I’m not dead (as all bloggers seem to post after a long period of noncommunication/updates), but I’m in grad school. Only in my grad school, I don’t have to write a thesis! Yay! I’m secretly trying to work it out so I’ve got undergrad: thesis, grad: no thesis; doctorate: obviously thesis. It’s a good gap. Anyway.

I do have to read a lot. And I mean A LOT. It’s nuts. And I do have to write (relatively short) papers. Papers wherein I’m GRAMMATICALLY INCORRECT, y’all! Can you believe it? I’ve never been tagged for this. But–and I’m going to blame this on blogging and Internet culture–I’ve found out I have a problem with my noun-pronoun referent/agreement. I’ve tried to bring it up with my instructor, but I’m left feeling rather “Eh, fuck it” about it.

For instance, I write: “The student has difficulty with repetitions and they will often give their attention elsewhere.”

Well, turns out THE STUDENT is “singular”, while THEY is “plural”.

I’m left saying: Why be so fucking nitpicky? I know we’re trying to be all elite and shit with our academic-ese, but come on!

I use “plural” pronouns because I’m trying to be gender-neutral—to avoid explicitly stating “s/he” or “he/she” or just “he” or just “she”—and to avoid such foreign substitutions as ZE or HIR, which I’m sure would REALLY cause my instructors’ heads to spin.

My instructors can’t seem to wrap their minds around that yet, seeing as how they’re all about APA format.

APA format bugs me.

And I hate using gendered pronouns in my writing about a general subject noun. It could be a “guy” or “dude” or “man”, or “girl” or “gal” or “woman”, but why specify? Can’t it just be a ‘person’? English language has of yet been incapable of leaving a noun genderless due to the pronoun requirement.

The student does something. I don’t care if THEY are a “boy” or a “girl”. I believe it’s rude of me to assume either in either direction.

I suppose if this is one of my main problems with school so far, I’ve got it good, right?

I also have a lot of group work, however, which is especially trying on my nerves, as not everyone reads what’s assigned to them. WHY ARE YOU NOT READING? You are paying the same amount as me, right? And you’re not doing your assignments? Please explain yourself, for $11,500.

I’m in a teacher education program. And I’m facing the same issues I faced when I thought about switching my undergrad to teacher education: folks just don’t read literature within the field. They are not familiar with what should be familiar terms, acronyms, organizations, concepts, and topics in the field of education. They don’t do their homework! Do I have unattainably-high expectations? That you should be at least somewhat familiar with your topic before you decide to devote your life to it? For example, I’m not going to go into computer science or bioengineering if I’ve never attached a file to an email (or cannot navigate Microsoft fucking Word), or messed around with cellular organisms before. I’d say, “Obviously I’m not that into it.”

In short, class time has been rather disappointing. There are highlights, fortunately, and a few classmates I can rally around. I’m hoping it will improve. We’ve got two years.

In these following two years (getting back to the point of this), expect limited updates from me. If you’re reading through RSS (a gripe for another post sometime), don’t sweat it: you’ll see the post(s) when/if I update. Otherwise, consider this a for-now farewell.

xoxo