On writing reports

Jim Diggpory, my doctoral dissertation supervisor, was dissatisfied with the long sentences in my dissertation draft. He wrote on the first page, "Marvin, there is no substitute for a simple declaritive sentence." I took that to heart. Gerald Clark, President of Elwyn also wanted brief, concise reports when I served as his assistant. "If you can't say it on one page," he lectured me, "it's not worth saying at all. "I took that to heart as well. I think poetry is often the very best writing (epigrams, Haiku, and the like). No one could beat Robert Frost for eloquence and economy of words.

Several years ago I left retirement to return to work part time for Interboro School District. They need psychological evaluations. I had spent many years doing psych reports and I knew what I was doing. But in Pensylvania the Department of Education dictates how reports should be written. Their cumbersome, redundant guidlines violate every rule of good writing. I refused to comply and wrote many reports the way I thought they should be written. "I'll be gone anyway before they catch up with me," I told the school psychologists I was working with. "No one wants to read twenty page reports." Several years after leaving Interboro for another school district, where I do not do psychologicals, I learned that the present Director of Pupil Services at Interboro was highly displeased with my old reports. When this was gleefully relayed to me I told the true story of being asked to paint a room by my new wife. I made a mess of the job and was relieved of my assignment after I stepped in the bucket of paint. She never asked me to paint again. So it is with psychologicals.