What do you do when…?
are awful at?
This is a challenge I face every time a student comes to me
with questions about grammar. I am awful
at grammar. I can still see the bright
red “30%” written on the top of my grammar tests in the eighth grade (if that
wasn’t reason enough to retire the red grading pens!) Somehow, I managed to pass eighth grade
English Composition, and I have lived in terror of grammar ever since. Logically, I know I must know something. I
couldn’t have fooled everyone on the way to my BA (in English!), MA, and
JD. But that doesn’t help the nagging
fear that I am a fraud, just one question about dangling participles away from
being exposed.*
Everyone has that one thing that still scares them, that
area of law they never understood, that critical skill they never grasped. Yet we all managed to graduate and become
successful ASP professionals despite our failures and misapprehensions. But an Achilles heel also has the ability to
turn a seasoned professional into a defensive amateur. If you are not secure about your skills, it’s
easy to allow an angry student to make you feel as if you are not qualified to
help them.
I have turned my Achilles heel into a teaching exercise. I own up to my weakness; my office is filled
with books on grammar, style, and legal writing. I have the hardcover, illustrated edition of
Strunk and White on my desk. I help the student research the answer to their
grammar problem.
I may not have the answer to their grammar problem, but I
feel I am teaching them a far greater lesson in admitting when to seek
help.
Rebecca Flanagan
*After I wrote this entry, I noticed an article in the New York Times on feeling like a fraud…very interesting stuff! "Feeling Like Fraud? Sometimes, Maybe You Should" by Benedict Carey, Feb. 5, 2007
