As a follow-up to the Not OK post, I want to share a story. I took a course in American Modernism as an undergrad. The readings were amazing. I still can recite the entire reading list 16 years later, it was that good. We had 86 people in the course (which is huge for a literature classroom) because when you say “modernism” people start running towards you like eager bulls in Pamplona. The TAs were amazing, the small group discussions were perfect.
But the course was a bust because of the professor’s truly atrocious English. It wasn’t just English lit, it was modernism. You’ve got to be able to express yourself with some elegance. This prof, though, had such an incomprehensible accent and such poor spoken vocabulary that most of his lectures were useless. The point is not who hired him and why – he might have been a brilliant researcher with a perfect written English. What I wonder is why nobody in his life – or in the life of the woman with the speech impediment or the fat dance instructor – cared enough about them to tell them that their choice of profession was bad.
I cannot boast a wide circle of acquaintances but I did have people in my life who cared enough to tell me that my writing in English sucked and who took the trouble of finding a way to deliver that message without hurting my feelings. And when I improved my writing style and still couldn’t get published, I had somebody who cared enough to explain why that was.
Is it really caring if you are setting a person up for failure and ridicule simply because you don’t want the unpleasantness of being honest? Self-awareness is the most elusive skill of all, and if people who care don’t mention things to us, we will simply never know.
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