Cate Denial

My friends and I have a shorthand for being completely overwhelmed: we say we’re lying on the floor.  I’ve used this phrase dozens of times and have never actually being lying on the floor while sharing it, but it encapsulates something raw and essential about reaching my personal capacity for coping.  Sometimes it’s all I can do or imagine. All I want is to lie on the floor. Kate Braestrup, a Unitarian Universalist minister from Maine, once observed that when…

Read More Read More

When I last taught my college’s First-Year Preceptorial class (a class focused on intensive reading and writing, and lots of class discussion), I wanted to find a new way to teach about academic integrity. Teaching a citation method and drilling down to the placement of periods and commas didn’t feel productive—more, it felt like it focused on all the ways in which students might screw up. I had heard students confess to being scared of citation, of mucking things up…

Read More Read More