In early September of 1998, my first girlfriend seemed ready to break up with me. I wasn’t ready to let her go, so I made a last-ditch effort to save the relationship by writing her a letter. It was similar to the letter that Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro wrote to his ex-girlfriend while they were in college, except that it was modeled more on Harry Burns’ big speech to Sally Albright (“I love that…I love that….I love that….”). It didn’t work; she broke up with me anyway.
In retrospect, it’s clear that I was pretty naive at the time. Having learned about romantic relationships mostly through movies, rather than personal experience, I believed that a grand gesture could erase or overcome fundamental incompatibilities. I don’t believe that anymore.
My recollection of this letter-writing scene is not solely one of embarrassment. My conviction that things could still work out if I can find the right words may have been wrong in that situation, but, in general, I want to be a person who thinks that his choices of words matter, and who tries to get them right whenever possible. It’s a form of optimism to think that if I’m attentive to my words they might have the desired impact, and I believe it’s healthy.
My latest exercise in lexical optimism is the essay An Exam is a Moral Document, just published in Advances in Physiology Education.
Will this essay be widely read? Will it change anyone’s mind?
I have no idea, but I’m glad I gave it a shot.
My Track Record 
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