[Author’s Note #1: This story occurred during the summer of 2016 — and thus, is entirely without mention of any kids.
I’ll admit: it’s not ideal. The main point of this blog, after all, is to preserve stories about my children — not about me. Nevertheless, I’m posting this throwback story for two reasons:
1) I realized recently that this anecdote is part of my origin story as a writer but that, ironically, it is nowhere preserved in writing, and…
2) By the time I really got underway, I found myself with insufficient June days left in which to finish the piece that I had originally intended to write. (Sound familiar?)
Thus, I’m instead posting this shorter story, which was significantly faster to draft up — if only because this tale has been so oft repeated.]
[Author’s Note #2: Chronologically, this story fits between Blast from the Past: April 1 & 3, 2016 and Process Control Class Goes to Coors Lab (which originally appeared in Blast from the Past as an entry for 2017). Ernie, who appears in Process Control, was also enrolled in the summer course chronicled in *this* post. It was, in fact, the venue through which we became friends.]
[Author’s Note #3: My behavior in this story was less than mature. I’d like to think that my character has improved over the six intervening years.]
Once upon a time, I was a chemical engineering student with a very serious problem.
I had completed my third year studies and was now enrolled in a mandatory summer course called Field Session. Each academic discipline put together its own unique Field Session, but the ChemE version was undisputedly the hardest and most awful.
Here’s how it worked: for each experiment, we ChemEs were randomly matched with two classmates and assigned a unit operation: pump, heat exchanger, distillation column, etc. Each group then spent eight sweaty hours in an oversized hobby shop collecting shoddy data, which was then leveraged into a “meaningful” and “analytically-robust” lab debrief.
[Note: These adjectives are used ironically.]
We did nine experiments, five of which required an oral presentation the following day. (That is, they required late nights and lots of tears.)
But, those five presentations weren’t the source of my very serious problem. Rather, that honor belonged to the other four experiments — those requiring written reports.
It’s not that they were hard: it’s that they were easy.
Among all the red flags that I had ignored for years, here, finally, was the reddest of all. I couldn’t filter data; I couldn’t propagate uncertainty; and I couldn’t calculate fluid velocity — but man, could I write a stellar lab report. Thus, I was anomalous among my classmates, most of whom referred to our word processor as “Microsoft Turd”.
[Note: I actually just made that up. In truth, that pun would have exceeded the linguistic capacity of most of my peers.]
To put it plainly, my very serious problem was this: I simply wasn’t cut out to be an engineer. Instead, I had the temperament, passion, and skillset of a writer — or, at the very least, of a non-engineer.
I had ignored the signs for years, but I finally acknowledged the truth in the trenches of Field Session — surrounded by, you know, real engineers.
And with that, I abandoned all pretense of being a STEM major and just became an aimless troll instead. Maybe I’d become a writer, and maybe I wouldn’t. And, maybe I’d still apply to engineering jobs anyway.
[Note: Incidentally, I did decide to waste my time by applying to engineering jobs. Reference especially Blast from the Past: April 28, 2017.]
Regardless of my post-college future, I was certain of one thing: it was way too late to bail on my chosen degree, so I might as well have some fun along the way.
One particular anecdote stands out in my memory — and, presumably, in the memory of Matthew Bower, as well.
Matthew Bower was a slightly woebegone professor from the underfunded language arts department at Mines, and the ChemE department had hired him to do the miraculous: to make intelligible the writing of engineers.
To this end, we ChemEs were required to hold two draft review meetings for each written reports. One was, not surprisingly, a linguistic review with Matthew Bower. (Or with the other language arts professor, who doesn’t appear in this story.) The other meeting was a technical review with the experiment’s supervising professor — who, of course, varied based on the experiment.
So, after each group submitted its rough draft, these two reviewers read through that draft and critiqued either its grammar and syntax or its technical content, respectively. Each reviewer then presented those edits at a subsequent draft review meeting with the assumption that their weary audience of young engineers would accept every critique without complaint.
Regarding technical edits, such acquiescence was vital. One could hardly expect good marks from a ChemE professor whose suggestions had been summarily dismissed. And, regarding linguistic edits, most of my peers maintained the same indifferent obedience — even though Matthew Bower held no direct influence over our grades.
There was just one problem: as far as I was concerned, *I* didn’t need critiques from Matthew Bower.
Now, it’s possible that I was totally wrong. Maybe he actually was a decent writer and/or editor. After all, I’ve never read his professional work, so I can hardly make a conclusive assessment of his overall competence.
It’s just that, you know, a literary professorship at Mines doesn’t speak to incredible aptitude — kind of like being a gas station janitor. I mean, you might be good at the job… but the standard is low and the demand is high, so you also could be bad at the job and nevertheless remain gainfully employed. Warranted or not, this was sort of how I felt about Matthew Bower.
More than that, though, I was pumped full of the hubris that comes from a brand-new dream, yet untested by reality. Now that I had secretly begun imagining life as a writer, I was unreasonably confident that I’d instantly be a great writer.
[Note: The intervening years have all but cured me of this belief.]
Simply put: I felt negatively about my draft reviews with Matthew Bower.
So, with that background, here’s the scene: it was Wednesday morning of the penultimate week of Field Session, and I was not doing well. After a month of poor sleep, blazing temperatures, and lackluster grades, my impulse control was at an all-time low.
Unfortunately, I would need to hold it together just a little bit longer. The morning’s schedule held back-to-back draft reviews — thankfully, the final round of such meetings. I wasn’t worried about our linguistic review with Matthew Bower, but I was concerned about the preceding technical review.
I slowly walked to that first meeting with my current group — a boy named Vance and a girl named Senna. I fervently hoped that Vance’s data analysis had been decent — because if it hadn’t, we would surely hear about it. Our reviewer, the assistant head of the department, was a man notorious for his impatience and academic brutality. We could expect no mercy from Dr. Assistant.
And, to no one’s surprise, we received none. He [metaphorically] shredded our paper — especially our lack of explanation for the glaring disparity between the theoretical and experimental results. However, since this analysis lay beyond my realm of responsibility, I painstakingly refrained from countering the professor’s criticism — going so far as to sit on my hands and bite my lips together. I probably looked as though I sorely needed the bathroom.
By the time Dr. Assistant concluded his roast, my hands were numb and my lips ached. We dejectedly trudged down the stairs to a small conference room on the first floor, which apparently was all the accommodation that could be afforded to the office-less Matthew Bower.
The language arts professor sat at a desk, our edited draft before him. Since I had written the bulk of the report, it felt appropriate that I should be the first to peruse his suggestions. Thus, I swept up our draft and read the first comment.
And that was the moment when the last tatters of my impulse control — already strained by our meeting with Dr. Assistant — vanished completely.
Leveling a glare at Matthew Bower, I snapped, “You want me to left justify!?”
My outburst shocked everyone in the room — especially the professor. He spluttered, “Uh, what?”
I pointed to the draft, where a handwritten note suggested, Left justify margins.
“I would never left justify,” I seethed. “I’m offended that you would even suggest it.”
I could feel the appalled stares of my group members, neither of whom expected that I would take these critiques so personally. Normally, I wouldn’t have. (Or, at least, I wouldn’t have been so vocal about it.) But, Field Session hardly qualified as “normal”, and these edits felt akin to an attack on my nascent writing career.
To his credit, Matthew Bower didn’t immediately fold to my onslaught. He took a deep breath, then answered, “Well, that’s just how we do it for technical writing.”
I snorted. “Hardly! Look at any academic journal. They’re not left justified; they’re fully justified.”
The professor shifted in his seat. “Well, most of those are in two columns, too.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Oh, so two columns would make it better?”
“No. I’m just pointing out that there’s a difference between your paper and a journal article.” He sighed, then continued. “Look, we just recommend left justification for these sort of lab reports. But, if that’s too upsetting for you, then you can do whatever.”
I nodded sharply. “It is, and I will. Thank you for your accommodation.”
[Note: Admittedly, left vs. full justification is an open debate. I just happen to come down staunchly on one particular side of that debate.]
I returned my attention to the lab report. It was riddled with little edits — comma here, word choice here, etc. I nodded as I scanned down the first page. I’d ignore most of his suggestions, but none of them rose to the level of “personally offensive”.
That is, until I noticed an alarming pattern of deletions. I always introduce embedded equations with a colon — both for grammatical clarity and for visual appeal. And there, over every colon, was a tiny slash.
I had mistaken the first for a stray mark — and the second one, too. After all, who would intentionally delete punctuation that was so obviously necessary to the flow and construction of each equation-containing sentence?
But, by the third such edit, I could no longer deny the truth. Matthew Bower was simply… wrong.
“What’s this about?” I snapped, pointing to one of the deleted colons.
Matthew Bower leaned forward in his seat. “Oh, just that you shouldn’t break up the sentence with a colon. The equation is just part of the sentence.”
“Really?” I marveled sardonically. “All centered up, with extra lines above and below? That hardly conveys ‘part of the sentence’.”
“Well —” the professor began, but I cut him off.
“You see, if the equation were in line with the rest of the sentence, then I might agree with you. But, it’s not. We’re using the Equation Editor — as instructed — and isolating the equation in the middle of the page — as instructed. So, quite clearly, it’s not just ‘part of the sentence’. The colon prevents the rest of the sentence from just dangling in the breeze, totally punctuation-less.”
Matthew Bower sighed heavily in response. My group mates, in contrast, remained perfectly silent.
Eventually, the professor said, “It’s just how we do it here. You can have you own feelings about it, but this is a good opportunity for you to practice conforming to the expectations of your employer. When you’re an engineer, and you’re at your first real job, they’ll give you a set of standard practices, and you’ll have to follow them.”
“No, I won’t,” I shot back. And then, I let slip the first mention of my incipient dream. “I’m not going to be an engineer. I’m going to be a stay-at-home mom, and I won’t have to follow any sort of writing rules.”
The professor raised an eyebrow, “And your husband will be able to support you in that?”
“Yes. He’s a great engineer.”
Matthew Bower returned a sad smile. “Well, that will be nice for you. My wife and I were both English majors, and now we and our four children live in poverty.”
“That’s really unfortunate, and I’m sorry to hear it,” I retorted. “But, thankfully, that won’t be the case for me.” I looked down at the draft and concluded, “And I’m leaving the colons.”
By this point, Matthew Bower had recognized that there was no point in arguing. He waved a tired hand for me to continue the draft review.
I scanned through the rest of our report quickly, pausing to quibble with only a few edits. Finally, I concluded my perusal, at which point I set down the draft and looked up.
Part of me — a large part of me — recognized that my behavior had been less than genteel. I ought to have apologized, but at the time, I couldn’t identify anything that I would have done differently.
So, instead, I stuck out my hand to Matthew Bower.
He looked at my extended hand for a long second, then tentatively shook it. I flashed him a brilliant smile and enthused, “Thank you for your time and effort in reviewing our lab report and in meeting with us this morning. We appreciate all the expertise and advice you offered.”
Three pairs of shocked gazes followed me as I rose and gathered my belongings. I addressed two of them. “Well, back to Coady Lab?”
Senna and Vance shot horrified looks back at Matthew Bower, then hurried to join my departure. I waved a cheery farewell as the door closed behind us.
We made our way back to the fourth-floor computer lab, and I barely noticed that I was the only one in a good mood — until, as we entered Coady Lab, Senna asked, “You know how I feel about that draft review?”
I looked back at my friend. “Yeah? How?”
Senna scoffed once, then answered, “Matthew Bower got destroyed in our draft review.”
[Author’s Note: We ended up with a 95% on our final report. Vance figured out the source of our data disparity, and I refined every last sentence of the write-up. To no one’s surprise, I refused to change either the full justification or colon-introduced equations.
Even so, that 95% wasn’t enough to save my overall Field Session grade, and it became the only class in which I didn’t receive an A. Unfortunately, it was also the only class with real-life, career-altering implications. (Or, at least, one of the few.)
Oh, and Ernie? Yeah. He got an A… and more than that, he won MVP of Field Session, too. At least I have friends in high places.]