Things We Should Do Better

I spent all of yesterday editing a student thesis.  Most of the people who ask for my editing services turn out to be foreign students, usually from China or Korea.  I am grateful for the business, but I get annoyed at myself because I always undercharge them, and then I end up spending many unpaid hours trying to unravel their grammar, which is often stubbornly knotted.

For instance, what was I to make of this?  “The two ways correlations enable to enhance higher level of learning.”  Or this?  “Additionally, address persistence communication and discourse among teachers and students are initially to foster reflection.”  Arrgh!  What are the admissions standards for British universities these days?

While I was working in the library, a bird was chirping outside the window in a maddeningly repetitive way.  It has been there all week; it must be doing something important in that tree.  I wished for a beebee gun.  However, inertia prevented me from moving to another library.

Every time I spend a whole day on a job that I only charged £35 for, I swear I’ll give a more realistic quote next time.  The problem is that they are students, and they send me emails saying, “I am self-funded and I can’t afford very much.  Please don’t make it too expensive….”  Then I lose my courage.

Not long ago a lad named Yousef sent me his thesis and emailed additional instructions an hour later:

“ I have just found out that my findings of the Moroccan tax system might be insufficient, and my analysis of the findings and conclusions are weak and that have lead to poor conclusions. It has been suggested that the Moroccan tax system barely meets the preconditions of R. Grover’s Model. Rather Morocco is a country that likes to show its systems are transparent and operating well but rather at the grass roots application level this is not the case.  I’m not sure if you can edit taking this information in board or whether it is better for me to rewrite it and send it to you once rewriten? Please advise.  P.s. would you have any idea what grade my research is at?”

After I informed Yousef that, unusually enough, the Moroccan tax system does not happen to be my field of expertise, and perhaps he should make the changes first, I did not hear from him again.

Whenever native English speakers send me their theses, I love them, even if their grammar is comparatively bad.  I give them an even bigger discount because at least they know to put “the” or “a” in front of the nouns.  When I get an email from someone with a name like Brad Johnson, I hardly dare hope.  “I presume you are a native English speaker?” I ask.  This question confuses and offends people named Brad Johnson and makes them suspicious of me.  However, after I have praised the high quality of their writing (compared to what I have been seeing from Tao or Ji), they are soothed, and we enter into a happy partnership.

Tags: grammar, poverty