Furious M Can't Write for Shit, Apparently

This just in: According to the Graduate Record Examination Furious M Can't Write

While the failure whiskey article touched on the most disappointing aspect of my GRE scores, in the objective sense my score on the writing section was far more dismal. Since I am majoring in mathematics and would logically apply to grad school in mathematics, I'm not too concerned about my writing score hurting my application, so my odd deficiency on that section is more of a curiosity than a detriment in the larger scheme of my life. Since nobody actually knows what the raw scores mean on the writing section I'll lay the percentile out right here, plain and clear: 37th. That's right, 63 percent of people taking the GRE's to apply for grad school write better than I do.

Strangely enough, this does not bother me at all since my entire life I have been told by English teachers and various authority figures who grade my writing that my skills in that department are lacking. It might have something to do with my reluctance to write for my audience, whether in terms of style or content (see essay: Hester Had It Coming). Or it may be that I am not a very good writer. But this is not troubling at all because grading a piece of writing is completely subjective beyond spelling and grammar. The grader may think, I don't like this, and cite a laundry list of reasons--poor organization, wordiness, antecedent problems--but at the end of the day it is completely subjective. I write a certain essay a certain way because I like it best when I write it like that; if somebody else doesn't like it as much in my unique style then that's really too bad, but I apparently cannot conquer my fiercely individualistic drive to write how and what I want to write. And I don't think that's a bad thing at all.

English paper grading is mainly an assessment of how similar you can write to the arbitrary standard that you're being taught or are supposed to have learned. My favorite example of writing that has seen incredible renown but would have been heavily criticized in an English class setting is the work of Jack Kerouac. Jeez oh man, an English professor would have a field day marking up his papers, leaving every page soaked in red ink. Run-on sentences, nonsensical statements--he writes like a million thoughts are pulsing through his head every second and he manically spews them all over page after page, hardly stopping to take a breath or rearrange the jumble of poetry, prose, and drug induced rambling. He takes words and flows, jams, improvises like a jazz musician blowing on his trumpet, frenetically and infectiously reveling in his zest for life and living. And that's why he is regarded as an important literary voice of the 20th century! If his work was graded in a class (or at least any of the classes I've taken) he would be told that he can't write well and that he needs to change what he's doing if he wants to get a good grade. So it doesn't bother me that throughout my entire life I have been told that I don't write well. All they're saying is, "you don't write like other people do" and I am perfectly content with that.

One last thought on the issue. I like the Jack Kerouac school of thought when it comes to writing your memoirs. Don't wait around until the end of your life when you are old and decrepit so you can sit in your study and ponderously describe things you did far in the past. Narrate your life as it happens! Write your memoirs "on the run", so to speak, because you never know when you might die of a liver hemmorhage at the age of 47 as a result of a lifetime of heavy drinking and drug use.