Ink

For the past few days my mind has been host to a tussle between two ideas that had popped up for a blog - a sword fight ensued, and after a grueling battle that saw both sides suffer heavy casualties, I guess this post won the honours of coming up first. Well I could technically go on and glorify this battle and justify why am posting on this subject before a more lighter aspect I have in mind, but I think I'll do my conscience some justice and disclose the truth.

My fingers have the supernatural tendency to act independently - figures why I love writing and typing so much! Well not two days ago my very own fingers turned on me, and in moment of anger and desperation, all lay down with just the right middle finger standing up to me, facing me. Now I can either take offence and tell them to bugger off (for want of decent language on the blog), or I could wonder what happened. But considering what I had them going through over the past 28 hours, I was not surprised by such rudeness on their part. Don't worry, am not going to disclose any objectionable dirty secrets here, stop racking your brains looking for ulterior motives. Fact of the matter is, for digits that have been used to blogging or writing essays on literary critiques, poems, letters, mails, it becomes derogatory to ask them to do something that is beneath any form of sense or emotion. To ask them to ramble on for pages without full commitment, to spew shit (I can't help it, can't make it mellower than that ! ) all over Microsoft Word, is without a doubt, debasing their credibility and honour!

Confused? Not more than a day ago my Facebook status read "Shakespeare's time is past .. a new Dark Age of report writing dawns upon us *no smiley*". Ah, bet the light bulb just lit up over your head didn't it ? But keep reading, its not just the motive I want you to figure out but read on a little to see what has become of us, over so many years. Education - has got many evils, none of which I am going to explore here. However, I am going to elaborate on something I realised, while drawing up an 18 page report and a 10 page book review. They say writing a book review on "how you feel" after reading the book is a 'good' thing. They say summarising your findings on a project you pursued 'helps' you 'realise' areas of strength and improvement. Don't ask me who in Pete's name "they" are !! The whole benefit behind the report writing exercise has become a farce. Projects never ensue, for want of procrastination. Reports just end up being fabricated, out of thin air. The surprising and sad fact is that such a realisation would come as a shock to several professors and colleges. They would never have imagined that students now can cook up the most believable nonsense off the top of their heads - they can conduct surveys and bring about key findings without setting foot out the door.

This is not where the story ends, unfortunately. Am not saying am the ideal student or haven't been part of such fabrication in the past. But yes, I will also say that I have time and again tried to be faithful to the effort. Alas, the system never rests from chasing its own tail - if one thing is overcome through resolve, another absolutely redundant aspects forges its ugly head up. Any honest and rule-abiding student who wants to get something meaningful and substantial out of the exercise is automatically put at a loss when it comes to writing down his or her (for want of political correctness) findings in a report. Why? Simple. The professor does not want to see anything short of a 15-20 page report. No matter if the whole experience could be summed up in a well-composed 5 page report, we sir want to have the student drill and pain his happiness to the point where he just cannot take it anymore.

What does the student do? Elementary, my dear reader. Its inconsequential at this stage to produce quality - the emphasis has already been laid on quantity. We as students have a multitude of weapons at our disposal. Verbosity. Font-size. Font-type. Line spacing. Headers. Paragraph styles. Title pages. Abstracts. Table of contents. References. Appendices. And a lot more. For want of time, and knowing how greatly reduced an attention span we now have as humans, am gonna detail just a line or two on each mode of clever writing, and then conclude.

Verbosity - Its not enough to spit words on to paper, it is quintessential to chew, break them into pieces, churn them in the stomach, regurgitate and vomit the cud out onto the paper to make it look well-processed and full of "mental nutrition". Let me give you an example. It is mundane to state "the present situation was sad". Instead, it is aptly defined and done with adept clarity if put the following way - "the circumstances we have been forced into present themselves as very unsatisfactory and not conducive to our well-being, defining the moment as least opportune and absolutely unacceptable by current standards". *phew* Now the professor would not be alarmed at the ambiguity of what is being said here, but would go "Hmm .. deep indeed - I reckon this lad(or lass - ah boy this gender equality is gonna kill me some day!) has a great future as a philosopher or thinker, he goes to the root of every problem". NO, you ignorant fool. This guy has a great future as a politician - coz he can twist words around with such art that even a scholar like you has been bamboozled by the utter hilarity of it all! In verbosity's defence, it does make your paper go from one line to three lines per thought! Deep indeed, I say. Deep bullshit!

Font-size and font-type - Am not gonna elaborate on font size, except for stating, a professor will screw you for going from a size 10 to 12, but if you're wise and tread the size 11 line, no mai ka lal can get you for it. Font-type or font-face, choose your terminology based on whether you're a Mac or a Windows enthusiast (the geek in me lives), is more subtle than the size. Choose Bradley Hand ITC, Verdana, Book Antiqua, Garamond over Times New Roman, and observe the wonders you can work.

Line spacing - One and a half line spacing is allowed, make it double, because trust me nobody's going to be sitting down with a ruler to measure when the report comes up for correction - just make sure you send it as a PDF document, and not a Word one.

Headings - Introduce them. You can never have enough, because every new heading demands a blank line before and after.

Paragraph spacing - This is something very technical. Instead of keeping the space at 0 pts, make it 2 pts, before and after - ah forget it if you're not a computer wiz!

Extra pages - Add a title page, even for an assignment. Add an abstract - don't worry, do as the name suggests, write in some tree-hugging hullabaloo crap that more or less summarises your ideas. A table of contents goes a long way even if it includes just entries of Introduction, Main body, Conclusion. References, even if just two, SHOULD be mentioned. An appendix is any irrelevant information you still have and might not have used, and can afford to include in the report, because it "somehow" touches upon the topic.

Take care of all the above and voila, in no time, you'll have a brilliant piece of art comprising 15 pages at the very least. Shame that quality has taken a hike, and what matters to professors is the weight of the submission. While writing up such utter useless nonsense, it drills into the conscience; the futility of it all. How over time we have become so accustomed to figuring out workarounds rather than the actual assignment, that the benefit that was to be accrued has been lost, and defeated comprehensively by the willingness to cheat. But like all other realisations, this one too is short-lived, and I know, the value of this post is going to boil down only to those pointers given above for making up pages, pretty soon. Oh the irony.