Disappointing! Student With Four Papers to Write Actually Illiterate

Oops! Upon sitting down to write one of her four papers due this week English major Sarah Goldman C' 22 discovered some alarming medical news. "I was looking at the Canvas site to read the prompt and it was like all the words had been replaced by these weird little sqiggles," recounts Goldman.

After an emergency meeting at SHS, Goldman was deemed "medically illiterate," a condition where someone cannot read which is very common among children under the age of four. "It's rare for someone to develop illiteracy, but it does happen," reported the sophomore nursing student who made the diagnosis.

Fortunately, there is hope for Sarah. The doctor has prescribed reading some classics like "Go Dog Go" and "Boom Chicka Boom Boom" to help Goldman regain her ability to read. "The s-sun did not shin— shIne it was too wet to pl-ay" Goldman sounded out the words to her new favorite book, The Cat in the Hat. "While I used to love Shakespeare and Jane Austen, I've moved on and now have new favorite authors like Eric Carle, Roald Dahl, and Dr. Seuss," explained Goldman.

As usual, the Penn professors were super accommodating and have agreed to give cut Goldman some slack. "Given that we are reading Chaucer and Beowulf, it's going to be a while until Sarah gets to that reading level," stated undergraduate chair Josephine Parks sympathetically. The English department has given Sarah a 2-7 year extension subject on her progress.

In the meantime, Sarah is now taking Intro to Children's Literature which has no papers but assigns 30 minutes of independent reading accompanied by a parent or guardian's signature for homework each class.