I Still Police Commas
Wherein our Heroine
recalls her Mentor.
In my third year of law school, I was
required to execute a major project. This "thesis" we were required to turn in
halfway through our third and last year was also known as the "Independent
Writing Project" or IWP. We called it the "I-whip," a beleaguered nod to the
fact that it was a killer of a project. Professor David Gregory was my advisor
for this project. "Advisor" should probably be relabeled "tutor." The
advisor's role is to guide, discuss and help with the project as much or as
little as they deem useful or necessary. Finally, they are to grade it.
Professor David Gregory was
the advisor you would choose if you had either serious chutzpah or serious
masochism issues. Or, in my case, I chose him because I was already working for
him and had come to know him the tiniest bit. His intellect was deep, his
learning was broad, and his wit left no-one unscathed. He was especially fond
of telling a story at the beginning of class, pausing for dramatic effect as he
cast his light blue gaze over the class, and intoning in his rough-voiced New
England drawl, "Now I ask you..." What ever he was about to ask was going to
seriously rewire your world-view. He did it so often that we got used to the
feeling of having the world dumped upside down and shaken like a snow globe.
Some of us even got to liking it. I don't remember anyone ever getting the
better of him in discussion or argument. But when he sparred verbally, you at
least thought he might believe you were worthy of the
effort.
The time-honored
ritual of IWP process included turning in drafts as you went along. In due
course, I turned in my first seven pages - the introduction - and got back seven
pages of red ink.
Most of
these were deleted
commas.
Before I went to law
school I thought I could write. My first year writing class taught me that yes,
maybe I could write, but I couldn't write like a lawyer yet. I had a lot to
learn about building an argument - crafting phrases that carefully built up your
own position while refuting the other side's strongest points until finally
there was nothing to do but agree with the writer. Legal writing is a lot like
a geometric proof that way. Each step must be explained. Nothing can be left
to the reader's assumption. Leave out a step and you're
finished.
By my third year, I
had the structure of legal writing down pat. I wasn't going to leave out an
"if" on my way to the "therefore." I knew the rules and had become confident of
my ability to play the game. Occasionally, I did worry that I was losing
whatever flair I might have possessed for writing fun, stylish prose. I hadn't
counted on losing my grip on punctuation. I remember getting that paper back,
flipping through it, and feeling a terrible, sinking feeling. Professor Gregory
didn't address a single premise that I had laid out in that introduction. He
didn't challenge my pre-stated conclusions and he didn't approve of them. He
hadn't engaged me as a lawyer or lawyer-to-be. Instead, he had come at me like
an avenging angel from Strunk's bible and cut me
low.
I brought the paper home
and stared at it for a while, blurry eyed, not seeing. Finally, knowing I had
to get stuck in and get on with it, I started to read what I had written, or to
read what I could behind the thicket of red circles and deletions. And I
realized something. Somewhere along the line, in a serious-minded attempt to
insure that each thought received attention, I had started to carve up my prose
with commas. I am a rapid reader. Perhaps I was trying to tell the reader,
"Please slow down." At any rate, the Professor was right. My prose was
littered with fidgeting, distracting, unnecessary
punctuation.
Over the next few
months I handed in other drafts to Professor Gregory. He never handed another
one back. They disappeared into the shelves and piles that made his office into
a labyrinth where the student picked her way through, off balance and unready
for a Minotaur with twinkling blue eyes and smoker's voice. We didn't discuss
the project again until I asked for an extension, which was granted. In
retrospect, considering I had chosen this particular project because I was
already researching the subject for the Professor, that was unusual. At long
last, after a long night of paging through a near-final draft with my own red
pen in hand, I handed in the completed project. I had worked on it for so long,
I had no idea if it was the best work I had ever done or if it was inferior
kindling.
Then commenced
about two weeks' worth of evasive action. I had a class with the Professor, so
I came into the room just before class began and bolted the moment it was over.
I didn't walk past his office. Having cast the die, I was afraid of how it
would fall. Mostly, I didn't want to disappoint the Professor. He had been
kind to me in his gruff, elusive way. He seemed to think I had potential. I
hated to prove him wrong.
He
caught me one day. It was inevitable. I was waiting for a friend, and suddenly
he was there. I am sure I froze like a frightened rabbit. I didn't hear the
words as he said them and the extended hand was incomprehensible to me. Pulling
what he had said from my short term memory I realized he had said,
"Congratulations on an excellent paper." I took his hand dumbly, and he shook
it solemnly.
It was one of
the two A grades I ever got in law school.
Posted: Wednesday - April 21, 2004 at 08:45 AM
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