Long ago, when I was a junior instructor in English at the University of New Orleans, I had the tedious task, along with other junior instructors, of sorting through admissions essays to determine placement of new students. This was a most unwelcome job. We had to meet on a Saturday to read hundreds of two-page handwritten essays. To streamline the work, we looked for three identified major errors. If I remember correctly, we determined that the presence of two of those errors would place a student in remedial English; the others would be enrolled in Freshman Composition. We avoided paying attention to content because it would only get us bogged down. I couldn’t help thinking about those students who had labored over their thoughts and words, unaware that what they wrote didn’t matter; all that mattered was the grammatical template we used to avoid actually paying attention to what they said.  

I was reminded of this recently when I submitted a short story to a publication. The editor, whom I happen to know slightly, returned the story with obvious consternation and a long list of red-inked “suggestions.” I didn’t read all his remarks, since it was clear very early on that he’d expected a conventional single-character point of view with an epiphanic plot structure. My story was omniscient, scenic, and existential. His remarks actually had to do with the story’s failure to fit his template. I responded to his suggestions with gratitude, very much in admiration and appreciation of his labor, but pointing out that what he clearly had in mind was another story entirely—not the one I wrote. It was rather like faulting a horse for not being a cow.

This has happened twice in the past six months. A different story, a different editor, but the same experience, and it makes me think of all those students whose words were never actually read before they were judged. But the real issue is larger. It has to do with those expectation templates. This editor had clearly put a great deal of thought into the design of his template. The selection of those three “major errors” for student essays had a great deal of thought behind it, too—and books by authoritative sources to justify that selection. If anyone objected to our method of determining student placement, we were ready with a small arsenal of references.

I am sure that we placed some brilliant students in remedial studies; I am sure we placed students in regular composition classes who couldn’t write their way out of a paper bag. Our system was unfair, but it was Saturday, there were hundreds of essays to read, and we didn’t want to be where we were, doing what we had to do. And that was the real reason for the criteria we used—our “template.” Likewise, whether or not my existential story had any merit of its own isn’t the issue. Its problem was that it was a horse and not a cow. Its horse-merit doesn’t matter if one is looking for a cow. The editor, whom I respect a good deal, also has an arsenal of references which he uses to justify his template. (There will never be a shortage of academics and critics who love to write about writing.) 

I think it must be kind of fun to devise formulas, templates, and systems. After all, it’s “creative.” Besides, we have to have a systems approach to everything—telephone menus and drop-downs, forms, and such. That’s the architecture of bureaucracy; without it, all is chaos. 

But I wonder now sometimes what all those students, whose sentence fragments and subject-verb disagreements put them in remedial English—what did they have to say? I don’t know. I didn’t read them. I wonder too at how impoverished we make ourselves by our designs, our expectations—of others, of ourselves, of life, and even of God, who tells us “Be still and know that I am God.” The world is predictable and safe and comfortable when we are in charge, when we slap our templates on it. But there are no discoveries with templates, and not much joy.