God help you if your prof actually comes to the site and stumbles across the HawT Gamer Chicks thread or anything that Pyro''s ever posted.

Does this mean I should be wearing more black or something? I''m not sure how to act with my new underground status.

Hang my head in shame, but... I like my job.

Get his license revoked, book ''em chief!

/copyeditor

He corrected your prose, thus emulating a copyeditor, one of the most thankless jobs in the world.

Which explains why he''s an English teacher.

Or perhaps he grades papers a little differently than most are used to

I had several english teachers that didn''t use the 100 point grading scale for anything.

They listed how many total points you were going to have an opportunity to earn during the year. I believe my senior year in high school the total was like 540-something points. Some papers/test/etc were worth as little as 10 points. The two extremely large projects we had were worth 50, and were exhausting to complete the correct way. There were of course.. extra credit assignments as well. I did a bunch of those earlier in the year and was able to completely skip a couple of the bigger assignments in the last quarter of the year and still get an A.

End of the year you took your percentage of the total and that was your grade.

Actually, I don''t think I had any teachers in my last two years of high school that used the typical 100 point scale, except the math teachers.

Perhaps a minor point to pick up on, and one perhaps you were already aware of. A ""divine"" to Emerson should be read in the English dialect as a doctor of divinity, typically from Oxford or Cambridge. i.e. A theologian.
The quote I''ve always taken as meaning, is an attack against rationalism and the need to justify common sense through the use of deductive reasoning. By consistency he means making unnecessary pedantic scholastic arguments for the blindly obvious, so that you make an argument for the sake of pleasing your collegues instead of actually making a persuasive point. Something which we know academics to be guilty of from time to time.
Thats what I thought anyway.

SHE grades on a scale of 0-9, the percentage grade is kind of whatever she feels like giving you at the moment. The 0-9 is the part that really counts in the end, the percentage is just what shows on your grades. a 8 or 9 is considered publishable.

Advanced Placement Language and Composition

Well that explains the math too.

*rimshot*

Okay, JD. You took the first step of putting your writing on display for others to read. There''s nothing wrong with that, of course, but the second step -- constructive criticism -- hasn''t really transpired yet. That''s about to change.

For a variety of reasons, I''m having a very hard time figuring out what it is you''re trying to say in your essay (note: that''s a criticism, not a confession). First, I should point out that the four paragraphs you posted are replete with technical errors of all kinds. Normally I''d bother to point out each of these errors, but there are quite a few on display here, and my enthusiasm for such a chore is finite. If you ask it of me, I''ll offer more specificity, but for now I''ll just suggest that you do some extensive preening. Look for things like run-on sentences, poor comma use, confused homonyms, lack of proper punctuation, misspellings, and a general lack of conformity with the rules of grammar and the guidelines of good diction.

I''ll break the rest down by paragraphs, although it should be noted that this list is not exhaustive:

--Ambiguity: Is it really the word routine itself that comforts you? Or do you mean to say that you are comforted by activities that are routine to you?

--Straw man fallacy: Emerson does not mention ""artists"" at all in the quote you''re responding to. And he also says that the philosophers adore foolish consistency... not abhor. Or, are you perhaps talking about a different group of philosophers here? In either case, you should specify just who it is you''re discussing.

--Muddy clause: ...who desire change with their constant changing lifestyle due to ""earthly baggage""... What does it mean, ""[to] desire change with [one''s] changing lifestyle""? Also, what ""earthly baggage"" are you referring to? (Don''t feel like you have to answer these questions for me; my point is simply that they should have been answered by your essay.)

--Should one be described as a ""starving artist"" simply because one isn''t frequently understood by others? Isn''t the adjective ""starving"" supposed to imply that the artist in question lacks a steady or significant source of income?

--What does it mean, to have one''s view ""on the days"" lighten significantly, as you claim yours has? Which ""days"" are you talking about? Why was your prior view of those days negative?

--Why should the identification of your muse eliminate your megalomania? Are you sure ""megalomania"" is the right word to use here? Furthermore, why did the absence of megalomania lead you to the internet and Gamers With Jobs? These events seem rather unconnected to me.

--What do Spider-Man comics have to do with the argument you''re trying to make?

--What does it mean, to philosophize ""sporadically""? This is the second time you''ve used those words together, but on neither occasion did you explain what it is you mean.

--Where does Emerson criticize the public for earning a living? Certainly not in the quote under discussion. Cite your sources.

--Why should the holding of a job imply that that job is unenjoyable?

--Ambiguity: Is it the ""foolish consistency"" itself which insults you? Or are you insulted by the fact that some people are foolishly consistent? Also: why? And what work does the word ""directly"" do in this context?

--Also, as illum mentioned, you seem to have misinterpreted what Emerson means by the word ""divine"".

--Inconsistency: Earlier you used the term ""earthly baggage"", but here you use ""wordly baggage"". As with the first instance, it''s still not clear what you''re referring to here.

--How is playing World of Warcraft an exception to your claim that Emerson would have ""agreed"" with your philosophically derived failure to enjoy your work? (Notice how awkward that question is? This is caused by awkwardness in the source.)

--If illum is to be believed, you have misinterpreted the sort of ""consistency"" being discussed by Emerson. It seems as though your entire essay was spawned from this misinterpretation. A careful statement of your thesis and definition of pertinent terms at the outset of your paper might have saved you quite a bit of trouble. Me too, for that matter.

In its current state, I can only tell you that I think your essay is problematic to the extreme.

This no not make cents too me.