{"id":628,"date":"2011-05-27T20:53:07","date_gmt":"2011-05-28T03:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nothingtoreadhere.com\/?p=628"},"modified":"2011-05-27T20:53:07","modified_gmt":"2011-05-28T03:53:07","slug":"required-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/n2rh.com\/?p=628","title":{"rendered":"Required reading"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>My last post reminded me of a story from my past that has some similarities.\u00a0 Fortunately, I don’t see myself getting as angry while writing this one.<\/p>\n

In my former professional life, I worked at a university doing a few different things.\u00a0 For about two of those years, I served as an academic advisor for the college office.\u00a0 A big part of that job was knowing where to find all of the information so that I could direct students to those publications and show them the answers to their questions.\u00a0 Ya know, the whole “teach a man to fish” thing.\u00a0 There were four main ones I went to on a daily basis. First was the General Catalog, which had information on all courses offered by the university (including descriptions and prerequisites).\u00a0 Second was the Schedule of Classes, a quarter-specific publication that said what was being offered then, when those classes met, etc.\u00a0 Third was the General Education booklet, listing what courses fulfilled what requirements.\u00a0 And fourth was the Guide to Undergraduate Studies, which had some information on specific non-GE requirements.\u00a0 The problem with that last one was that all of its info was already in the General Catalog and it also duplicated a lot of items listed in the GE booklet.\u00a0 Finally, someone had the bright idea to combine the last two.\u00a0 It made a lot of sense and would save money in the process, so I was all for it.<\/p>\n

“But what should we call that new resource?” the college wondered.\u00a0 Without being asked, I threw my hat in the ring and started thinking up names.\u00a0 Not only do I really enjoy those kinds of exercises, but I was about to leave the university setting after a total of nine years, and it would’ve meant a lot to me to “live on” via something as silly as a publication name.\u00a0 I only had one important internal criterion: it couldn’t be anything that would open the door for redundancies.\u00a0 For example, since I hate when people say “ATM machine” or “PIN number,” I had to make sure the name I came up with would make that abomination impossible.\u00a0 In practice, that meant that if I were making an acronym, it couldn’t end with “guide,” “booklet,” or “brochure.”\u00a0 Technically, I wouldn’t want a word like that anywhere in the acronym, because if people had called the Guide to Undergraduate Studies “the GUS guide,” I’d still want to punch them in their inaccurate faces.\u00a0 With that ground rule firmly in place, I started thinking.\u00a0 First, I wrote down every word that might make sense to fit into an acronym.\u00a0 This was all for the College of Letters and Science, so I put those three capitalized words down.\u00a0 (There was an organization on campus already called CLAS, so that was out of the question – in case you were wondering.)\u00a0 I put down an R for requirements, G and E for General Education, and a few more until my sheet of paper looked like I was trying to find the bonus answer in the Jumble.\u00a0 (Somewhere my mom is giving an understanding nod.)<\/p>\n

When the dust settled, I had a front-runner: “The LASER,” short for “Letters And Science Educational Requirements.”\u00a0 I wasn’t 100% on board with promoting the “and” to capitalized status, but I was willing to live with it because everything else worked so well; it was cool-sounding and an accurate representation of what one would find in those pages.\u00a0 I walked into the Dean’s office and made my pitch.\u00a0 I was confident, presenting it as if it were hands-down the best option he’d see.\u00a0 I read it to him and handed him a piece of paper with the name and the spelled-out version.\u00a0 He cocked his head a little, and I didn’t like that.\u00a0 Clearly something wasn’t sitting quite right to him.\u00a0 Was it too modern sounding?\u00a0 Too science fictiony?\u00a0 Then he spoke: “I’m not sure about the E.”\u00a0 I explained that since it had all of the GE requirement plus the University Requirements, the umbrella of “Educational” made sense to me.\u00a0 “It’s not that,” he said, “It’s just that there’s also an Education Department, and I think that could get confusing.”\u00a0 I saw his point but didn’t fully agree with it.\u00a0 Maybe I was naive, but I thought students would be able to differentiate the two.\u00a0 “What else could we put in that spot?” he asked.\u00a0 That was a good sign because it told me he wasn’t against the name itself, so we brainstormed together.\u00a0 “Well,” I said, “They’re all ‘undergraduate’ requirements.\u00a0 I don’t like the way L-A-S-U-R looks as much, but it would still be pronounced the same way.”\u00a0 He didn’t really like that one either, even though it fit the bill.\u00a0 I had an idea, debated internally whether to speak it or not, and then went for it: “What about ‘Academic’ instead?\u00a0 My only hesitation with that is that I’d still want it to be pronounced like ‘laser’ and not have people say ‘lay zar.'”\u00a0 He thought for a minute and then said, “Letters And Science Academic Requirements…that works.\u00a0 Let’s do that.<\/a>”<\/p>\n

The new and improved academic resource wouldn’t be coming out until the following academic year (once I’d already be gone), so I did my part in telling people about the new name and how it should be pronounced.\u00a0 When the time came to leave, I mentally crossed my fingers and hoped that people would take the right path.\u00a0 After all, what’s the point in creating an acronym that spells out a real word if the word isn’t going to be pronounced that way?\u00a0 Well, a year later, my friend Suzanne told me that people were largely calling it the “lay zar” but that she was doing her part in correcting them and trying to right the ship.\u00a0 That was the last I’d heard of it until my last post reminded me of this story.\u00a0 I emailed Suzanne and asked for a status report on “laser” versus “lay zar.”\u00a0 I wrote that my gut told me people probably fell into saying ‘lay zar’ but that I hoped it wasn’t the case.\u00a0 She replied with two main points: One, she corrects people and lectures them on the right pronunciation but it has little to no effect.\u00a0 Two, it’s my old L&S colleagues who are to blame.\u00a0 “They call it ‘lay zar’ ALL the time,” she wrote.\u00a0 Well that’s just great.<\/p>\n

I’m torn in three directions with this whole thing.\u00a0 On one hand, I’m really pleased that I made a little mark in the world of academic advising after spending so much time and energy engrossed in its minutia.\u00a0 On the other hand, it bugs me that people are walking around calling it essentially by the wrong name.\u00a0 And on the magical third hand, I can’t blame them.\u00a0 It looks like ‘lay zar,’ so if they don’t hear it pronounced the right way from the very beginning, it’s really not their fault.\u00a0 Should I have pushed for “LASUR” instead of half-heartedly offering it as a suggestion?\u00a0 I still don’t like the way that looks, but is that more or less important than how it’s said?\u00a0 I really don’t know.\u00a0 I guess I should just be glad that people aren’t also being redundant and talking about their “lay zar requirements.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My last post reminded me of a story from my past that has some similarities.\u00a0 Fortunately, I don’t see myself getting as angry while writing this one. In my former professional life, I worked at a university doing a few different things.\u00a0 For about two of those years, I served as an academic advisor for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[183,182],"class_list":["post-628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-academics","tag-lasar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/n2rh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/n2rh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/n2rh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/n2rh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/n2rh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=628"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/n2rh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":632,"href":"https:\/\/n2rh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628\/revisions\/632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/n2rh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/n2rh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/n2rh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}