Next time I'll leave the red pencil at home

I appreciate the student who raised his hand in class and said, "Planetarium--I can never remember whether that's about plants or planets." Sure, we all got a good laugh out of it, but I wish more people were willing to speak up and admit when they're confused instead of nodding knowingly about things they know nothing about. 

I also appreciate the student who, when asked why a character in Tara Westover's Educated had said some particularly outrageous thing, raised his hand and said, "Because he's crazy." Yes! As I wanted to tell the rest of the class--especially the ones avoiding eye contact--"If you don't realize the dude is nuts, you're not paying attention."

Yesterday at a big meeting I was tempted to get out my red pencil--the imaginary one I always carry, long enough to reach up to a theater marquee to remove unnecessary apostrophes--and correct some errors on slides presented by people I probably shouldn't be correcting in public. First I wanted to correct the spelling of a colleague's name, because why bother congratulating a person if you can't be bothered to spell the person's name correctly? But that's the former journalist in me speaking, the person who breaks out in hives at the recollection of a particularly egregious spelling error.

But then if I'd had my imaginary red pencil with me, I would have wanted to correct some other things, like enrollment numbers and rambling responses and administrative decisions I find ridiculous. These things may not have been errors, but I simply can't accept a world in which such statements can stand unchallenged.

Finally, I was delighted to share with my upper-level writing students this passage from a book I've been slogging my way through:

Nowadays, of course, given all man has learned of their senses, it is easy to see why they should have felt so liberated, so connected to their wild selves, when it appeared: like any crepuscular creatures that possess night vision (whether naturally or through a device), the augmented but still ethereal light of that Moon makes all the usual night sights--whether rustling trees and bushes or prey and predators--show up brilliantly. 

My students were apologizing for their first drafts, worried because they weren't quite perfect. I pointed out that the definition of a draft is a piece of writing with something wrong with it, and then I pointed out that the sentence above was written by a professional author and published by a reputable press that presumably employs competent editors, and yet not one of us could make sense of it. (Does it help if you know they refers to cats and when it appeared refers to the full moon? Not much.) If a sentence can pass through so many brilliant minds without becoming comprehensible, then why should we expect all our sentences to hit their marks on the first try?

So here's my tepid cheer for the presence of error in the world. Let's speak up and admit that we don't know everything! We're all still learning (I hope), so let's admit our confusion out loud and help each other toward understanding.