So, I got a job

Yes, it happened.

I, a college graduate (with a creative writing degree) got a job that actually utilizes my degree. So yeah, I'm kind of a unicorn. I get to work with fashion, designers and editors. I get to be creative in my writing and I feel like I know what I'm doing.

In this job I've been writing a book on the side and working with a designer to make the cover. I have loved that experience so much that I've begun asking fellow writers and friends if they want to publish anything. So far I have a friend who wants me to put together her poems into a book. I can't wait! So the dream job has now become clear: books and publishing. And editing them. You know what, pretty much the whole process of getting a book from someone's head to your hands.

Shameless plug, if you have a novel idea or one in progress or hell, one done, I can help you get it printed. Basically I can design the interior (trust me, cover art is NOT a talent I possess) and put the novel together and off to the printer for you. And of course help with the writing of it, should you want that. But anyway. Dreams over. You may not read this blog just to know about some random girl's life. You probably come here for the other stuff. (jk, I'm just pretending to have a big audience because it helps me sleep at night.)

More posts coming soon, because I'm trying to be adultier. In my own way, thought.

The evolution of popularity

According to the TV and movies you've seen since you could retain memories, popularity usually has to do with beauty and confidence. That's what I always thought that popularity would be when I went to school. Not so much elementary school, but middle and high school, I expected that cliquish popularity to take over.

I started going to school during a transition period. Ideals were changing. Beauty was no longer a requirement to being popular. And the idea of what 'popular' even meant was changing. Early 2000s and late 1990s, it meant those mean girls who dressed beautifully and went to parties. It meant you had confidence and knew everyone and classified everyone. It started to change when that whole 'be yourself' movement began to take charge.

When that happened, kids began to take less notice of those people that knew everyone. They were slowly taken down from their pedestal. Eventually, everyone was on the same ground. I didn't witness bullying and/or teasing in middle school or high school. It just didn't happen. People made friends and talked to one another and there was no hierarchy. People just were, and they weren't afraid to be judged for liking something obscure. In fact, the more obscure something was, the more people were interested in it.

People still liked mainstream music and culture and entertainment, but the Internet was allowing everyone everywhere to branch out and discover those little bands in Minnesota with seventy likes on Facebook.The Internet was instrumental to people changing how popularity in school was seen. You could discover anything there. Even the things you were sure no one else knew was a 'thing' had fandoms all over the Internet. We started to receive acceptance online and not just in a school setting, and suddenly, the opinions of people you went to school with held little to nothing when you had the entire world at your fingers.

But still, on television and in movies, popularity was always shown as the popular beautiful people with complete power over all other students. Everyone was classified, as if they could have no more than one hobby. I mean that was slowly changing, but it was still treated like a rarity when a drama geek was also a 'popular' kid. It's entertaining to watch, but it's not so real anymore.

I know that bullying is still a problem, and cyberbullying is no small dilemma. I just never witnessed the bullying or meanness to others. And if I did, people didn't take it. Since people didn't hold hierarchies, peers weren't afraid to speak up when something unfair was happening.

There will always be a problem with bullying because people are raised differently and are abused and some are just confused. But things have really changed. I, for one, am glad that my sister goes to a school now where everyone is free to be themselves without fear of judgement.

It's Coming Up

As you (most likely don't) know, I am to graduate in May. As I keep telling people, that's if I pass my classes. Not that I'm in danger of that. I just like to keep a hint of caution. I will have a creative writing degree. It's, like, my dream degree. I didn't even realize how perfect it was until I had been in it for a while. But it all adds up.

• At night, I was the best bedtime story teller. 
• I ate up books; children's and young adult. Still primarily read those.
• I actually wrote a few 'books,' including a book that I bound in cardboard about a unicorn who went on a journey to find other unicorns. She meets a giant spider in the forest. (I had no idea about that movie, The Last Unicorn)
• I also wrote a little four page poetry book. I wrote on the front who illustrated it (me) and who wrote it (me). It was a thrill to see my name on a cover.
• My senior year of high school I got to take a lot of elective courses. From a catalog, I selected creative writing, and it was the #1 class for me. I spent hours on my portfolio, literally binding ten little books with a work each in them to all fit into one of those decorative books that open.
• In English classes, my essays always had a sense of self. I loved writing days.
• I worked in the library for a class period my junior year. Dear god, the smell of new YA books as they roll in and the satisfying crack as they are opened for the first time... 
• I would get more passionate about the creative essays than the research papers.
• I stay up on all the young adult book trends and authors and titles and such. Always have.

So you see, it was something in front of me all along, but I never really put it together. I wasn't even aware such a degree existed. I heard someone say it in passing and I just reached out and grabbed it. My major used to be vocal performance, because it was something I loved doing, but I didn't enjoy the technical side of it. I minored in it instead and took on the writing degree!

Over the years I have written dozens - if not hundreds - of stories and poems. I have written scripts and written critiques for my peers and worked on my own little novels. I edited other people's work and helped them out with plot and characters. That rush from seeing my name on the cover of something? Still totally there. Now I convert my Word documents into epubs so I can read them on my ereader. Flipping through and seeing my book, even if only I see it, is exhilarating. 

So after graduation, I don't know where I'll go. But I'll always have writing. And I will always know that I majored in something I really love. 

Yep, I go to school with my grandpa

As my grandfather, heretofore referred to as 'Gramps,' will tell anyone, he started taking courses five years ago after watching a special on television. This special said that older people should turn off their televisions and go back to school, because if you're super old, you can go for free. So Gramps got off the couch and asked his school, Hendrix, about it. They weren't interested. However, UCA was. So he signed up for courses, to audit them.

I started attending UCA the next year. Gramps takes classes every semester; he's taking two courses this time, and they always fall at the same time. Lunchtime, afterward, so he can pig out in the cafeteria. He likes taking the history courses. He excels in them, even sometimes adding information the professor didn't know. He spends hours a day in the library reading and researching about what he's learning in class. Being unable to even turn on a computer, he reads books, and a lot of them.

Gramps lives across the street from the campus, so he walks here every day. He goes to the cafeteria and reads newspapers as he eats, then goes to class, then researches. When I can, I join him in the cafeteria, and tell all my friends about him to say hi. He's quite an open book. Friendly and talks to everyone. His peers in class call him 'Jim' and when they call him 'sir', he tells them if they're to call him sir, that they should instead refer to him as 'Your Excellency." And they call him that.

When the professor assigns partners, they all fight to be with him. He knows his stuff, and he's funny. Pretty absurd, too. I sat in on a class that he was in once for a non-fiction assignment, and he was so proud to introduce his granddaughter to the class. He brags to everyone that he attends university with me. The cafeteria ladies all know him. Students say hi to him on the sidewalk.

I'm so amazed at him, at his commitment to school. He never misses a day, not ever. I mean, who all can say they're going to the same college their gramps is going to?  I do what he does and we brag on each other often. As my last semester here, I'm trying to take every second in and enjoy it, knowing this is something to tell my kids and their kids one day. And who knows? Maybe I'll even go to school with my grandkids.

Why I Pay $4 for a Cup of Coffee

Before college, I was never really into the whole coffee thing. My dad drank it in the morning as a ritual, but I never got into it. When I got to college, I realized that there was a Starbucks in the library. Of course, I couldn't believe anyone would pay $4 for a coffee, and that's for the smallest size (dubbed 'tall' inexplicably). But something changed in me at college. 

1.     It’s fucking delicious, that’s why

The first time I ever went here to have myself a coffee I had no idea what I was doing. Really. I went up and said “I like sweet things, but I don’t like coffee…” and the poor baristas whipped up a mocha. A mocha, for clueless people, is a hot chocolate with espresso in it. Jesus, it’s delicious. It’s warm and chocolaty and perfect. And those bastards at Starbucks know that once you’ve had a taste you want more and more. So of course every time I passed the little coffee shop I spent FOUR dollars on a little cup of hot chocolate with espresso in it.

It gets better. Christmas rolls around, right? And they have all this seasonal flavored syrup people go gaga for, like peppermint and Christmas tree and sugar cookie and ornament. But there’s also gingerbread. Oh god, the gingerbread flavor. I went to Starbucks and a guy I had a class with was working. He crafted me a drink that Jesus would worship. It was simply hot chocolate with gingerbread. I know, I sound ridiculous. But it was incredible. And from then on I didn’t care that it cost $4 a cup of heaven droplets.

2.    I do not have the time to craft my own deliciousness

In the morning, I’m lucky to get cereal down my throat. I don’t own a coffee machine, and the idea of making hot chocolate with water makes me queasy. I was never in the habit of having coffee before the morning starts and I’m still not. I just like it when I’m studying or want to look sophisticated. First of all I have no clue how to make anything they have. Go ahead and send me all the recipes you want, I can’t make it like they do. I don’t have that fancy steamer that boils milk in mere seconds, nor do I have the whipped cream dispensary that you hold upside down. So I cannot replicate their creations. And furthermore, I will not. That is sacrilege.

3.     What else am I doing with my money?

That sounds bad. I know. As a college student money is tight. I try not to blow money all willy nilly, but sometimes you want a mocha with whipped cream and gingerbread syrup. At my school there are meal plans. I have a student ID card that has the money for meals on it. Preloaded. You can spend that money only on things on campus, food-wise. So I have at least $625 to spend a semester on food, and if I don’t, I lose it. So why the hell not buy coffee when I want to sip something hot?