Re: Academic Pomposity

["Williams, Diane (contractor)" <Williams_Diane -at- DOTE -dot- OSD -dot- MIL>]

>>Dan Wise said: Robert P. commented on the awful, pompous, stuffy, dense
style adopted by many academics.  I received a sample copy a couple of
years ago of a scholarly journal for the technical communication
field.... This was one of the stuffiest and most pompous journals I
have ever seen.  I queried the editor and was told something to the
effect that this style was "expected" in scholarly journals.<<

My English prof (possessor of a Ph.D.) for my grad-level "Shakespeare in
the 20th Century" class this semester said the same: this kind of
writing is expected of them!

I just wish that these "high academics" wouldn't talk that way in class!
It's hard enough reading their essays of literary criticism (the world's
most useless occupation, IMHO), where I have to take a shovel and dig
for the subject, verb, and point of their postualtions, without also
having to perform an aural autopsy on this aureate oratory in class. <g>

Many times I've asked my high-academic profs to please repeat what they
said using words of no more than 4 syllables! If they would only do that
the first time around, we'd have a lot more time in class for
discernible discourse!  ;-)

My current prof even mismarked a comma splice in one of my short papers.
I e-mailed her the sentence and pointed out that "however" was used as a
conjunctive adverb in the sentence and needed to be set off by commas.
Was her comma splice notation about the first comma in error? Yup, she
replied.

The prof I had for a different Shakespeare seminar a year ago was
probably the best example of the worst teacher I've ever had. No one in
class knew what the heck he was talking about. In the early weeks of the
semester I was the only one to ask him to repeat what he said. Later on
more folks asked as well. I knew I wouldn't get better than a B in the
class, which I was praying for so it would count towards my M.A. degree.
I got the B and vowed to avoid that prof for the rest of my degree
quest.

I like the current prof I have though. She's quite a bit more down to
earth.

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