I gotta lot to say

I can’t write well. And I don’t use the right words every single time. You can spell a word out loud for me and I wont be able to follow the sounds coming out of your mouth in time to write it down correctly. I look dumb or useless in moments when I ask someone to repeat their name five times or to tell me how to spell quiet one more time. I butcher the English language both while speaking and inscribing, but oh the words in my head are smooth, elegant, and often times scathing. I’ve done well to compensate don’t get me wrong through the hurdles I jumped to scrap my way to the top. Ah but at the top they don’t see my hurdles they just see my results. They don’t know what I have gone through to get here. My dyslexia is hidden by the coping mechanisms I was taught in elementary school. When my mom asked my teacher if I was goofing off or if I really could only write in gibberish in the second grade. When my mom fought tooth and nail to get me diagnosed and teachers that could train me to overcome it all. I missed reading class and part of grammar class in elementary. Its when I did cross word puzzles with my special teacher and she taught me how to recognize words and use techniques to read easier. Its ironic on this side of time that where I needed the most training, reading and writing, I ended up losing time studying it. I never did learn grammar, funny thing about grammar if your smart enough to get into top English they don’t teach it to you any more. A rhythm in the words, I feel it in my head, but you cant read it because my grammar doesn’t translate it for you. My voice is strangled by my grammatical and spelling errors. I don’t write at the graduate level because well damn what is that supposed to even mean. I used the wrong their in a sentence oops… then I didn’t catch it on the read through because my brain skips the word when it thinks it knows it. I’m so damn smart but you just don’t know it. Or you do. You just don’t care if it doesn’t fit into your expectations. What are those again you never clarified expect to say I missed them. Even with auto correct Word can only carry me so far. I love spoken word because it is everything I am good at my voice doesn’t get lost in the grammar because you hear my breath and my pause is noticed. Its worse in grad school. It is not enough to get my point across it must be clear and precise. I have never been either. My professor described herself as a “grammar nazi” as if it counted as some type of an apology for grading me so harshly.  Your annoyance should not impact my grade. I can’t help it. I’ve hit my limit and I don’t even like thinking that way, but im tired. I jumped the hurdles and I won’t do it any more. I know my skill level is limited so I use other people to improve it by checking and checking and checking my work after I checked and checked and checked my work. Yet still it is not good enough. My worth and the value of my knowledge should not be defined by my grammatical expertise. I am not an English major. I will not be writing books. But that is still silly because even in the real world authors have editors. I’m almost done and I won’t jump through an additional unnecessary hurdle, I’m walking to the finish line. Try to stop me.

Yesterday I went to a meeting between the Provost and Dean of Graduate studies at my school. We've been having a lot of difficulty because most grad assistantships pay below a living wage and have no access to health care. However it became even more convoluted over the summer because we are trying to become a research school yada yada..... Anyway I go to this meeting and the Provost has the audacity to tell us we are not laborers- that they only see us as students and grad assistantships are to help increase your experience as a student for your field. The complete lack of understanding of it means to do labor and be a laborer seems obviously lost on them. But I don't think it is. I'm sure with enough thought they would easily come to the conclusion that we are indeed apart of the labor force of UofMemphis. I know this because of how the school marks me as an employee. I think they understand completely that we are laborers. We are doing a job to receive recompense in the form of money and tuition. What they are choosing to do is invalidate us as a workforce and separate us from the other school employees. The damage they do by acting if our only role here is a student are numerous. They deny us rights and the lack of validity, recognition, and respect is intrinsically tied to understanding us as a workforce. They know they are doing harm to us, but they refuse to think it is wrong.