To the Class of 2021, I suppose that I would feel unusually close to your class since this is my last year of teaching. You are the last class I have been with for all four years. But my respect for you as a group is not just based on…
Viewpoint
Years ago, I, having read Oliver Sacks’ “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” as well as Paul Kalanithi’s “When Becomes Air,” and having thought to myself, “Hey, that seems legit,” decided that I was going to be a doctor. What I did not initially realize was that…
Last week, an unsurprisingly-anonymous op-ed in this paper bemoaned the lack of “nuance” regarding what the author referred to as “the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.” The article was fairly long, but a key sentence in this article read.: “I cannot understand this complicated geo-political and ethno-religious conflict as the ‘good’ versus the…
When I wrote my first English essay at my U.S. high school, I struggled with citations—not the formats but when and what exactly to cite. The teacher said that if I took any ideas from another individual, including direct quotes and paraphrasing, I’m supposed to cite them as sources. I…
Many staff members at Carleton have offered decades of service to our school and to its students. In advance of the class of 2021’s graduation, these small pieces of advice for our graduating seniors have been collected from some of the college’s longest-serving staff. While few staff get to stand…
Dear Carleton Community, This past week, more than 10,000 Gazans have been displaced from their homes, and at least 137 are confirmed to have died as Israel intensified bombing campaigns and threatened to launch an all-out ground invasion. Among the dead, at least 27 are children. Though the Israeli government…
Writing this piece is daunting. There is so much I want to say, so much I need to say, but finding a way to accurately articulate my conflicted feelings feels futile. This is my attempt. I have felt disheartened, frustrated and saddened by the lack of nuance the Israeli/Palestinian conflict…
It’s official: Loud chewing, the king of pet peeves, has been dethroned. In its place? The insidious, mind-numbing horror that is collegiate academic writing. I decree, a new king is named! Despite the novelty of his reign, we have suffered for far too long under the tyranny of seven-syllable words,…
I am someone who loves to read the Carletonian. I have a ritual of picking up the newspaper from Sayles every Friday and sitting to read what looks interesting to me. And since The Distance started being published online, I have been able to share and engage with articles I…
When the fossil fuel divestment movement began at Carleton almost a decade ago, few colleges or universities had committed to moving their endowments out of fossil fuels. By 2014, only two U.S. liberal arts colleges had made divestment pledges: College of the Atlantic and Pitzer College. But today, 10 U.S.…