Luckily, there are many out there who don’t! —including me, at least as far as this sentence is concerned.
Is my student saying that it’s unfortunate for the world (or some segment of it) that some suffer from comprehension, or that it’s unfortunate for the sufferers? I’d go for the latter. Certainly, in this modern world of ours that we live in today (phrasing I like to call Freshman-speak), comprehension is far from universal, and those who have it do a lot of suffering as they contemplate 1) said world and 2) the non-comprehenders. And watching what passes for political discourse these last couple of years and especially these last couple of months, I’d say it’s unfortunate for politicians that some people do comprehend what’s up with them.
As happens too often for comfort when it comes to the most dazzling of Horrors, I neglected to note the context, and so I can’t even begin to imagine what this student might have been trying to say. I invite readers to hypothesize.
You Knew What I Meant 
January 9th, 2012 at 1:51 pm
apprehension?
Of course, these days, as you suggest, comprehension of how the world is being run, and how little we seem to be able to insert sanity into the process, might very well create the hypothesized apprehension.
January 9th, 2012 at 8:50 pm
I think the title of this post would look good on a t-shirt. I have given too much thought to what the student could have meant. I understand the individual words, yet I don’t really comprehend the meaning. Trying to figure it out causes me to suffer.
January 9th, 2012 at 10:31 pm
Thanks both, dear friends. A T-shirt is a GREAT idea!