I Kid You Not

Let me begin by noting that I write professionally, meaning a manager found my skills satisfactory enough to give me a job and pay me (though not so handsomely as I'd like) to compose stories and other prose for various outlets.

That being said, I find it amusing that I had the following conversation the other day.

As part of one class this semester, I have to do a dreaded group project. These are never smooth situations where everyone gets along and creates top-notch work 100 percent of the time. Nope. My experience with group work is that someone always begins to hate someone else and the work ends up being a compromise that's basically the common denominator between ability levels in said group.

Anyway, my group experience this semester was going alright until last week. (See post below about calling me a control-freak.) Then in a meeting this past Friday, I made some very professional comments about a section of the paper that my not-so-nice group member didn't appreciate. It was strange--these were comments I would have been comfortable sharing with my boss, but this group member took offense. Who's the control freak now?

But that's beside the point. After I made just a few comments on this section, the group member immediately flipped to my portion of the paper and said, "I've noticed some inconsistencies in the intro and background sections that you composed, Susie. I notice that we're using 'she has' in some places and 'she's' in others. We should really decide on one, don't you think?"

There was absolutely no way I could disguise the "you've got to be kidding me" look on my face.

"Um, OK," I said. "But they're grammatically the same. 'She's' just means 'she has.'"

"But I don't like contractions," my group member said.

"Oh, OK. I'll make a note of that," I replied, hastily scribbling on my notebook.

"I just really think using the contraction is inappropriate," she added.

At this point, I made the decision to not push the subject. I actually left the meeting feeling like maybe I had forgotten how to write. I've (shit, pesky contraction) always learned that a good way to vary your prose and make it less redundant is to use the contraction. Imagine saying something like "She has said time and time again that her experience at Target ranks far above those times she has shopped at Wal-Mart, which she has decided is Satan." Throwing at least one "she's" in there makes the sentence a little less mundane.

And how--in the name of all that is holy and good--am I supposed to make sure no contractions are used in a five-page, single-spaced paper? Do I just do a find and replace for an apostrophe? I can feel the headache coming back...the one I've been fighting off all week...the one my mother assures me is "not a toooomah."

So in the span of about ten days, this person has bullied me around both physically and verbally, shushed me in class when I was trying to answer a question she had asked me, and then totally undermined my writing ability and professionalism by making an issue out of a writing technique that is totally acceptable--and talking to me about it as though I were a child who only spoke Swahili.

When I finish this project next Friday (fingers crossed), I am getting drunk. Really drunk. Even if I have to do it alone. Anybody with me? It'll be a BYOC party at Susie's. You know, Bring Your Own Contraction.