ByJoelle Renstrom

Joelle Renstrom teaches at Boston University, maintains the blog Could This Happen?, and writes for Giant Freakin Robot. She's addicted to chapstick, loves the color orange, and hopes to keep the number of countries she's visited higher than her age.

  1. A couple days ago, I had just began to shampoo my hair when I saw a spider dangling under the faucet, struggling to hold on to its filament.  

    My heart started racing and I had one foot out of the tub before I started reviewing my options—I could end my shower now, covered in suds. I could try and wash the spider down the drain. I could yell for my

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  2. Recently, in the rhetoric class I teach at Boston University, we read an essay that included a forward by Arthur Clarke. I opened the discussion by asking who Arthur Clarke was. My students all just looked at me. They must practice variations on the blank stare late at night in the dorms. There’s a bit of deer-in-the-headlights in there, but there’s some defiance too. Rather than skim the reading for hints, they continued to stare…

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