Reading comprehension
February 26th, 2007 | Tags: osv. | 7 Comments
Most of my regular readers (both of you) are above average in every way. Unfortunately, some of the people who have found this site via web search are not as bright. I honestly don’t know what it is about the internet that compels folks to carelessly skim over some prose before issuing forth a frothy, incoherent response — are there that many people with terrible reading comprehension who feel trapped by their lack of a soapbox?
While I cannot claim that this site’s random pitchfork-wielding visitors are somehow unique among the crowds of people who assault more popular sites (note John Wiseman’s post “Like Beyoncé and Jay-Z” for an amazing example of total commenter insanity that even extends to adjacent posts), I have gotten some crazy comments.
Most notably, see this post, in which a wide variety of people rail, with varying degrees of rhetorical acuity, against a range of positions that I have not advanced. (Here’s a tip: neither “this activity is difficult” nor “this activity makes me feel good about myself” imply “this activity warrants and demands spectators.”) Only one commenter failed to completely miss the point: random guy on internet is baffled by baton twirling.
At first I was confused: Why all of the irrational hate? Why have all of these baton twirlers descended on my web page? Why can none of them read and see that nowhere did I say “you are [sic] not a sport?” Then I noticed that many people — many more than had commented — had found this site by searching for information on baton-twirling scholarships.
Uh-oh.
Since this site is apparently the premier destination on the internets for baton twirling scholarship information, I have some advice for twirlers who want to get in to college: Spend at least half as much time practicing reading well and constructing arguments as you spend juggling torches and accumulating bruises. There are, presumably, a limited number of baton twirling scholarships. It seems that you’ll improve your chances of snaring one by presenting the impression that you’re not only an amazing twirler (by whatever metrics athletic departments use to evaluate this) but that you’re also reasonably equipped for academic success (by, for example, doing well on standardized reading comprehension tests and writing good application essays). Also, please consider what you’ll do after college. Since there is such stiff competition for professional twirling jobs, you may not be picked in a high round of the twirling draft after your NCAA eligibility expires. In this case, if you’ve done well in college (again, involving reading and writing well), you may have something to fall back on.
I mention these spurious comments now due to the arrival of a new challenger. Fortunately for the authors of twirling comments, I have recently been presented with a comment that demolishes theirs in nearly every way; it is even elegantly terse. Please enjoy the reigning “bad reading comprehension exemplified comment” winner, on a 2005 post about Ash Wednesday.
February 26th, 2007 at 08:02:14 PM (#)
Oh, the joys of Google. I am enjoying the continuing coverage of this little phenomenon. I find it fascinating.
March 12th, 2007 at 08:07:34 PM (#)
I hope that you’re not implying that if you are an amazing twirler, you are stupid. Almost all the girls on my team & corps are honor roll student with very high gradess The oldest members of our team were accepted into amazing colleges. And by the way, bruises show that you’re dedicated and that you strive to be your best.
I am not trying to be rude.
=]
March 12th, 2007 at 08:14:47 PM (#)
Not at all, KC, and thanks for your comment. Rather, it seems simply that many of the people who found my web site by searching for information on baton twirling scholarships failed to read the site carefully or construct an argument before posting a comment. It would be thoroughly irresponsible to make an inference about all twirlers based on such a small and (I hope) unrepresentative sample.
April 12th, 2007 at 12:17:40 PM (#)
Hi Will and KC,
Will, you hit the mark. I Googled the phrase “scholarships for baton twirlers” because I wanted to know what information was out there about the matter, specifically the numbers of scholarships (and to what degree they were…full or partial) that were available to baton twirlers these days. I came across the first thread of “bloggers,” and that thread soon digressed into a debate basically as to whether twirlers were athletes or not. After reading all of the posts, I wrote a post (having not seen this thread yet) asking the question about scholarships because I am the single father of a 12-year-old daughter who (along with her mother) is dedicating a lot of time to twirling in the hopes, as her mother believes, that the dedication will pay off in a full-ride scholarship. As I pointed out in that post, I am a a former longtime sportswriter who has a fairly good idea of where scholarships (academic and athletic) go and don’t go these days, and I don’t believe there are many full-ride scholarships available to baton twirlers. This is why I am putting my daughter’s academic efforts ahead of her baton twirling efforts (she is a straight-A student as a seventh grader taking advanced placement classes); one of my fears is that she is spending too much time twirling the baton, putting extra pressure on her to maintain her grades and she may soon break down. I don’t want her grades to suffer because her mother puts so much pressure on her to spend several houts a week twirling (including upwards of 12 hours on a Sunday competition, or on both a Saturday and Sunday for the major competitions).
By the way, young KC, twirling the baton and getting good grades are mutually exclusive, meaning that because “almost all of the girls on my team & corps are honor roll student(sic) with very high gradess(sic)” does not mean that because you twirl the baton you are a good student. And, when you say “The oldest members of our team were accepted into amazing colleges” doesn’t mean they got there by twirling the baton, but, I would venture to guess, through good grades in all cases.
One of the the points that Will was making, I think, and in any event I will bring up, is that the poor grammar, spelling, and sentence structure contained throughout the posts in this particular thread (and, yes, KC, unfortunately, even in yours) reflects on the priorities that so many parents and young people have today. For example, my daughter’s mother puts as much priority (more, really) on baton twirling as she does academics, believing, as I mentioned before, that my daughter will surely get that big full-ride scholarship in the sky for baton twirling. It’s frustrating for me, as I am trying to raise my daughter to teach her about priorities and balance and reality — i.e., that she has a much, much better chance of receiving an academic scholarship over a scholarship for baton twirling. Unfortunately, I have also seen this attitude on the Little League fields, youth football fields, among cheerleading groups and all of the other so-called youth athletic areas, where parents are misleading their children into thinking that athletic scholarships and professional contracts are theirs’ for the taking, when in reality approximately 1 in 100,000 Little Leaguers will ever play Major League baseball, at best.
So, again, I pose the question to anyone who might have the factual answer: How many full-ride scholarships are offered to major U.S. universities for baton twirling each year?
I would certainly appreciate a clear-cut answer. It could save a lot of future heartache for one young baton twirler and her parents.
April 12th, 2007 at 01:03:37 PM (#)
Ed,
I looked at the NCAA page to see if they had any statistics, but apparently they don’t consider twirling a sport. (I must say that I was absolutely shocked to discover this.) A little more Googling turns up this article, which asserts that “Iowa is the only university nationwide to offer a full tuition scholarship, regardless of whether the twirler is in-state or not, for the spirit spot.”
Note that this claim doesn’t say anything about what scholarships may or may not be available for in-state twirlers at other universities, but the picture does look rather bleak. I’d suggest to young twirlers who seek full scholarships that they instead aim for more modest and reasonable goals, like becoming an all-Pro NBA point guard, getting elected President, or winning a multi-state lottery.
Thanks for your comments.
best,
wb
April 27th, 2007 at 02:06:24 PM (#)
I am a senior in high school and was the feature twirler. Next year I will be attending a university where I will be recieving my instate tuition for being a feature twirler and I am recieving a scholar award that will cover all but $1000 of my out-of-state tuition. I would not discourage any girl who is determined to twirl in college. It may take a lot of time for practice, but learning how to set goals and achieve them along with many other disciplines can really help everything outside of twirling. Twirling is a very unique sport, and if you have the chance to do what you love on the field in front of a couple thousand screaming fans then I say go for it. I know there are quite a few colleges out there that offer scholarships for twirling. Many of the scholarships are small but every penny helps considering how expensive it is for college these days. A website that may help you Ed, http://www.twirlmania.com This site lists colleges that have twirlers and offer scholarships. Scroll down to college twirling.
September 18th, 2008 at 11:04:49 PM (#)
hi my name is catreena i am a junior in high school and yes i am another twirler..
i would just like to say that me and my team mates found one of your previous blogs and were not very happy to see you bashing on our years and years of hard work. you say its not bashing but when you say we dress like hookers(in uniforms that probably cost more than half your wardrobe i might add) and toss sticks in the air, but im pretty sure thats bashing twirlers everywhere..(which btw have you ever tried to toss one of these ’sticks’ in the air? i dont think so) and as far as your whole ’studies’ comments go..i am mainly twirling right now so that i CAN get into a good college and most twirlers spend just as much time studing as they do twirling and most of them also take honors and advanced placement classes, there are girls that i twirl with that are WORLD CHAMPIONS and the get into the ‘big colleges’ like the ones hat you need a 4.0 or higher to get into, even with out twirling
so maybe the next time you try to defend yourself you will realize that you are just digging yourself into a deeper hole with baton twirlers all around the world because yes.. baton twirling is a world wide SPORT and you might like to know that your country is one of the top three twirling countries in the world so i guess we are sorry for being good representatives at ‘tossing our sticks’ for your country..