Further updates of scant interest
Sep. 18th, 2005 06:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
katallisonWell, I have achieved a partial triumph in the Basement of Disaster; a path has at least been cleared to to the windows, and the larger and grosser cobwebs have been vacuumed away. Sufficient unto the day, etc. etc.
After these accomplishments, and a long shower, I went over to my old friend J's house to help her son H with his college applications. H is the high school senior I was shamefacedly perving over in an entry a while back, the tall amazingly good-looking kid with the perfect RayK hair and the alpha brain. Despite his formidable abilities in calculus, theoretical physics, etc., he is something of a klutz in daily life, and had recently had a bike accident that left him with both arms in casts, hence unable to type. So I hauled my laptop over and spent a while deciphering his tiny angular scientist-geek handwriting and typing up some of his application essays and, for good measure, a school paper on The Crucible. H's essays are hilarious, because he has the scientist's mindset of "State the problem, describe the procedure, state the solution, bing bang done" and he has no patience whatsoever for the art of essay writing, which I (and various of his teachers) have explained to him is all about "Ease in artfully, foreshadow what you're going to tell them, then tell it to them, using lots of examples and metaphors and illustrative language, and then gently draw together what you've just told them." He finds this pointlessly repetitive and inane, and his impatience shows through here and there in his prose. *g* However, he has an excellent command of language, and is almost as fond of semicolons as I (and always uses them correctly), so I forgive him much, and find his papers a hoot to type. I like to imagine him fifteen years from now as the shining young star of some physics department somewhere, still falling off his bike and walking grouchily out of longwinded departmental meetings, trailed about by an adoring gaggle of grad students, and departmental secretaries who would just *love* to do his typing for him. *g*
After these accomplishments, and a long shower, I went over to my old friend J's house to help her son H with his college applications. H is the high school senior I was shamefacedly perving over in an entry a while back, the tall amazingly good-looking kid with the perfect RayK hair and the alpha brain. Despite his formidable abilities in calculus, theoretical physics, etc., he is something of a klutz in daily life, and had recently had a bike accident that left him with both arms in casts, hence unable to type. So I hauled my laptop over and spent a while deciphering his tiny angular scientist-geek handwriting and typing up some of his application essays and, for good measure, a school paper on The Crucible. H's essays are hilarious, because he has the scientist's mindset of "State the problem, describe the procedure, state the solution, bing bang done" and he has no patience whatsoever for the art of essay writing, which I (and various of his teachers) have explained to him is all about "Ease in artfully, foreshadow what you're going to tell them, then tell it to them, using lots of examples and metaphors and illustrative language, and then gently draw together what you've just told them." He finds this pointlessly repetitive and inane, and his impatience shows through here and there in his prose. *g* However, he has an excellent command of language, and is almost as fond of semicolons as I (and always uses them correctly), so I forgive him much, and find his papers a hoot to type. I like to imagine him fifteen years from now as the shining young star of some physics department somewhere, still falling off his bike and walking grouchily out of longwinded departmental meetings, trailed about by an adoring gaggle of grad students, and departmental secretaries who would just *love* to do his typing for him. *g*
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-18 11:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-19 12:05 am (UTC)Did you offer to scratch his itches while you were there? :)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-19 12:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-19 12:18 am (UTC)Actually, triple yay on the basement. When I moved from Kansas, you would simply not believe what my front yard looked like the day the Salvation Army came.
And that was only nine years.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-19 12:25 am (UTC)I have no idea whatsoever what he might be talking about. That paper only needed three pages, dammit! I made my point already!
Signed,
Never Did Like History Papers Much
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-23 07:31 pm (UTC)