked for an explanation for this conduct, and I
read her a sentence or two from the Paper:

...For Phillips the capitalist views social legislation as medaling with "evolutionary inevitability" as they rationalize that because of the law of evolution the strongest will survive and the government has no right to interfere with the natural process by putting regulations on the efforts of the strong to move to the top by means of the free market system.

That was one sentence.

Likewise, when the poor working family and the single mother is better off on welfare then with a job one needs to consider how to make work able to pay the person at the bottom better.

That was another.
It went on in a similar vein for thirty-five pages. Thirty-five excruciating pages.

I could have polished and gutted and redone and made that paper college-degree earning material. I could have changed the monotonous sentence structure and repaired every
awkward word choice. I could've done wonders with that paper.

I did not.

I chose to do the bare minimum. I split up run-ons and fused fragments. I spellchecked thoroughly and highlighted sentences that were absolute gibberish. I made that paper sophomore in high school material.

And I left it wondering along these lines: How does anyone come so far through the American educational system and not know a blasted thing? The author quite breezily informed me that she had no knowledge whatever of basic grammar-- "but that's what you're for," she assured me. "I want you to fix all that stuff." I asked her, as delicately as possible (for, though some are loath to believe it, I dread confrontation) exactly how she had made it through four years at an accredited university with "no knowledge of basic grammar."
"Oh, no problem," came the response, "I always have people read through my stuff beforehand." Which, being interpreted, is that she always had people rewrite her "stuff" beforehand.

This will sound silly, but I felt-- used. I felt that my talents, the diligence with which I learned and applied myself, were being taken for granted. Were being used to cover up someone else;s shoddy work and take what they had not earned. And so I held myself back. I did not make the paper worse. I made it immensely better than it had been. But I did not do all I could have done. I refused to rewrite the paper for her.

Rewriting is dangerous for me as an editor-- it can be very tempting to change things that are technically correct on a point of style. And, as much as in me lies, I refrain from changing too much in papers. This one, though, required no special restraint on my part. I did what I was supposed to do and gave the wretched thing back to its parent.

I proceeded to revel for several days in a feeling of academic superiority, not to mention self-righteousness, which, given the state of that paper, I still feel was not entirely unwarranted.

And then today (I am fairly certain) I flunked my Math and Society final.

"Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity." --Eccl. 1.2