I’m starting to get the hang of work. Ever since I came in for my interview, though, I’ve noticed loud banging sounds coming from overhead. It sounded something like ten-ton hippos doing belly flops on the roof. I finally asked one of my co-workers what it was. “There’s an aerobics studio on the second level. Eventually, you get used to it and stop noticing it.” Ahh, I thought. Well, that’s one mystery solved.

Since nothing else interesting happened today, I decided to take this time for a little rant. You may notice, after I put the closing punctuation at the end of a sentence, I space twice. This is how I was taught to do it in typing class in high school (early- to mid-90s). And this is how I have always done it. A few years ago, when I was first teaching Freshman Composition at the University of Georgia, I noticed that a number of students were only putting one space at the end of a sentence. I thought there might be more to this than poor form, and eventually I discovered the source: The Modern Language Association had handed down their ruling from on high that, from now on, sentences will only have one space after the final period!

The Modern Language Association is an association of English teachers that is now over 120 years old. They’re the main governing body that decides what is “standard” English and what isn’t (and even the terms used – for instance, they don’t use terms like “proper English” or “correct English” anymore; they use “standard English.” This is a politically correct switch from recognizing English grammar as an absolute to recognizing it as an evolving, mutually-agreed-upon set of largely random and arbitrary rules.)

Anyway, they’re always changing things like that. I guess if they don’t change anything, they won’t have any reason to put out a new version of the MLA Handbook, and if the handbook doesn’t change, people will start asking why they pay yearly dues to the organization’s officials when they obviously aren’t doing anything. It makes things hard for me, though, because I’m always having to re-learn stuff, and I can no longer have the confidence I used to have when a student says, “But this is how my high school English teacher told me to do it!” I always think, “Did they change something on me again? I’ll have to go look it up before I give my student the answer.”

Of course, this is how every good business works, from the Auto Industry to Microsoft to Big Tobacco. If you can implement planned obsolescence into your product, you turn a one-time customer into a lifetime customer. If you make your customer reliant on you for continued service, you stabilize your income and secure your future prosperity. Funny how that works in academia as well as business. And you thought the Ivory Tower was immune!

My uncle and aunt are missionaries to Third-World countries, and they have adopted the old saw, “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach him to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” Everyone else is adopting it too, it seems, but applying it in reverse.