What is "it" all about?

No, I am not trying to question the "Hokey Pokey."  I'm thinking about communication.

The second supervisor I ever had once told me that "you really get it."  That's why she liked me.  I get it.  She repeated this a couple times once, enough to make me wonder if I really do get it.  What is it?  My job?  Well, yes, I "get" that, as in I understand it.  If I didn't, I'd ask for clarification.  That is...unless my worst fear came true and I'm clueless about my own cluelessness.  The horror.  To be without knowledge, to have not even enough wherewithal to remedy the lack of knowledge.  But that's a whole other layer of paranoia that we don't need to pile on right now.

I've been told it's rude to correct people.  But I just can't stop myself sometimes.  Of course, occasionally, I've sat there and let the voice in my head correct you.  Yes, you.  One of tonight's Jeopardy questions was "Who was Socrates?" and that got me recalling 5th Grade Social Studies, during which the teacher quickly offered us a drive-by of Western civ. before moving on to the eminently more important American history.  To review the Greece unit, a classmate was at the board jotting important things to know.  Like "soccer tees."  I heard the teacher say "Socrates," and it took me a while to figure out why the kid was writing something about soccer.  Well.  Because it is soccer, not the outcast, doomed philosopher, that was firmly entrenched in this boy's adolescent mind.  Not a bad thing per se, but in the scheme of learning about ancient Greece and being tested on it...yes, kind of a bad thing.

While amusing, the hazy memory also reminds me of the anxiety I face every week teaching.  Do they hear the words coming out of my mouth, and think of something completely different?  Something other than what they've read in the book or seen on the screen?  Are my vocabulary terms and concepts as easily misconstrued as a random pronoun? The kid heard "soccer tees," if you recall.  What are my students coming up with instead of "Monet"?

Part of my job is to make Monet more than a foreign word.  To attach the name permanently to the concepts of the Impressionist himself.  The antecedent, if you will.  But pronouns are tricky, even in English.  It's the easiest way to confuse people.  Toss out a few "its," "thises," and "thats" and you've got a recipe for "huh"?

Of course, you know what you mean.  You know to which antecedent you are referring.  But are you communicating that important piece of the puzzle?  Nope.  That's one of my pet peeves while grading, a lack of reference.  I can guess what they're talking about, but part of the test is to express that concept.  Not dance around it.

One of my current supervisors always throws me for a loop by asking half-questions.  She knows the full question inside her head, but all I hear is "Do we have that number in the database?"  Kindly, gently, I probe, which number for which organization?

It comes down to, I suppose, say what you mean and mean what you say.  As I have alluded to it before, I have a difficult enough time wondering what horrible, negative things you are thinking about me without sweating the small stuff.

But what about when you use "it" to convey your own pomposity?  (I like typing that word.)  One of the forgettable contestants on American Idol made some odd speech when he was told he made it through:  "You've got to have 'it'," he said.  Referring to his own talent in this way made Simon Cowell wish he could rescind the invitation.  Not that he doesn't agree.  What do you suppose "X-factor" means?  A fancy pronoun.  A quite over-teased and advertised one, too.  Would it have been better to say "You've got to have singing ability, confidence, stage presence, and sex appeal"?  Lacks punch.  Or the other American Idol I cannot remember, the Brooklyn girl who gets up at five am for 100 situps and a jog:  "I worked hard for this."  Not her talent...her abs, of course, exposed by a skimpy top and Vanna White gestures as she utters "this."  Cheapening the grammar.

Pronouns and other stand-ins for big ideas are infinitely useful, but we must use them responsibly.  Until we develop telepathy and communication as we know it just collapses.  No pronouns, no metaphors, just a Vulcan mind-meld.  And as a wannabe scholar, that I certainly do not get.