Information

I discovered last night that the UW has a School of Information. Great! We also have a Library of Books and a Fountain of Moving Water. As well as a Food Court of Food.

Apparently, the information dispensed at the School of Information does not include the correct names for grammatical concepts. I think it's funny when people are grammatical sticklers without having much grammatical knowledge themselves (I would have to sheepishly put myself in this category), but it's hard on students when, for instance, they get dinged for passive voice and are told to come into the writing center but there is actually no passive voice at all in the essay. I spent a good while puzzling over this last night, until the student explained to me that "passive voice" included constructions like "I was thinking" instead of "I thought."

And this is all well and good and no big deal, except that the student prefaced our whole conference by saying he was a terrible writer--which was not at all true--and I just felt bad. But we were able to clear everything up and he's gonna be fine.

Confidential to U.J.: check your email! And please refer any questions to the nearest niece.