Do you remember, way back in elementary school, doing grammar exercises? You know, the ones with a list of sentences and the directions to draw one line under the subject and two lines under the verb? Well, I did that to my prospectus this weekend—every sentence of it.
“Why in the world are you doing that?” my husband asked.
“Because,” I explained, “you don’t turn in papers at the PhD level with subject-verb agreement errors—especially a dissertation prospectus.”
Now, subject-verb agreement is not an issue I struggle with, but throw in time restraints, nerves, complicated ideas, and some complex sentences with a couple of prepositional phrases thrown in between the subject and verb, and who knows what tragedy might befall. Let’s just say that the exercise gave me peace of mind. For a few minutes, at least.
Note to English Teachers: Remember this for the next time a whiny student asks, “When will I ever use this?”
3 comments:
That sounds like a terrible idea! Me, I'm a terrible self-editor so something like that would help immensely. Good luck at your prospectus defense, I'm sure you'll sail through it.
I have a meeting with my thesis director today to discuss my second proposal. I hope this one goes over a bit better than the last one.
I'm sure Snow White appreciated the extra attention as well!
Yay! Now it is time for the hard part! I will be praying for you, even though I know you will do great! You are such an inspiration to me.
And I don't blame you at all for checking your prospectus. I would have done the same, and then made three other people read it to look for errors.
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