Reading Shapes
McDonald, Cathy

>>SPEAKER: Tell me your name.

>>CATHY: My name is Cathy McDonald. I work at Western Washington University in Bellingham. I am a returning student, that is I went back to school for my bachelor's, my master's, my PhD - which I only earned two years ago - so I got my PhD at age 54. There are two things from my literacy background that I'd like to share. First of all is the quotation I believe is variously attributed to Dorothy Sayers who said, "I hate writing; I love having written because writing is such a birthing process that the power and the feeling of gratification you have articulated." For reading it is this; I think I was a reader all my life until I went to college to be an English major. When I graduated with my bachelor's I said that's it, I'm never reading again just because for a while the idea of fiction as interpreted through the lens of the university scared me off. These days I have been, I would say conditioned, that the most exciting, interesting, and compelling reading I can do would be to read three C's or to read journals. Last summer we went on vacation and my husband said, "You have to bring a book. No, you're not allowed to bring scholarship, you have to bring a book." It was so hard and I didn't want to read. How boring to read a book when I could read something from scholarship about literacy. So there's my story; reading about literacy is now more compelling to me than reading. The end. [Laughing]