After grading many, many assignments by college students this week

[Coventina]

I am ready to scream if I see the word(?) "vibe" one more time.

"Vibe" is not an adequate description when talking about art!

Different vibe, unique vibe, weird vibe....none of these things tell me anything about the work!!

Argh!!!

Next semester, automatic grade deduction for each time you use "vibe" in a paper!!!

OK, I feel better now!!

[Nature Man]

1. whoa, harsh vibe . . .

LOL

[Coventina]

2. Yep, it's totally harshing my mellow, man!

[sdfernando]

3. Only appropriate if the subject matter

was a vibraphone!

[Coventina]

4. Lol! thanks for the laugh!!

[greymattermom]

5. relative of mine is reporting

emails claiming that a grade of B+ will ruin a student's career prospects, and that another student turned in a paper 63 days late and asked if it had been graded 24 hours later.

[Coventina]

6. Oh yes, 'tis the season of magical thinking.

It's especially fun when the parents try to get involved.



My favorite demand recently was: I was ONE MINUTE LATE TO CLASS! IT BETTER NOT COUNT AGAINST ME!!!

[Captain Zero]

54. I thought in college no one cared if you were late or bagged a class.

You are paying for it. As long as you can pass the tests and get your paper turned in?

[Coventina]

56. Nope. We are now required to keep attendance due to new federal financial aid restrictions.

So, because I have to do it, I make it part of the grade.

It's a really easy way for them to earn part of the grade, they just have to attend class.

[paleotn]

66. I hear ya.

My wife calls it fairy dust.

Ranks up there with "my parents paid good money for these classes. I'm entitled to pass them." Sorry, it doesn't quite work that way.

[3Hotdogs]

7. --- guess you weren't a fan of Lionel Hampton and his viberophone.

[Coventina]

8. LOL!

[panader0]

89. I saw him once in a small club in Tucson.

What a talent.

[gratuitous]

9. I remember one college instructor

His syllabus had a lot of really good information in it, and I remember he was death on slang or vernacular. He didn't make a big production of it, but he did make sure to read out his syllabus sentence on using the right word. "Oh, you make it sound so . . . academic." "Right; because at this school, you are an academic." Try to sound like one!

[Coventina]

10. Yes, I usually put the note: Don't use slang in academic papers.

It usually helps, but not always.

[flor-de-jasmim]

21. Yeah, it helps when they can identify slang usage.

[meadowlander]

11. Thanks for the reminder to watch this again:

[Coventina]

13. That was hilarious!

Yep, picture them talking about an art piece, instead of the Constitution, and you've got it!

[Ms. Toad]

50. Thank you!!!

It's 1L law student papers I'm in the middle of 93 of. There's a lot of "vibe" going on when I gave them a lot of incredibly specific facts and an essay 2 weeks earlier that was nearly identical . . . you can lead a horse to water. . .

I also need to add this to my January intro to law school class.

[LisaM]

52. If you're teaching law students.....

Last edited Fri Dec 6, 2019, 09:35 PM - Edit history (1)

PLEASE teach them not to use "and I" when it should be "and me", and not to misuse "thankfully" in emails to clients; also, that paragraphs are allowed to have more than one sentence.

I'm an English major who is also a paralegal and when I see the lawyers - particularly the newbies - doing these things, it sets my teeth on edge and I can't do anything about it!

Thanks in advance.

[Ms. Toad]

64. That's small potatoes, compared to what I'm seeing.

mostly I'm telling them to keep themselves out of their writing (so the I/me question shouldn't come up). As to paragraphs - right now I'm battling wall-o-words. Paragraphs that run more than a page long.

I don't touch on client letters much.

I'm OK with one-sentence paragraphs for certain purposes (for emphasis, for example).

My focus (as to paragraph length) is to make their work visually easy to read - which means fewer than 10 -15 lines before a break. When they hit about 10 lines I suggest they think of a logical place to break and insert a blank line. The eyes get pretty tired about that time and don't track from the right of the text back to the left. (Although similar tracking problems are created when every paragraph is a single sentence - or worse, a singel line.)

That said, there is a different structure for legal analysis. It is logically similar to the paragraph structure you learned, but the breaks are more for readability, or to separate logical chunks of analysis. The paragraphs in legaly writing don't necessarily reach a concluding sentence before moving on a new paragraph, and paragraphs don't necessarily begin with a new topic sentence.

If you think of standard paragraph structure you are used to (topic sentence, supporting sentences, concluding sentence) requires several paragraphs in legal writing. There are many variations, but one of tme most common is Issue, Rule, Analysis, Conclusion. The issue is equivalent to the topic sentence - and often is a stand-alone sentence. It is a question that you answer in the middle paragraphs (which are logically equivalent to supporting sentences.

Rules are one equivlaent to a supporting sentence. They are typicaly a separate paragraph (without a topic sentence or a conclusion, because the point is just to set out (for your professor, the court, opposing counsel) the rules on which you are relying. The analysis is a second part that is equivalent to a supporting sentence. It will typically comprise one (or more) sets of what might feel to you like incomplete paragraphs. They apply the rules to the facts - those paragraphs should include a conclusion as to some small component of the rule that is analyzed therein, but typically don't include anything equivalent to a topic sentence.

Once you get to the final conclusion it , like the issue statement, is often a single sentence paragraph. It can be combined with a preceding analytical paragraph - but it is often clearer (especially with the application of multiple rules) if it is in a paragraph all by itself.

[LisaM]

72. I don't mind some one-sentence paragraphs.

It's the emails that ONLY contain paragraphs of one sentence that bug me.

I had a lawyer who prepared a chart full of links for the client to open that I later had to save as examples, and she named every link, EVERY ONE OF THEM, "here" (as in "Click "here&quot . It might have made it marginally easier for the client, though I think she could easily have developed a better naming protocol, but it was a nightmare for me later to turn 25 links or so, all with the same name, into the examples I needed.

I have another lawyer who puts her exhibits out of order in her documents. Why? Why?

(Ha ha, and I fixed my typo - I saw that I put "me teeth" instead of "my teeth", and since I'm not actually a pirate, it looked silly).

[Ms. Toad]

74. I'm guilty of clich here,

but only occasionally, and only in documents to students.

But as long as we're trading war stories - I rarely used anyone in the office I worked in for 13 years to help me prepare documents because - invariably - it took longer for them to prepare them that it took me to do it on my own. This was largely because of the excessive number of back and forth review-fix-review again iterations.

The worst one was a simple documet that was a fillable Word document that needed to be converted to a .pdf before being filed with the trademark office. After several iterations, I thought it was perfect (it looked perfect in Word), but when they converted it to a .pdf, the spacing was off. It took me at least an hour to discover that in order to get rid of an incorrect word in an early version they had changed the font to white, rather than delete it. (By now I forget the details of why it looked fine in Word, but was out of alignment when converted - I just remember the AHA! moment when I discovered it, and being really angry at how much time I'd wasted because the paralegal figured that white font was as good as deleting.)

It was a form that would have taken me about an hour (at most) to type myself - and by the time I got done I had spent close to 3 hours on it. (And because our fees for this particular trademark task were fixed, I lost money on it.)

Then there was the paralegal who hit "enter" at the end of each line, because she didn't understand that Word would automatically flow properly if she just let it do its thing. (She didn't last long.)

That was back in my early days at the firm, before I just told the bosses to forget it - I'd do all my own document preparation. I'd have given my eye teeth for a parlegal who paid careful attention to detail - and looked up how to fix something correctly, rather than just figuring out how to make it superficially look correct.

[LisaM]

75. I'm in trademarks, too!

One of my best stories was a trademark search I was asked to do for a male-enhancement product. They wanted to call it VIRAGO.

I was shocked - didn't they have dictionaries? - but the lawyer who had requested me to do the search didn't know the meaning of the word either. So I shot him the dictionary definition and they called off the search and chose another mark. My mother taught college English and she's always wanting me to tell that story.

I mean, why not just name your product SHE-HAG?

It sounds as if we would have enjoyed working together. I can't imagine changing something to white font. How odd.

[Ms. Toad]

77. Mostly I did licensing and patent work.

My favorite trademark story was the pinyin + character mark a client from China wanted. If you've played with Chinese words much, pinyin words often have multiple characters associated with the same "word," especially if the diacritical marks have been removed from the word.

One of the character words associated with the pinyin word (absent diacritical marks) was, literally, the name of the product - but the actual character (included in the mark - so it identified which character word the pinyin word was associated with) meant something entirely different.

Of course, the trademark office rejected it, based on one meaning of the pinyin word. My boss (the office trademark guru) told me they would never allow it (thinking it was like an English word - in which any of the definitions of the (pinyin) word would have disqualified it as a mark). That would have been correct - except that it was the chinese character word they should have been checking the definition of - not the pinyin representation of it that could be traced backwards to multiple different words, only one of which was being claimed (not to multiple different definitions)

Long story short - I was able to appeal the rejection by painstakingly drawing out where they had gotten lost (politely, of course), and it was approved in less than an hour after I submitted the appeal - approximately the length of time it would have taken them to read the appeal.

The white font was really odd - that's why it took me so long to find the problem. Now that I'm trying to reconstruct it - it wasn't the spacing that was off, it was that the "deleted" word (in the Word document) kept magically appearing in the .pdf when the paralegal converted it. I sent it back to be corrected. She insisted she had corrected it (but didn't even bother to check the .pdf to see that it was still there. I found it, again, and sent it back. Wash, rince, repeat. I was about to retype it from scratch when I had the thought to go back to the Word document and search for the magical-text-that-couldn't-be-deleted. The search highlighting landed on what appeared to be an empty space in the Word document. So I changed the font color - and voila! there it was!

[Hermit-The-Prog]

78. white-out!

You may have encountered a typist converting to computer.

[Ms. Toad]

83. Absolutely.

In case you were kidding -

At some point (my guess is around 2005 - couldn't find it with a quick search) the trademark office started charging more for paper filings (or less for electronic ones). Prior to that time, every trademark applicaiton was typed up on a typewriter.

This was shortly after that fee change. And the paralegal was one of the main ones who had used the typewriter to fill out the forms.

We were still a sneakernet firm then (and for several years after that) - despite having a sub-specialty in a field that should have made us early technology adopters.

[LisaM]

79. This is so interesting to me!

I realize I never get to talk shop, partly because we have to be discreet about our clients, and partly because it's a pretty niche field. I just spent the day doing three long applications, two of which had 12 classes and multiple filing bases, and the third which only had a paltry six classes, but all different use dates from the other two applications. The client is a progressive political organization so I had fun with the specimens. A lot of them show the word IMPEACH in big letters. My little gift to posterity.

[Ms. Toad]

81. Yup.

With clients filing things in the PTO, the need for secrecy about the identity of the client is not so great, since the attorney and/or firm name is publically associated with the client. (I walked into my job interview knowing who the main client was, and could talk intelligently about the products I hoped to be working with, just because I did a patent search.) And in person, even people who don't know that little secret know who the client was - but even then I have to be very careful in conversations to sort what I know from the client v. what i know form other sources.

Most of our trademark clients were mom & pop and couldn't afford more than 1-2 classes. Sometimes we had to have a discussion with them about whether it was worth it to even file a federal registration.,

[LisaM]

82. The filing fees for these three applications is going to be about $15,000.

I'm surprised they have that kind of money, and then there's five hours of my time (@$350 an hour; I'm pretty senior). I don't like when they get granular on every little item, I think they could eliminate beach towels, for example. But it's not my decision! At the last minute, they added Christmas ornaments to two of the apps - another $550. Yikes!

[Ms. Toad]

84. No one in our firm billed at that rate -

(all attorneys - even the head attorneys who had nearly 4 decades of experience, were billed at the same significantly lower billing rate). We didn't bill paralegal time at all. You must be in pretty pricey geographical area, or in a pretty pricey firm.

[LisaM]

87. Both

We are a well-known firm in Seattle. And I have a lot of experience. This is the second-nost annoying set of apps I have worked on. The first was when the attorney sent me 36 URKs to use as specimens and not one was a live link. It was also almost 5:00 pm. And I was covering for another paralegal who leaves earlier, and we had a ferry to catch that night. I was sizzling;. Got it done, though

[Ms. Toad]

88. That's the client I use as an example of why one portion of the bar exam is not totally meaningless.

Part of the bar exam is a 90-minute essay that is supposed to simulate work a first year associate might do. I tell them to imagine a client walks in 3:30 and they have to meet a 5:00 PM filing deadline - and then tell them that they really will have clients just like that.

[LisaM]

90. I have built up tricks over the years.

Experience really does pay off (which is partly why I prefer seasoned politicians for high office). I like to cook, and I think you can break these projects down like a recipe - be organized, mix up the dry ingredients first and set them aside, have the mise en place ready for everything else, and put all the pieces together at the end. Organization is so key. I always, always do everything in numerical or alphabetical order so I don't get confused at the end. But it took me a while to get to this place. It's highly unusual for me to spend five hours on preparing applications.

[lpbk2713]

12. Do they start a sentence with "I mean ..." ?

I'd point them to the nearest door.

[Coventina]

14. Not in their papers, but in class, all the time!

[Hermit-The-Prog]

24. how about starting one with "So"?

[Coventina]

25. Constantly. Some papers begin with "So" as well!

[Hermit-The-Prog]

29. So, I mean, like the vibe's I'm getting their are literally making my head esplode.

Sorry about that. I'd offer aspirin, but can't reach you.

[Coventina]

32. It's the thought that counts!!

[Hermit-The-Prog]

35. should've sprinkled more apostrophes

Two of my nieces are teachers, my son teaches, and my wife taught for over 25 years. I've seen the things that cause the red pens to bleed upon the paper.

[virgogal]

49. Wow,I was thinking of that one. I hear it constantly on NPR in the AM by

some expert that sounds about 16 years old. Glad to see someone feels the same,

[utopian]

76. And "Well" and "Yes"

Just posted grades and am now enjoying a beverage.

[japple]

47. I hope that none of those papers begin with Ummm or Uhm...

"So" is bad enough. I sincerely hope that none end with "at the end of the day..."

Cheers to you during this stressful season!

[Igel]

55. My response is to repeat it.

"You mean? No, I mean. I real mean. Misuse 'mean' again and you'll see just how mean."

It's high school. They don't appreciate it.

[Coventina]

58. Wow! You are harsher than I am, then!

I just keep the corrections to the written assignments.

Generally, I'm thrilled if I can get students to speak up at all.

[abqtommy]

15. Hey, take a pill and chill, Jill. Have a toke and tell a joke! The history of the word "vibe" is

explained in the Online Entymology Dictionary* as first being used in the 1940s as an abbreviation
for "vibraphone". (blame Benny Goodman and Lionel Hampton for that) Then in the 1960s "vibe"
came to apply for an instinctual feeling. (blame coffee houses and the beat generation for that)

Given this long history I have to question your prejudice and willingness to do harm to anyone who triggers it. tsk tsk I had my fill of teachers/instructors that allowed their personal prejudices to interfere with what should be the joyful process of learning. My vibe is that you're heading for a personal disaster if you continue in the direction you're going now.

*https://www.etymonline.com/word/vibe

[Coventina]

17. "Vibe" does not describe a work of art.

Saying "it has a unique vibe" or "different vibe" tells me nothing about your observation of the piece.

It in no way demonstrates learning.

[abqtommy]

26. I have learned enough about you to now place you on full ignore. That's my observation.

[Coventina]

27. LOL!

[kcr]

95. Why not?

[NutmegYankee]

16. I'm sensing negative vibes.

[Coventina]

18. Yep, as I stated above.

It's really harshing my mellow!

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

19. Rembrant's Night Watch is like totally tubular.

Sweet, while maintaining Street.

I don't need no stinkin' "vibe".

[tavernier]

20. Hmm.

My grandson texted me yesterday and told me he had just been “excepted” to his chosen university next fall.

Perhaps he’ll be one of your new students. 😂

[Coventina]

22. Did you send him condolences?

[tavernier]

23. No,

I congratulated him on his ACCEPTANCE, and capitalized it in my return text.

Cute boy. Fingers crossed he will get through the first semester.

[Binkie The Clown]

28. You're not, like, being inclusive.

Your students need a safe space where they won't be judged so harshly.

[Coventina]

30. Yep, I'm a real ogre!

Making students think and write clearly and all.

I'm a monster and must be stopped!!!

[cwydro]

31. I don't blame you one bit.

Vocabulary seems to be something people no longer care so much about.

[Coventina]

33. Well, the sad thing is, I don't really require fancy words.

Just words that actually mean something!

I'm just trying to help them think and write with clarity of meaning. It's a skill they can apply to any subject.

[leftieNanner]

36. Clarity in writing is so critical to almost any profession

My husband was a Human Factors Engineer before he retired, and he had to rewrite so many reports produced by his staff! They were very poorly written and unclear. Teaching these students good writing skills now will help them in their careers, no matter what they pursue. Good for you.

[cwydro]

51. Good for you!

I hope you’re able to reach them.

[guillaumeb]

34. I am sensing a very harsh vibe from you Coventina.

To help you in dealing with your vibe problem, please listen to this.

[Coventina]

37. LOL! Thanks!!

[jcgoldie]

38. I'm getting a strange vibe...

[Coventina]

41. Hahahahahaha!!!!

[tblue37]

39. I just retired in June from teaching college English--and grading innumerable essays.

I feel your pain!

[Coventina]

40. Has your hand recovered yet?

Mine feels tired after a day like today.....

[tblue37]

42. Not really. The damage is probably permanent after 47 years of marking papers. nt

[Martin Eden]

43. Sounds like you need a soothing tension relaxer

May I suggest a muscle vibrator?

[Coventina]

44. A personal massager?

[Martin Eden]

46. Even better ...

... and it avoids a form of that horrible word.

[Ms. Toad]

45. I feel your pain.

8 in the current batch down, 85 more to go.

Next semester I have about 180 students, half of them with a writing assignment every other week. The rest with a writing assignment every 5 weeks. (And then finals.)

I get very tired of the fad words and phrases.

(on my supper break before I tackle another dozen or so and go home)

[Coventina]

48. Ouch!!

I have to say, it sounds like you've got it worse than me.

I've become so depressed about the state of writing skills, I've seriously considered just giving up on writing assignments entirely.

But, there really is no better way to know how well they've understood the material....

[Ms. Toad]

53. My job is to teach them how to write legal analysis -

so I can't just skip it. My only hope is that in 2.5 years when I'm preparing them for the bar exam (the second group - with "only" a writing assignment every 5 weeks) they will be far better prepared. (Previouslly this intensive legal analysis course was only given to the 25%-ish of students after they had nearly failed out - and those students were my stars in the bar skills class. Hoping they all will be out of this batch.

(Also hoping neither faculty or administration makes any more big changes to my workload before we see if this works - because I can't do much more than the 80-100 hours a week I"m doing now.)

[Coventina]

59. It sounds like you really have your job cut out for you.

My hat is off to you!!

[TomSlick]

57. I'm a language person with no capacity for art criticism.

My appreciation for art is limited to "I like it," "I don't like it," or "I don't understand it." Perhaps for the same reason, I am unclear what is meant by "vibe."

I think what is needed is an expansion of your students' vocabulary to explain what they are thinking or feeling. My bet is that you do not use "vibe" to describe your description or criticism of art. I would hope that your students would learn to use your vocabulary in order to ensure that you understand their meaning.

Perhaps it is a matter of the difference between liberal arts students and fine arts students. I was always rather good at parroting my professors words in my class writings.

[Coventina]

60. Don't belittle yourself. All you have to do is ask yourself "Why do I like/dislike this work?"

Keep asking yourself questions and you will find that you can write about art!

The problem is, some students stop with the "unique vibe" instead of expressing what makes it unique, and how is it transmitting "the vibe."

on edit: typo

[TomSlick]

71. I appreciate the encouragement.

However, I am afraid that I like art that is representational - I can identify the subject of the art. My first concern is how representational, the harder I have to study the art to decide what is being presented, the less I like it. For me, the purpose of artistic technique and skill is to ease my effort to see what is being represented.

I will allow that once in a great while, I note what I call the artist's "eye," i.e., the ability to see something - beauty or meaning - in the subject I would not on my own. On those rare occasions, I truly appreciate (both understand and like) art. When my pedestrian mind is caused to see something I would not on my own, the artist has provided me a service.

[CTyankee]

61. Can we also give MEME a rest?

[Coventina]

62. Agreed on that. However, that term does not show up in my students' papers!

Which I find interesting!

[CTyankee]

65. Perhaps they are less sure of its meaning. Vibe is easy to define!

[LeftInTX]

73. Not yet!!

I assume you teach visual art...
Pretty soon they will be comparing real art to a meme

[BigmanPigman]

63. I never heard a professor use "vibe"

or read it during any of the many Art History classes I took while attending Art School. I think if I had used it myself the teacher would have been perplexed since that was in the 80s. Is this part of the art-vocab they are using when they are teaching and critiquing art now?

[Sloumeau]

67. Vibe - JoJo (With Lyrics)

[Initech]

68. You're killing my vibe, man!

[slumcamper]

69. Bullshit!!!

Language, like ART (I would add that language IS an "art), is a dynamic construct that evolves across time.

New words come, old ones fade, and meanings change over time.

This reality creates interesting sociocultural dilemmas between individuals and groups, whether based in age, gender, region, ethnicity, etc.

Clearly, the linguistic construct of age cohort with which you are interacting within your location/region represents the pervasive (dominant?) linguistic construct. You may resist--as is apparently your inclination--or evolve.

Ya catch my vibe?

[Hermit-The-Prog]

80. you're forgetting something ...

Decades ago, my English teacher won every argument about writing style by proclaiming, "Mine is the pen that turns your paper red."

[lunasun]

70. One of my favorite uses of the word vibe . De Niro

[exboyfil]

85. Thank you for actually reading the essays

and attempting to improve the writing of your students. I was shocked by the lack of engagement by my daughters' teachers in Junior High and High School.

By far my best high school class was Honors English. It was the class that prepared me for college, and my major was engineering. My English teacher would bleed all over my pathetic essays. Thank you Ms. Haynie.

[BSdetect]

86. But surely if they wrote "like a vibe" that would make it meaningful?

[TheBlackAdder]

91. Check the context and nuance of the word's use. You could be the Class Vibe Rater.

[cab67]

92. I've not encountered that term

but I teach in the sciences.

That said, the sooner students stop using a Wikipedia as a primary source, the better.

[Hotler]

93. Can we still use "Awesome"?????? nt