In class...

Okay, so this is more of a rant than a rambling, or maybe a little of both. Anyway, my teacher, who by the way may possibly be the most depressed woman in the world, decided to critique the students' writing style today. Now, this seems perfectly acceptable considering that she is a teacher and we are students here at University to learn and become better at everything we do here. The problem I have with this is that she was uprooting the style of writing that all of us have learned at this school. When we took the intro writing classes that are required at this university, we were told that some things may have to be tweaked for each subject, but basically, the way they were teaching us to write would serve for all classes. Now, this teacher, who has us writing two page simple character analysis papers is telling our whole class that we need to change everything about our style of writing. Introductions don't need to be even close to paragraph; they need to be a couple sentences detailing what you are writing about without giving all your interesting tid-bits away. Okay, this I can see as being an understandable change as it's just her preference. Also, we need to be using at least two footnotes per paper. This is a completely stylistic writing choice that I do not believe, nor what I taught, that there should be a quota on. If you need a footnote, which you probably rarely will, make one. My other teachers have actually asked that we avoid them, if necessary, because they are generally used in longer research papers, not two page analyses. And though there were many other little stylistic changes she requested, I can't remember them all because I pushed their ridiculousness out of my mind. Perhaps, I am annoyed because I am an English major and she's not even in the English department and the changes she's asking for do not follow any official format such as MLA or APA. Perhaps I'm annoyed because her requests make no sense. As the saying goes, "I'm not happy about it, but I'll do" ...because I have to so I can make an A.