"What's another word for initiative? Initiative...initiative..." mumbles one. She spends her evenings in master's classes, plans her lessons during lunch.
"Use the thesaurus," says the other.
"I know, but I don't know how to get it on this computer." She types in initiative, hesitating over the i-n-i-t-i-a...t-i-v-e.
Two sets of hands fumble with the mouse.
"Click on the word. Right click," says the other.
"Oh! Right click!" She clicks. Scans. "Inventiveness... originality... ingenuity! That's what I want. Ingenuity." She selects the word, replacing initiative with ingenuity. "I don't want to plagiarize," she says, with parentheses.
She types a few sentences and clucks. "Man, this essay is supposed to be 15 pages. I'm at 12. I'm going to have to puff it up a bit. Fifteeeeen pages." She saves her 12 pages and goes off to teach her next class.
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
stories at work.
Posts
1 comment:
Oddly reminiscent of TFA! Ray has this great picture of about eight of us sitting in a naked room,each surrounded by a shifting mound of grading, looking stricken.
It's alays a joy to read your blog.
Post a Comment