The Impostor

A funny thing happened to me this week. Beth sent me a solicitation for editing work from the English department mailing list, and I responded. The author introduced himself as a doctor and medical student at UC Davis, and he wanted help with a case report and literature review he'd been assigned in the field of addiction research. He sent it to me, and it was abysmal. It was written at a tenth grade level, and didn't correspond at all to the kind of document he'd said. I marked up his paper and arranged to meet with him. He was friendly, charming, and a complete fake -- a sort of a con artist. He turned out not to be a doctor at all, but a chiropractor. The "medical school" he was attending was a program for physician's assistants. And he didn't know what he was talking about; for example, he didn't know what Antabuse was, which is one of the oldest and most obvious drugs prescribed for alcoholism. He kept trying to cover himself, but he knew nothing. I don't know what was up with him -- my best guess is that he was severely dyslexic (he didn't read my comments), and was looking for me to write the paper for him, or at least wanted to draw me out and induce me to give him the ideas during our meeting. Strangest of all, he paid me, and the check cleared.

Beth says that I simply don't understand the crisis in literacy which this country faces. She may be right.