accidental learning + serious proofreading.

most of you know that kent went back to school in the fall to pursue a degree in education. aside from the obvious changes to our house - kent constantly studying, textbooks littered throughout the house, an abundance of scrapbooking time - there are other side effects of him going to school.

as his official proofreader, i have to read every paper he writes. and while it is time consuming, and sometimes i want to scream, "i've already done this!", i've realized that i'm also learning. for example, i can now tell you what outside factors led to the creation of the christian faith as we know it today, or what the 'romantics' are (hint: it has nothing to do with love). i can even tell you about confirmation bias and adolescent growth spurts. all very, very relevant and much discussed topics, i tell ya. but honestly, i kind of like it. even though i'm only getting a very condensed, coles notes version of things, i'd like to think it's expanding my mind.

however, being his proofreader does not come without some other side effects. as part of my job at fusion, i'm in the in-house proofreader. and as dorky as it is, i take great pride in it. i've always been one to cringe when i see a spelling mistake, and i can notice a double vs. single space a mile away. at other jobs, i would have been known as the grammar nazi, but at fusion it's par for the course. so when kent came home the other day and showed me this, i very nearly had a mild heart attack:


i seriously almost cried. how did i not notice those spelling mistakes, or that misuse of the word 'there'? that's when i realized - the poor guy accidentally printed the pre-flo-hacking-his-paper-to-death-version. yikes. and because kent is such a great student, he went to talk to the prof about his mark (something i would never have done in my university days). she was great about the whole thing and told him that his paper was actually very well written but she couldn't give him a higher mark because of all the grammatical errors. she also offered to read over his draft for the next essay. so, below is the email kent wrote, with his rough draft attached. i thought it was really sweet:

So I showed my wife my last essay and she was very shocked. The reason is that she is my proofreader and she takes it very seriously, plus, it's her job. She works for a marketing agency and she does all the proofreading for the company. Anyway, she was in total disbelief that she could have missed so many mistakes so we looked into it. It seems what happened was that I printed and handed in the rough draft, not the finished (AND PROOFREAD) draft. Oh well, **** happens... a tough lesson to learn though.

and yes, my husband who goes to a mennonite university just swore in an email to his prof. (i censored it for this post, but i'm sure you can figure it out) according to him, she's a cool prof and swears herself, so he thought it was fine. and according to him, that word must not be a swear in the mennonite dictionary because it's the only swear we've heard our mennonite friends use liberally and frequently. hee!

anyway, tell me - what have you learned recently? are you as anal about grammar as i am?