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To: Lando Lincoln
I read them both. I am a college professor and read papers by students regularly. I would say the writing quality is typical of a high school student. I have seen worse from college students, however. The lack of any real depth to it is what I found the most bothersome, apart from the violent themes.

I do not teach English, but I cannot imagine a student turning in work like this. It is literally a cry for help. Most students try to sugarcoat their writing for professors. They tend to write what they think the professor will like. Usually, you have to push them to take risks. In this case, the student went way off the map, and I can see why his teacher was concerned.

There isn't anything here that tells me the student is a psycho-killer. But taken together with other things, such as his manner and aloneness, it looks like a red flag after the fact. The trouble is, there are probably hundreds of gore-fest scripts getting written on college campuses, and no one actually gets hurt by them.

17 posted on 04/17/2007 8:42:08 PM PDT by massadvj
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To: massadvj

If there are hundreds of gore fest scripts being written by college students on the level of “Richard McBeef”, then we may as well resign ourselves to picking the vegetables Americans don’t want to pick.


43 posted on 04/17/2007 10:33:34 PM PDT by Sender ("She is the friendly face of America; where Condi frowns, Nancy smiles." (Syria))
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To: massadvj
I read them both. I am a college professor and read papers by students regularly. I would say the writing quality is typical of a high school student. I have seen worse from college students, however. The lack of any real depth to it is what I found the most bothersome, apart from the violent themes.

Writing plays isn't easy, and in most cases with which I'm familiar, it isn't a requirement for an English degree, The stilted dialogue and lack of depth make him an awful playwright, but his grammar and syntax appear to be at least competent, so I'd guess he could write acceptable, maybe even pretty good, papers and essays.

50 posted on 04/18/2007 12:44:25 AM PDT by ReignOfError (`)
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To: massadvj
The details of the insults, the depth of the hate, the persecution, and the theme of being helpless as wrongs are done by malefactors impressed me. They smack of a persectution complex. Everyone is motivated by hate or cruelty.

As far as the quality of the writing, technically, it is difficult to judge. Most of it is dialogue, so liberties with the language may be attempts at character. The attempt to portray character through angry words is an immature writer at work. Character comes out through action, and there is very little action in either piece. It's a common mistake.

A friend of mine teaches business at a university in New Jersey. On occasion, we'd have a couple of beers and he'd read some examples of what his students submitted for grades. I think he was trying to get me to come up with a creative way to say 'F.' Some of it is uproariously funny; I would have repeated at least a year of high school if I wrote papers like that. Grammar, spelling, and syntax are alien concepts to many students who were raised in English speaking households. But none of it rises to the level of anger in these two examples. I wonder what his other writings are like.

62 posted on 04/18/2007 3:58:59 AM PDT by sig226 (Where did my tag line go?)
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