Jessica Barksdale Inclan's Blog

• What Might Have Been

  November 7, 2009

  • This early morning, I woke up thinking of something that happened 33 years ago, something that could have changed my life in the way that Elizabeth Smart's life and Jaycee Dugard's lives were changed.  Even at the time, I knew it, and even now, it wakes me up from a sound sleep.At about 10 pm one evening in Orinda, one of my good friends and I set off from a friend's party.  It had been a girl ...
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• Reading Aloud

  November 6, 2009

  • Fiasco.  Gamut.  Proust.  Intrinsically.  These are words that my native-speaking English reading and writing students could not pronounce yesterday as we read aloud from screenplays.  There were more words, and there were also words that my non-native speakers missed (the best was when one student said "shits" instead of "sits," changing the entire scene with that one ...
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• Letter of Recommendation

  November 5, 2009

  • Deep into the armpit of this unusual and physically demanding semester, a former student wrote to ask if I could submit letters of recommendations to what looks to be about ten or so colleges and universities.  If you haven't applied recently to a college or university, you will find that there are often online sites to do so and if there are not, there are additional forms to fill out and send ...
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