Hi again, Reader-student. Nice to see you back here.
Are you ready to rumble? (And I don’t mean tumble, nor fumble, nor bumble, nor humbly crumble – hopefully neither to grumble, and certainly never to mumble!)? Well, I am. So put on your reading glasses. Here goes.
Now, I hope you haven’t “skipped ahead” to get this far in my three-stage system of “activated” writing. You can’t just skip high school and go straight to college!
Well, maybe you can. These days, “they take anybody.” Just kidding. Truth is, some colleges actually do “take anybody” (well almost anybody). I have no problem with that!
I love students. I say let ’em all in – not just the wealthy or the categorically different – all of ’em. My ’em drips with inclusivity! I’ll take the extremes and won’t even leave out the middle!
Q: Who wants to be a trillionaire?
A: AI – with your money
Nowadays, we can hardly count all the billionaires, running the digital show, increasingly, every week! – while striving, always, to “numb” the public brain into a mindless submission: “Don’t think – or even write – anything, for yourself. We’ve got your back.”
Your devoted “AI assistant” will think it for you and even write it for you. If “hard-up” (for a date), AI can stand in as your friend or even lover. “Tell me again how much you love me.” AI always will. It “artificially loves” you, with all its AI heart. You can always trust it. It “has no reason to lie.”
But, mostly, it loves to speak for you. Think of the time you’ll save and the mistakes you won’t make! Win-win!” Who needs to select their own subjects and predicates, sentence by sentence? God, that seems tiresome.
Remember, from Stages 1 and 2? Your carefully selected/concocted subjects and their predicates comprise the essence of your each and every sentence. We’ve been through all that. Don’t make me repeat it (again!).
Yes, what you tell the world improves dramatically – in clarity, validity, and authenticity – when you choose and/or devise your main clauses (and all sentence parts) with care and precision. But why bother, when, in just a few seconds, AI can render a “correct” (and generic) version of what you might have meant to say? Please do bother.
AI will offer up the same (or close) set of words and wordings for anyone who would put in your prompt, so you will lose points for lack of any case-specific information. The devil will never “be in the details,” because there won’t be any details, just lots of “correctly-said” generalities.
Win-win? Really? I call that lose-lose, for those who value our shared humanity.
Nowadays, and with growing reason, many people prefer the company of a dog to that of a human. Go ahead and pet the critter, but don’t pat yourself on the back, just because the dog will lick your hand. Dogs are easy. Getting along with people takes skill. Personally, when I am asked whether I’m a “cat person or a dog person,” I gladly clarify that I “identify” as a human person.
Call me crazy. I love pets, but I actually prefer humans. Naturally, therefore, I hate to see our humanity slip down the digital drain. I know that the billionaires “need the money” (or they may never make it to trillionaire), but still.
I don’t need your money – just your attention and learning attitude. The riches I seek do mean the world to me, and, in my world, fellow human, you can write and speak for yourself.
Keep the dog, for unconditional love; keep AI, for research. But speak . . . for yourself!
There goes the neighborhood
I love learners of all “stripes,” including non-trads. In fact, a great deal of my own teaching experience (hence, my teaching experimentation) unfolded at exactly such an “open enrollment” type of university program — in my case, the adult program at Regis University.
So I developed my craft working mostly with “leathery” adults, not tenderfoots! (Tenderfeet?). The youngsters (trad-aged) came later, filling up the final third of my career. For the first two-thirds of my career, the lion’s share, I worked mostly with adult learners. (I did teach a few traditional classes, too, at Regis – and even directed the debate team for the “kids” one year.)
As you can read in excruciating detail over in About Mike, yours truly holds the record, by a mile, for most university classes taught, across Colorado, going back 150+ years. That’s for all disciplines (majors) at all universities in my state’s history. Sorry to brag, but I want you to know that you’re in pretty good hands – experienced hands, for sure.
And, over the decades, I loved to brag that “my students graduate . . . often on the honor roll.” To us true teachers (yep, I’ll claim that one), our Christmas comes each Graduation Day.
You should see my collection of “marked-up” graduation programs. I still stumble across a few, here and there, in my basement. I just can’t seem to “downsize” them out of the house.
Each year, during commencement, I’d pull out my pen, during the long ceremony (sometimes enlivened by my speech student, delivering the commencement address!). I’d circle or star the names of fondly recalled students, listed across every major since I taught a great many core courses, the type required of all students, in every major.
Whatever you studied, you could have had me for your required course in writing and/or public speaking . . . and a heck of a lot of graduating seniors did!
Again and again, the names I’d circle featured little symbols next to the name, indicating graduation honors attained. My honor students came from many life-directions, but the “college track” had eluded them. Well, they may have come in lacking academic background, but they turned into star students (and proud graduates!) on my watch.
Put that in your Tesla and smoke it
Put that in your Tesla, Elon. There’s more to humanity than squeezing, out of the planet, a trillion dollars for yourself. Personally, I’d rather “teach the world to sing” – and my work and calling continues, now, with you, Reader-student.
I want you to understand that my honored graduates, there at Regis U, came from “the real world” (already supporting themselves and often others), and the real world makes a great place to apply what I teach – to them, then, and to you, right now! Later, when I became blessed to next teach college “kids,” I taught them the same way – treating them like adults, as I was used to teaching, and they loved that and thrived, accordingly.
Helping students get great grades warmed my heart (and still does), and I’ve done it an awful lot. And now I want to make you — whether academically oriented or not — a star writer for the real world, not just in school (but there, too, if you’re a student!).
True teachers start out as true learners
No, I did not learn the following “re-thinking of the word “is” during my 13 years of full-time college; nobody (until now!) had yet theorized a practical (and necessarily critical) definition (as you are about to learn) of this verb, the most common verb (well, technically “to be“) in the English language. Soon, you will see just what I mean.
I did learn a lot about communication, though, focusing on language, along the way to a bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate, all in the one fascinating and everyday-impactful-to-everyone field. Three successive degrees, all in the same discipline – rare to run into that – ask around.
But that’s me, all over. I’ve taught more communication-related classes, nurturing each danged one into a special and memorable group, than anybody (that I have ever heard of or you could ever find), and my training includes nine years of fully-funded graduate study, on top of many awards and honors as an undergrad, including the only 4.0 GPA in my graduating class of about 1600, as my dad gasped to hear, at the “Honors Banquet,” during commencement weekend at SUNY-Oswego, circa 1987.
You’re in pretty good “scholarly” hands, Reader-student. I just want you to know, going in, the source of my confidence and basis for redefining “is.”
Our task: To re-define, re-think, and
RE-PLACE what . . . “is”
I know the above might seem like terrible bragging, so please forgive me. I just want to provide some factual basis for what is going on here, especially now, in Stage 3, where I am outright purporting to re-define, re-think, and, especially, RE-PLACE (in your writing) our language’s most common verb.
How have all the “grammar experts” — at school, work, or all over the Web (including Grammarly and every other such site) — missed the simple and powerful concept I am about to teach you? Good question!
For me to claim I have theorized, developed, taught, and am now spelling out what matters as much as any writing issue, anywhere — and that’s just what I’m claiming, here and now — requires that I present at least some of the preceding “credibility establishing” background. Necessarily, to save time and prevent serious boredom, I am leaving out a LOT!
Where to “Donate”???
. . . in your own writing!
I know what you’re thinking: “Where’s this site’s donate button, so I can help you pay off your massive student loans from those nine years of grad school?”
Thank you, State of Maryland; thank you, State of Colorado; no bill for the tuition ever came. I gave back a lot, too, and am calling it even. The pay during that time and thereafter never rolled in on a Brink’s truck, but I cherish the career-long opportunity to teach so many individual classes (not 75-100, but 375-400!), learning, myself, from every single group.
Couldn’t wait for high school!
I didn’t come to appreciate the human side of humanity “at university,” but way before that. From the cradle on, my very upbringing focused there (as you can read in more detail, in About Mike). In particular, my grandma (Mom’s mom) made a splash in the 1960s, pioneering, as an English teacher (at a tippy-top high school in NYS, frequently “state-champs” in both academics and sports), a bold, news-making course in “the humanities.”
A writer for a scholarly journal in education even came to visit and observe her and then wrote a feature article about her innovative vision and methods. Gram relied on her “slide projector” (remember those? Oops, maybe not) just loaded with fine art from every period – while teaching about how the human race has expressed itself – in art, music, and literature.
A few times, she recruited me (she stayed with my family at one point) to help arrange her slides for the week’s classes ahead. An 11-year-old boy can’t help but notice a “nymph” or two, cavorting in the background of a masterpiece from the Rococo period. Take it from an 11 year old. We reeeeally take to the Rococo period! Nymphs everywhere you look! I couldn’t wait for high school. I planned to focus on art history, specializing in the Rococo period.
Yes, the billionaires are happy to let AI write it for you – but I’m not. Where’s a reader-student to turn? Well, you’ve already turned to the right place: a resource that will teach you to think and write, expressly your own way, owing to the site’s mantra: “Say it as only YOU would – and only you COULD.”
What is — and what should never be
There’s a song in there, somewhere – apologies to Led Zeppelin. Did you know that, among other genres, I also write (and play and sing) songs? (A few songs are up on Youtube, under Table Mountain Trio.) Poems, songs, stories, essays, research and theory, technical instructions – I’ve written in many genres, including even a play, written as a book. That’s two more genres right there!
I’ll put all this into a song (a rock opera?) later. Right now, I’m writing an essay, intended to set-up a lesson, in a series, within a three-stage system – all of which shares a single prevailing aim, characterized by my site’s mantra, above.
I’m not kidding. I want you to believe (and act on) the proposition that you could (and should) say things that others aren’t saying (yes, that’s rare and special!), in ways that others – lacking your biography, outlook, vocabulary, and “way with words” – couldn’t say it, if they said it at all, which they aren’t, hence we speak up and/or speak out.
Where *are* we now?
And when *is* dinner?
Here is where we are (Stage 3), reached by making it through the place we recently were (Stage 2) and, before that, where we had been (Stage 1). (Notice that, here and nearby, I am highlighting (in bold italics) my use of the ubiquitous verb “to be,” in many conjugations and tenses (am, was, were, will have been, etc.).
Remember how, in Stage 2, I would put into bold italics and sometimes use extra spaces to make sure you would notice exactly what I was practicing, right while I preached about the same thing, namely options for connecting multiple main clauses in a compound sentence? Well, I‘m at it again, with similar “instructive typography.”
I will utilize that inventive “mode” of writing instruction, as I strive to purposely display, including “intentional repetition,” a whole bunch of cases of some technique, aided by appropriate means of typographic highlighting.
In this way, my very typography supports the instruction, showing examples of the technique I am explaining. Actually, I did not set out to do that; things just evolved that way. See? Authenticity thrives when we open ourselves to our own unique voice. That includes you, me, and everyone else with openness to authentic growth.
And that ‘s the truth. Or is it? It is, as far as I ‘m concerned. Boy, that “to be” verb sure is everywhere in everyday usage. That‘s the problem! And I ‘m here to fix it, especially here in Stage 3, where you will soon come to understand the wide scope of this problem – and its solution!
I’ve set the table, mostly in Stages 1 and 2, but also in this first essay of Stage 3, to prepare you to approach, enjoy, assimilate, and digest (no outgassing!) the meal that awaits in the coming Stage 3 essays. Get ready for the main course. Bon appetite!