INCREDIBLY Inappropriate...OR, On Why Proofreading is a Necessary Skill

Today, one of my yearbook students was directed to crop a picture I had taken of Barack Obama at a rally for the Current Events spread. The picture is a pretty close shot of President Obama standing under a sign that reads "CHANGE" on the first line and barackobama.com on the second line.

The picture was too large and appeared grainy and pixelated. I told my student to crop the picture to make it smaller. After a few minutes, she calls out, "Ms. D.....it won't work." In my stressed, irritated state, I bark back, "Make it work. You have a great picture and it needs to be on your spread!" She sighs and says, "Ok, Ms. Daughtery."

After two or three more minutes, she says again, "Ms. D....I don't think this will work. Do you have another picture I can use?"

Truly irritated at her idiocracy, and in a tone that could cut ice, I curtly reply, "No. I. Do. Not. Use. The. Picture. It. Is. FINE"

She sighs again and finally she says, "just take a look at it Ms. D."

She prints out the new spread with the cropped picture and brings it to my desk. I look at the picture. There is Barack, standing under the sign, with the blue sky in the background, and a sea of people looking at him. "What's wrong with it?" I ask, in a tone that clearly says "dumbass"

She looks at me with eyes that clearly say "pity for you, bigger dumbass" and says, "you don't see it?"

"What?" I reply, getting more and more irritated. The spread is due in 48 hours, there are hundreds of more errors to be fixed and my stress level is increasing by the second.

"Look." She takes her finger and points to the "Change" sign.

Except it does not say change. In her attempt to crop the picture to fit in the box, the"c" and the "e" had been cut off.

In essence, we are left with a picture with Barack Obama standing under a sign that now clearly reads "Hang" on the first line and barackobama. on the second line.

Thank GOD for students with better proofreading eyes than their teachers!

Of course, we fixed it. :)

*M*

PS--I printed it out for my workshop on writing for yearbook and showed it to three other teachers and two administrators. NONE of them caught the error.