Your Prose is Utterly Awful

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“For the most part your prose is utterly awful.”

My lit professor had marked up one of my papers and it was savage. It was 1985. I was a sophomore in college. 

He continued: “You demonstrate no understanding of punctuation, which is to say, no understanding of organization at the level of clause and sentence.”

He ended: “Wouldn’t you like to turn this paper into English?” 

I had forgotten about this particular assessment of this particular paper by this particular professor until I came across the document cleaning the basement. I had no recollection of the harsh critique, but I obviously kept it because it made an impression at the time.

Do professors comment like that today? 

A few years later I got a job as a journalist, proving both that I was somewhat immune to criticism and that it’s possible to work as a professional writer with no understanding of punctuation or sentence structure.

I didn’t have the requisite five-year’s experience that the Associated Press told me I needed, so I headed to Mexico City where I got a job on an English-language newspaper. I started at $70 a week; a paycheck steadily eroded by inflation.

The more valuable part of the job was the experience and exposure. 

My articles, what’s called “clips” in the trade, helped me land a bigger job later in New York. 

The world has changed a lot since then with one of the biggest shifts that you are no longer so entirely dependent on getting the validation of an organization to get a job.

Would-be writers can create their own clips by writing blogs or online at Substack or LinkedIn. 

It’s less about being “certified” and more about doing the work. 

It’s a profound shift from an institutional mindset to individual effort. 

There are scores of youngish writers I follow on Twitter and LinkedIn who have taken advantage of this change. Some of the prominent names include Jack Raines, Nathan Baugh, David Perell, Dickie Bush, Nicolas Cole, Eve Arnold and Keiran Drew.

As far as I can tell from online BIOs, most were never paid as writers to work for an organization, institution or media property before they launched newsletters, content creation agencies or digital classrooms. One was a dentist, another a portfolio manager at BlackRock.

They just built something, and people came. 

Jack started writing online in 2021 when his application to work at Morning Brew was rejected for a lack of experience. His newsletter, Young Money, now has 43,000 subscribers.

Jack isn’t against working or studying at prestigious institutions — he later enrolled at Columbia Business School — but he’s an example of how to bootstrap your way to opportunities.

Obviously, it’s still the exception to the rule. Most people apply to schools and jobs where they get valuable experience that can be parlayed into a career. 

Still, it’s a path that didn’t much exist before and one more and more people are taking.

BRIEF OBSERVATIONS

CHATGPT PERSPECTIVE: Ethan Mollick an associate professor at Wharton, has emerged on social media as one of the most astute observers of the pros and cons of large language models such as Chat GPT. He’s also fun.

DATA VISUALIZATION: I love data visualizations that provide perspective. Reddit is a good place to find many, including the dataisbeautiful group. Who knew that Mexico had so many more airports than Russia or even Canada. It’s wild that Paraguay and Bolivia outrank Indonesia.

WHO FIRST: Who first…. Autocomplete provides a window into the shifting soul of a trouble world. I get some of these, like who split the atom and who discovered America. But why does “who sang fast car” rank so high?

COME WHAT MAY: I am as susceptible as the next person on the subway in New York City to notice small and endearing quirks of my fellow strap hangers and snap discrete photos. In this case, the tattoo saying Come What May on a woman’s foot caught my eye and made my day.

BRAWL AT CHUCK E. CHEESE: There is an app called Citizen which provides alerts when mayhem is occurring somewhere in the city. The best part is it tells you how far away you are from said mayhem. It’s almost always closer than you think is optimal.