Steph's Blog: Anxiety of an Introvert

Steph's Blog: Anxiety of an Introvert: I tweeted this yesterday : The one where I refer to another female as a "bitch. " Yes that was intentional and girl was being ridiculou...

Steph's Blog: Thoughts at 2am: Faith in Humanity?

Steph's Blog: Thoughts at 2am: Faith in Humanity?: I'm going to try a free write today. It's been awhile since I've blogged and I tried to get back in the habit of it with an outlined post, b...

Steph's Blog: The "into class" rant

Steph's Blog: The "into class" rant: um.... Hi. How are you?  This is awkward....... great now it's even more awkward.... I could tell you about my writers ...

Summer School is over!!!

Hello blogging world!

It's been a little over a month sense my last post. Sorry that it's been so long, I've been in this thing called.....

"Summer School"

Which is by far the worst invention anyone has ever thought of ever. Cramming a 16 (or whatever number I don't feel like looking it up) week course into a 6 (this number is correct, because its small and easy to remember) week course is utterly ridiculous. Basically, for this means that you double up all the reading AND you require students to sit in a classroom for 3 hours. 

Let me say that again, I had to sit in the same room for 3 hours. Listening to the same person talk for that entire time. 

3 hours. 3 days a week. 

It should come as no surprise to you that my "attendance is recommended and will greatly improve your grade" class, was rarely attended by the Stephanie Galvin writing this....

But my "2 absences will result in a failing grade" class had only one 3 hour block without yours truly.

It is at this time that I should thank the creator of Sparknotes for once again helping me ace a Literature class. 

I need to finish studying for my stupid summer school finals now....but I just wanted all of you to know that I'm still alive....I guess...and will be back writing soonish...maybe....I haven't decided yet....

Thanks for reading,

Steph

Defining Stupid

I’m bored, and blogging. This cannot be a good combination.

It’s been awhile since I’ve blogged, or written anything in a really long time. To be honest, post-portfolio writing is just not fun. I hit writing overload after I finished both of my portfolios and now I’m going to have to force myself to write anything. I worked out a way to start writing more fiction, thanks to the wonderful Chase Lindsey. Then Sarah Ann Weaver mentioned something about how she is going to blog more often and my head went,

Maybe I should do that?

So here we are.

Ah, the struggles of being a writer…. none of you are interested in that. You just want something to read, or maybe read, or something that will entertain you…so I’m going to try to do that more...I guess

Since we last saw each other, or since you last read my blog (lets not get over dramatic Stephanie this is not a television show) a lot has happened. I went home for 4ish days, I finished my semester with a 3.6 GPA, and I started summer classes. We will get to all of that, or at least the summer classes, because I am currently sitting in one of them…whoops

Today, I want to talk about stupidity, and how I am a prime (word of the day) example of an idiot.

Definition Time:

I define stupidity as the act of being stupid….(that was a joke, that would be how a psychology book defines stupidity)

My definition of stupid is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Or repeating mistakes because you haven’t learned from them…

For example, if I try and sit in a broken chair, and it kicks me off of it, then I try to sit in the same chair the same way, knowing full well that I will get kick off of the weirdly amazing chair that has an ability to knock you off of it, that makes me stupid. Smart, would be changing my tactic, or how I try to sit in the chair.

Webster’s Dictionary, defines Stupid as lacking common sense. Any research methods class will teach you that common sense is an illusion and it doesn’t really exists. This is why we have scientist, experiments, studies, lab reports, etc.

Basically, stupid is a relative term and you can’t exactly define it. But the example I said is about as concrete as I can think of.

Example of Stephanie being stupid:

I left my keys in Nebraska when I went home. I also left a very important necklace, and my ipod charger. We left the house at 4 in the morning to catch a 6 o’clock flight, I was exhausted, I didn’t double check my room, and I left things there. You would think, that after landing in Texas and hearing from my mother the amount of things I left in Nebraska I would be more careful with my things. But, I wasn’t. We got back to my Grandpa’s house and got the spare keys to my car. Took a nap, and then after putting some things in my trunk, my keys disappeared.  Where did they go you ask? Well, they were hidden in my trunk.

For those of you who have never seen my car before. I drive a Toyota Avalon, his name is Alvin, Alvin Galvin. He is about 10 years old (made in 2002) so he has a lot of little quirks. These quirks include but are not limited to: random window engine breakdown resulting in the inability to role up the passenger side window, small crack in the windshield, inability to automatically lock passenger-side back door, inability to lock driver’s door, and (wait for it) inability to open the trunk without a key…

it looks like this (not an actual picture of Alvin)

Yeah, so closing my SPARE keys in my trunk, meant that I would not be able to open my trunk without the keys. This led to about 45 minutes of trying to find a way to open the trunk, and trying to find a way to grab the keys. You don’t want to know what we were using in order to do that. We finally got it all figured out, after Sarah grabbed a gold club and I used it to hit the emergency latch in the trunk.

What was the point of that story?

Well, I felt like an idiot. I had lost my first set of keys, and almost los my second. By my definition of stupid, I had behaved in an extremely idiotic way. But we fixed it, I won’t lock my keys in my trunk anymore, and the next time I go home, no matter how much sleep I get, I will make sure to have my keys. And, I will check to make sure my keys are in my hand before closing my trunk.

So, was I stupid? Well that’s a relative term. Was I lacking common sense? Common sense doesn’t exists. In my opinion everyone does stupid things, and sometimes stupid things can be the best thing that happened to you.

Thanks for reading,

Sorry for such a long post,

Steph

The Vinegar Club

Wow...

I have watched this video probably 30 times. I then bought the poem on iTunes, and have been searching the Google for a copy of the lyrics....ta-da, I can't find one anywhere. I even went to page two on Google....no one goes to page two on Google. This is a crisis (slightly over-dramatic, but whatever) because I need to have a copy of this poem. I desperately (always nice to use the word desperate in a post...it makes you sound so cool) need a hard copy of this poem. 

Important note


This is the part, where I tell you that if you don't watch that video you will not understand the rest of this post, which is slightly true, but not entirely true. But, if that pathetic little tid bit up there in that last paragraph did not convince you to sit there for the 4 minutes and 29 seconds of pure Andrea Gibson genius....I really don't know why you're still reading...not that you should stop reading...but you should also watch the video.

Not-really-that-important-note-just-said-that-to-get-you-to-read-it is now over




This poem, makes me think. In fact, it makes it impossible for me to not think. I feel depressed listening to it, like a good depressed, which just sounds like a giant oxymoron because what kind of an idiot would like being depressed...most of the time it sucks.

I read an article about a certain song that I'm sure you all know, sung by this lovely lady:

It's a sad song that she sings about her ex boyfriend.....oh that's all of them? (Kidding!) 

Someone Like You is a tear jerker, its about her losing the love of her life and singing her heart out. It, once again, showcases her amazing talent. I'm a fan of Adele incase you didn't get that...

Anyway, I read an article about Adele's song, click here for the article....(I'm about to give you a summary of it though so that might not be necessary) 

Basically, it says that listening to sad music releases dopamine in our brain, it makes us happy even though we are sad. It gets all technical and actually describes whats happening in the music and in your brain at the same time. If you have time, read the article, if not just keep reading this post and you'll be fine. 

Andrea Gibson's poem, does that for me. It's filled with all this depressing imagery, and these wonderful stories that I'm not sure if I want to cry, if I need a hug, or just in general how I feel after listening to it. I know that the poem makes me want to keep living and make a difference.

The reason that I found this poem, is because of an Anthology project that I have to do for my poetry 1 class. For the past week or so I've been watching a lot of Spoken Word, because I kinda love spoken word. I've also been reading a lot of poetry, and, just in general, doing my homework. Weird I know. 

It's portfolio season again (woo?).  This means that for the next week I'll be revising a lot of my work over the semester and writing those fun little revision statements. Every creative writing major loves writing revision statements they are the funnest thing in the whole wide world

Please tell me more about these wonderful revision statements....

As I was looking back on all the my wonderful writing of the semester I noticed two major things.

1.) Until recently, my fiction has sucked this semester....sorry about that. I guess I've sort of been in a funk, but the books good! Or looking good, so if you still want to read that let me know.

2.) All of my poetry deals with the same topic. Which is this picture:

So, basically, my writing knew what I was talking about before I did.... because I sorta came to that conclusion this weekend when Sarah Ann Weaver pointed it out to me. 

Funny, how I never know how all my writing is based off my life but Sarah does...and even when I do know that it's based off some very minuscule section of my life that I expect no one to get it...Sarah does...guess that's what best friend's are for...I don't really appreciate that enough...SO Sarah, if you're reading this, thank you for being awesome. :)

Watch the video! Because I want to know your reaction to that poem, and what you think of it. Please comment a response!

Thanks for reading,

Steph

Trust: A Novel

I started writing a novel this week. Like a real novel....with characters and a motive and plot! (What? A plot? novels don't have those...right?) Anyway, that was very exciting, I haven't been this excited about an idea since Advice...which is probably still to date one of the greatest thing I've ever written that is more than 15 pages...kinda sad because I wrote that in high school....yet not sad because this came out of that: 

Insert picture of my tattoo...my stupid macbook won't let me open it right now

Anyway, the novel....I don't really know how to describe the novel. If you ask any writer to describe what their book is about they would most likely spend the next few hours describing to you in great detail the major themes, the characters journey, and how the conflict represents a greater metaphor for all of humanity. Why? Because we're pretentious...and sometimes (very rarely) highly over-confident. And when we're not over-confident we're very well...complainy is how it was said today. We complain about things, and we're dark, and depressing. Writers aren't the kind of people that people like to be around a lot...unless you're one of us....sometimes.

Which brings me back to the novel. That idea, right there, is what the novel is about:


Feeling lost, betrayed, lonely, and lied to. My novel is about trust, and the struggles with it. About growing up, and about failure... How to handle a world where you feel like you can't trust anyone?

Those, are Raisin cookies that look like chocolate chips. The main reason I, personally, have trust issues.

So, this whole novel thing is going to take a while. It's gonna need some editing, and I technically only have the first chapter written out (though the outline is done....however much help that is). I need readers to like read the first chapter....so if you're interested in helping me out, let me know.

Also,on a completely unrelated note, Jaquira Diaz (if you're reading this) your reading tonight was fantastic, Winnona Pasquini (if for some reason you are reading this too) so was yours. The two of you make me want to get an MFA so hopefully I can become half the writer you are. I'm honored to be your student, and thank you for teaching me. (Suck-up part of the post over...though really that was genuine, you're both geniuses and I was truly inspired sitting there) 



And to those of you reading thus far....I give you.... a chemistry joke...

A chemists goes to a bar with a friend. "What will you have?" The bartender asks. 
"H2O" Says the chemists.
"Oh!" Says the friend, catching on that it's water, "I'll have H2O too."
The friend died!

Thanks for reading,
Steph