As I mentioned before, I didn't really have to worry much about being accepted at Eastern New Mexico University. I knew that my grades in high school were good enough to get into just about any state-funded college. I expected all the other students to be close to the same academic level I was. I mean, I was aware there were a lot of B and C students, but I figured that since they all graduated, they had the same basic education, learned basic English, Math and History and got through it okay.
And I was wrong. In the post linked above, someone told me that ENMU's admission standards were so low that the school would accept anyone who took the SAT or ACT. It didn't matter what the score was. ENMU was really good at recruiting out-of-state students. They actually targeted the B and C average students. I kept hearing stories of students from other states who didn't know what they were going to do after high school and they got a brochure for ENMU through the mail. Some of them didn't like the idea of having to go out of the country to go to college because they didn't want to drink the water. After it was pointed out that New Mexico is a state, they thought better of it.
During my Stage Crafts class my freshman year, Mr. H, the professor, was telling us about the various jobs that people did behind the scenes. He started talking about the Scene Designer. We were all taking notes. I was sitting next to Tood (who was not my roommate). I looked at his notes and saw that he had written "sean dezzigner." I thought, "Wait! You don't know how to spell the words 'scene designer?' How the heck did you get into college? How did you graduate from high school with atrocious spelling like that?" I knew teachers who would gladly flunk students who didn't know how to spell relatively simple words even to the point that they could not graduate, so I wondered about the quality of public education was in Albuquerque. I mean, I was blown away by the level of acting in his school's Theatre department. I'm surprised that quality didn't carry over to the basic educational needs.
And it was especially surprising to have that from Tood. Tood was actually one of the smartest people I've ever met and he worked really hard on backstage projects in the department. I wondered why he didn't try to do better in English. I guess it doesn't matter because, as far as I know, he never finished college.
I didn't realize it at the time, but this would be the forerunner of all the bad spelling, grammar and punctuation that would plague the Internet in the future. He wasn't the only one who failed to make an effort at doing things correctly in school. As you've probably noticed, I try to make everything perfect on this blog. Even when I text, I try to make it as close to the way I speak as possible. I do not even use the standard abbreviations, like LOL and WTF. Many years ago, when I used to chat on AOL, I did this as well. There was this one woman I started a conversation with. I didn't notice, but she gradually started using punctuation and capitalization in her messages. She pointed this out to me. She started doing it because I was doing. She was actually trying to impress me.
At the very least, this taught me not to expect so much from people in general. This meant that I was going to enter a world in which people didn't try very hard in their writing. I had to accept that there would be a lot of misunderstandings because somebody didn't put a comma in the right place. Nothing was really ever going to be up to my standard. I know there are people who have little tolerance for that, and they are in positions to actually do something about it. I'm not. That's another thing that makes me a loser.
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