Keeping Up With The Roses

I find it interesting that the way we learn to speak is through watching and learning, trying and failing, and then finally over time, we know exactly how to communicate what is in our mind. Yet when is comes to learning other languages our educational environments invert the process of learning language. If I want to learn Russian do I need to know where the subject and verb are placed in the sentence? Or does it make more sense for me to learn the vocabulary so that I can give directions to my hotel to a cab driver in Moskow? Interesting thought.

While sitting in class all through my grade school years I never thought that I would need to pay attention to the "minutia" of grammar. Never once did it cross my mind that one day to a certain extent my ability to communicate on paper would be vital to success. In my line of work the skill of rhetoric is becoming more important every day as technology advances. My past professors are, I'm sure, laughing and smiling with "I told you so" fresh on their lips. Why did I not pay more attention to grammar, propositions, rhetoric, cumulative syntax, and adjectival steps? Hmmmm.

This thought was prompted a few weeks ago when I was praised and then humiliated in the span of two sentences. I had been working on a project for several months and had finally put the finishing touches on it and the response to all of this effort was not on the content of the project, but on the grammar! "Josh you are a extraordinary writer, and you are very good at motivating people to action through your writing. But you often make mistakes most commonly found with novice writers, you're too wordy and make rookie grammatical errors." That was all. It was like being hit by a Mac truck, two sentences was all it took for me to realize that paying attention in English class would have been a good idea.

After I picked myself up from the verbal slaughtering that had just occurred, I determined myself to become better. Was this my competitive nature? Maybe it was. Nevertheless, (to borrow a line from West Wing although tweaking a bit) "I must be better, I can be better, I will be better, and I will start this moment today." So, I am taking a course offered by University of Iowa's Professor Brooks Landon on Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer's Craft. I am hopeful that I learn quickly where my weaknesses are so that I may raise the quality of everything that I produce.

I made a decision in college, after listening to a History professor muse on jobs available for Liberal Arts students, to focus on my head knowledge. He stated that a person can either be paid for using their hands, or for using their heads. Since I was then mowing lawns for a living, I made the decision rather easily to commit myself to earning a living off of one square ft. of real estate, the good ole noggin.

I will let you know how it turns out...or better yet maybe you are a better judge?