I was talking about my education tonight, and I actually spoke the words, graduate school, out loud. This made me think of the scholarship, and then I read Brandon's post about being an English scholar, and about what that really means.

I think about how I got to here, the place where I am. I just walked up, after having gotten my trade school education, and said, please, let me in so I can think some more. I have not studied grammar beyond the eighth grade. I don't know how to dissect a sentence, but I have some idea of how to organize an essay. I stress some idea. I have read a great deal and acknowledge that most of my skills are reflections of what I've read. I don't know of any famous or published literary critics that I would admire, except of course, my instructors with their heavy and luscious PhDs; I imagine these titles gilded and polished, me trying to hold them and feeling the cool slickness of the metal; mmmmm a cool, slimy-slick PhD. I need reading glasses just to fantasize about it.

No, I don't really know how to write. My grandma calls it having an "ear" for English -- or more clearly, an explanation for being good at writing without formally studing the language. I want to understand it, this grand language, and really, it is a grand one, even though everyone goes, oh, only one word for love, but that's rediculous -- who needs thirteen words for love when you have a bagillion for bad? I think our mishmash language is brilliant, even if I don't have a proper command of it.

I liked your illustration, Brandon, about how you were more impressed with essays that took a steeper risk, and didn't do so well, than with a more boring paper, that has 1,000 references. I want to steer that way in my writing. I'll work on it. Splash.