Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: BLUE (11/09/17)
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TITLE: Perfect (per'fikt), adj. 1) faultless | Previous Challenge Entry
By Kathleen Muldoon
11/14/17 -
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One serious attempt to fulfill my biblical call to perfection came after enrolling in my first college course. I began my undergraduate degree at age 35 when I started working at a university where a staff scholarship was an employee benefit. While I appreciated this chance to earn a degree, the challenge of college petrified me. My high school study habits had long since faded from memory. Therefore, I chose English Composition 101 for my first semester with a view toward easing my path into academia.
My first assignment was to describe in 500 words a place where I go to seek peace. The professor told the class he would not use harsh red pencil to correct our papers.
“Editors use blue pencil,” he explained. “The changes they suggest are to help strengthen your writing.”
I liked that! Blue pencil sounded nonjudgmental and encouraging. I began the assignment that Saturday. My topic was the peace garden at a nearby monastery where I often found welcome relief from the noise and traffic of the city.
I wrote my first draft in an hour; on reviewing it, however, it seemed so ordinary! I wanted my writing to be perfect. Each word needed to be magnificent, strong, worthy of a college paper. I turned to the paperback reference set I’d purchased at the campus book store—a dictionary, a thesaurus, and a grammar book. I found in the thesaurus the words I needed to adequately describe my sacred place. For the remainder of the weekend, I replaced each common word with an exquisite one. I eliminated all the boring “was” and “were” forms and substituted dynamic verbs. I don’t recall them all but vividly remember my opening sentence: “I perambulate into a botanical oasis of pacification at the monastic domicile of the Benedictines, alight on the ossified settee, and scrutinize the transcendent boughs laden with verdant foliage that encompass me.”
The week between handing in my paper and receiving it back seemed endless. Finally, as the professor prepared to hand back our compositions, he announced that overall he was pleased with our work and that a few students had neared perfection. I tried not to blush. As he handed out the papers, I noted that many were awash with blue pencil in the right margins. My hand trembled as I accepted mine. Yes! No blue comments marred the margins. My spirit soared. Then I noticed in the upper left corner three words, neatly printed in blue: BURN YOUR THESAURUS.
Thus my two week college career nearly ended. How could I have been so stupid? It was Saturday before I took the crumpled paper from my backpack and reread it. My face burned with embarrassment. Then I started laughing. What a pile of rubbish!
I went to class early the following Monday evening and asked the professor for help. He laughed with me as he scanned my paper.
“I wanted it to be perfect,” I admitted.
He nodded. “Perfection is in the eye of the beholder—in this case, it’s the one who ‘be holding’ your paper.”
He explained that writers communicate with readers, and that communication needs to be clear, informative, entertaining, and understandable.
“I think you’re describing the Peace Garden at the Benedictine Monastery, right?” I nodded. He went on, “I too find peace there. I know you’re entering the garden, sitting on the stone bench, and enjoying looking at the trees. But you need to describe this place for a reader who has never been there.”
I learned more from this professor than from any other over the next few years. He helped me learn to use simple but powerful language. Much of this help came through blue pencil comments in the right margin of subsequent papers.
I learned a lot about my faith, too. As a reader of Scripture, I needed to understand what the authors and translators wrote. Take, for example, Matthew 5:48: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (NIV) According to the "Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible," Hebrew words rendered in English as “perfect” do not mean sinless but rather describe “a person attempting to follow God’s commandments to the best of his or her ability.” Now, that communicates to me perfectly!
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