This is the blog of Kelly Jennings, science fiction writer.
While I'm on the subject of English grammar, nothing pisses me off more than someone who thinks they know grammar when in fact
I started studying it in high school, which meant I had to be bussed to the boys' high school, since the girls' high school didn't offer subjects like physics and Latin and higher math. Why would we need to worry our pretty little heads about such things?
Public high schools where I grew up were segregated by sex until the mid-1980s, when the parents of a student finally sued the state over the practice. Why were they segregated by sex? So that little white girls would not have to go to school with young black men. But yeah, systemic racism definitely never existed in the United States.
ANYWAY.
My brother was in the same Latin class as I was, and I consistently scored higher than he did on every test and quiz. Since he knew that he was smarter than I was (all my brothers always thought they were smarter than I was, since I was just a girl), how could I possibly get better grades than he did?
"It's because you study," he explained to me. "I could get A's if I studied too."
That right there is why men often do worse in school than women do. Women are so tricky they commit underhanded acts like studying for exams. (The same brother failed Finite Math in college because I had made an A in that, and if I could make an A in a math class, clearly he didn't need to study or do homework in the class to get an A himself.)
No, seriously, the real problem is that men and boys are certain that they don't need to study, since they are so much smarter than women that they can learn without studying. And when it doesn't work, that doesn't mean they're wrong. It just means women are gaming the system. Or something.
I taught the grammar class at our university for years, as well as the History of the English Language class (fondly known as HEL). Grammar has always been my favorite subject to study as well as to teach. If I had my way, everyone would study Latin* as well as English grammar from the time they were six years old.
HOWEVER.
The biggest problem I'm seeing with my students is not that they haven't been taught grammar, but that they have been taught grammar badly. Either their teachers did not know English grammar (a possibility, I admit) or the students did not understand what they were being taught.
So I get students who think that any long sentence is a run-on, for instance. Or I get students who have some hazy idea about clauses starting with which or that and when each word should be used. Or I get students who are perfectly certain that starting a sentence with a conjunction is "bad" grammar.
Or various other weird misconceptions.
But the worst part is, I get students who think that "good" grammar equals good writing, and that if their sentences are grammatically correct, then they're "good" writers.
Of course, their sentences often aren't grammatically correct, but that's another issue.
*Why Latin? Because a sound knowledge of Latin grammar makes understanding English grammar so much easier. Also, the process of learning Latin correctly teaches problem-solving, logic, and the ability to think clearly. Sadly, usually the only people teaching Latin these days are homeschoolers, and they teach it very badly, just as they teach English grammar very badly.
This is good advice for those of us who are feeling overwhelmed and hopeless while Trump attacks our families, destroys democracy, and does his best to destroy the world:
I'm just going to (re)post this whenever I need to remind myself. Maybe it'll help you too? 1. Focus on things in your control & take ONE action there. 2. Limit your inputs. You can't help if you're paralyzed.
— Celeste Ng (@pronounced-ing.bsky.social) January 28, 2025 at 8:00 AM
My son-in-law works a job requiring heavy labor and lots of heavy lifting, and day before yesterday he injured his foot. As the resident expert in all things medical, I advised ice, elevation, and ibuprofen, and waiting a day to see if it got worse.
It got worse, so we had to take him to an urgent care. (He couldn't drive because the injured foot was the driving foot.) The first one we visited was packed; the second two were closed. We finally found one tiny one near the local Whole Foods which was still accepting patients, though they closed right after admitting the SIL. (This was at 10:00 in the morning, by the way.)
You had to have a credit card they could put on file before they would even let you sign in. That's with insurance.
It took us four hours to be seen. Ninety percent of the process was paperwork -- getting the SIL's insurance verified, getting the credit card verified, getting information about where the SIL worked and who his spouse was and where he lived, in case they had to come after him for the cost of the medical care. They had four people doing the paperwork. This was all before anyone even asked him what was wrong.
Ten percent was him actually seeing a doctor, which took about 15 minutes.
Good thing we don't live in one of those countries with socialized medicine.
I will say the staff was very friendly and doing their best.
Oh, and he's fine, by the way. It's a stress injury to his Achilles tendon. Rest, ice, a stronger anti-inflammatory, and compression. He can't work for a week, which means he doesn't get paid for a week. Life in the American precarity.
One thing I'm noticing about retirement is how much more I resent all the "training" I have to do.
Not that I didn't resent the training when I had years ahead of me at the job. Every semester, the same explanations of the same things -- here's what to do for ADA, here's what to do if a student has a health crisis, here's what to do if there's an active shooter in your building (die, basically) -- but as the years have gone on, the number of "training" sessions have increased.
This year alone I've had to do Blackboard training again, even though I'll never use Blackboard (I prefer Google Classroom), and now I'm supposed to do several Workday sessions even though I only have fourteen weeks left on the job.
Not that I'm counting the days or anything.
Also assessment sessions. UGH.
We are now two weeks into the spring semester and so far it's not excruciating.
Because I taught five classes in the fall, I am only teaching three this semester. Two are online, and going all right. I do have three students who despite all my cajoling have not yet done anything for the class. But honestly that's pretty low for an online class. The others are all working hard and getting their work in on time.
The one f2f class meets just once a week, on Tuesday nights. It's my fiction workshop, and an excellent group so far. Often I have a hard time getting workshop participants to speak up this early in these semester, but these guys have so much to say.
Also they are all writing a lot. It's great.
The kid is also doing well. He loves graduate school, and is making friends with the other students. He is not so fond of teaching, so I don't know if I can persuade him to become a professor. So sad.
Kevin Drum makes an observation.
For all the Republicans who kvetched constantly over the past four years about Joe Biden's "unlawful" behavior, I'd like to remind you that in one day Donald Trump has:
- Pardoned hundreds of violent criminals solely because they're MAGA supporters.
- Explicitly declared that he wouldn't enforce a law he's legally required to enforce.
- Redefined birthright citizenship in a way he knows very well is unconstitutional
(and several more examples)
But of course the explanation is very simple: Trump supporters don't care about facts, reality, or the law. If their guy does it it's okay. If it's blatantly not okay, as for example when Trump bribes people and lies about things, why, that's okay too, because all politicians do it. And if not all politicians do it, it's still okay, because look what they're doing in China, I suppose you'd want to live there instead?
The whole TikTok thing is just a harbinger. Trump and the other Conservative lawmakers wanted to ban TikTok. Conservative states made laws banning it. Trump's Supreme Court upheld those laws. Then Trump, surprised by the outcry from his base, takes credit for "saving" TikTok by refusing to uphold the ban. Conservatives applaud Trump's freedom-loving stand.
That's how it's going to be, for the next four years. Don't say you weren't warned.
I was assured by people on Reddit that it's silly to worry about what Trump will do to trans people and their rights because "presidents don't make laws."
Which is, you know, hilarious, considering what happened to women's rights the last time he drove the big truck.
Anyway, here's what the ACLU has to say.
I've increased my monthly donation to the organization, which fights for the rights of us all. If you want to do the same, here's the link.
Also: What Trump says he'll do, and what he has the actual power to do.
Teaching first year students for thirty-plus years has taught me that if there is a way to misread a simple set of instructions, they will find that way. And if you have 60 students, they will find 60 different ways to misread the instructions.
At this point, it's almost a game. Can I write something that can't be misunderstood or misread?
Magic Eight-ball says No.
The kid and the boyfriend are now legally wedded husbands.
Photos:
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| During the Wedding |
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| After the Wedding |
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| Celebrating Afterwards |
I chipped a tooth, so I needed a dental appointment. Getting one turned out to be surprisingly easy -- I got in a noon today.
Riding that high, I decided to set up an appointment for Dr. Skull with a PCP.
That turned out to be a nightmare. It took me three hours and calls to several local doctors before I found one who would just make me a damn appointment (which is a month away). Everyone else wanted me to fill out reams of paperwork, so that they could decide whether to accept him as a patient, and warned me that even if they did accept him, the first appointment would be at least a couple months out.
Oddly, I've been told only places with universal health care/single-payer systems have this sort of problem. How strange!
The wedding has been rescheduled for this coming Friday -- a week from today.
Fingers crossed the weather gods don't come at us again.
We got six or seven inches, I'd guess.
Another shot off the back porch:
We're now supposed to get seven inches of snow, so the courthouse is closed.
And then next week, classes start, so it's going to be hard to reschedule for that week.
UGH.
So we have a big snow headed our way. Here's the official forecast:
The same thing happened when he got top surgery -- a huge snowstorm hit that day. (Five inches then too!) It's like the weather gods don't like trans people or something.
(I'm joking.)
Well, there probably won't actually be any bells, since it's a courthouse wedding. But the kid and the boyfriend are getting married on Friday. They want to get married ahead of Trump taking office, so it's been kind of a whirlwind arrangement. (The justice of the peace who is marrying them is also trans!)
He says the funniest part was getting the marriage license. He looks male and the boyfriend, who has just started on T, still looks like a woman, so they appeared to be a straight couple, and they were getting all kinds of "jokes" from the cis people at the courthouse -- "Ooo, last day of freedom!" -- that kind of thing.
"And I was like," the kid said, "I want to get married, what do you mean, are you people okay?"
Anyway, if I can get some pictures, I'll share them here!
Only about a quarter of an inch and it's already melting, but weather guy says about five inches Thursday night/Friday morning.
Junti on the high up:
Honestly, do we really need another year?
