The Academic Circle of Life & Excellent Usage of Commas

by Laura Yeager There is a great circle of life that occurs at the university. Years ago, when I was in graduate school at Iowa State University, I was studying with Jane Smiley.  I had won a fellowship (The Pearl Hogrefe Creative Writing Fellowship) for my first year of study; to finance my second year of school, I was given a teaching assistantship.  Essentially, in addition to taking classes I taught two college writing classes. Jane was also my thesis advisor, so she read all of my writing.  She noticed that I did not know the rules for punctuating restrictive and […]