Dangling Modifier and Broken Parallelism in a Scholarship Essay
An applicant is drafting a 300-word scholarship essay for a community foundation whose readers are not scientists. Two sentences are causing trouble. The opener reads: "Walking into the lab for the first time, the equipment intimidated me." Later, the essay says: "Over the summer I learned to calibrate sensors, to log data accurately, and writing weekly reports." The applicant wants to sound confident and precise, and has already used the phrase "I learned" four times in the essay, so repeating it is a concern but not a dealbreaker.
1. Diagnose the problem with the first sentence. Explain the test that reveals it, and give two repairs that carry slightly different emphasis.
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Diagnosis: dangling modifier. The opening phrase Walking into the lab for the first time is a participial phrase, and by convention it modifies the subject of the main clause. The subject here is the equipment - which produces the absurd reading that the equipment was walking into the lab.
The test: ask "Who is performing the action in the opening phrase?" The answer is I. Then check whether that same word is the subject of the main clause. It is not, so the modifier dangles.
Repair 1 (keep the modifier): "Walking into the lab for the first time, I felt intimidated by the equipment." Now I is the subject, so the modifier attaches correctly. Emphasis falls on the applicant's reaction.
Repair 2 (recast as a clause): "When I first walked into the lab, the equipment intimidated me." The modifier becomes a subordinate clause with its own subject, so nothing dangles, and the emphasis shifts to the equipment as the source of the intimidation.
2. Diagnose and repair the parallelism problem in the second sentence.
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Diagnosis: the list joins three items, but the third breaks the pattern. Items one and two are infinitives - to calibrate sensors, to log data accurately - while item three is a gerund phrase, writing weekly reports. The reader expects the third item to match the first two.
Repair: "Over the summer I learned to calibrate sensors, to log data accurately, and to write weekly reports."
Two notes on the fix:
- The repeated to is optional ("...to calibrate sensors, log data accurately, and write weekly reports" is also parallel), but retaining it across all three items makes the structure unmistakable to a non-specialist reader.
- Adding to write costs one word. Check the 300-word cap before submitting; if the essay is at the limit, cutting a redundant to recovers the word without breaking parallelism.
Never fix parallelism by converting the first two items to gerunds unless the surrounding sentence also uses gerunds - consistency with the larger context matters more than any single list.
3. The applicant worries about repeating "I learned." Which repair for the first sentence, and which handling of the second, best balances variety against clarity?
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For sentence one, use Repair 2: "When I first walked into the lab, the equipment intimidated me."
Reason: the essay must show growth, and this version preserves the original contrast - the applicant starts intimidated and ends competent. Repair 1 keeps the correct grammar but flattens the drama into a simple feeling statement. Repair 2 also avoids adding another I -opening, which matters in an essay already dense with first-person sentences.
For sentence two, keep the parallel infinitives. Repeating to is not the repetition the applicant should be worried about; learned is. If learned appears too often elsewhere, vary the verbs in other sentences ("I trained myself to...", "I came to understand...") rather than sacrificing parallelism in this one.
The governing judgment: fix repetition with vocabulary, not by breaking structure. A parallel list is invisible when it works and jarring when it does not, so it is the last place to trade clarity for variety.