Having fun with Herge

The Adventures of Tintin: Tintin in America / Cigars of the Pharaoh / The Blue Lotus by Hergé

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Interesting to see the work of Herge as an American. His stories are long and involved and entertaining. However, the images and some text are quite overtly racists. Granted, these stories were first published in the 1940s and 50s, so I suppose it is just a product of its time. Despite that uncomfortable part, the stories are fun and well-drawn, and quite interesting! Herge was a talented man!



View all my reviews

untitled poem from October 13th

you open
your mouth

but only

sound
fell out.

Titus fought the law and the...law won. :(

Wow, I think I just took the longest shower I've taken in two years. Probably because A: it actually had hot water, B: there was no stuck window that let all the cold air in from outside and C: there weren't any bugs living in the shower! Hurrah for clean bathrooms.

In other news, I was invited to talk at the Creative Writing Minor meeting today, to dispel the horrendous myths the freshmen have been spreading about it. I personally haven't heard of any of those rumors, but whatever, I'll go with it. It was an interesting experience, to say the least. Most of the freshmen just stared blankly at the three of us speakers, and I felt a little out of place considering I had been debating whether or not I was actually going to fulfill the creative writing minor for a while now.

It was cool to talk to my poetry professor, though. There are many things about her that remind me of myself, which is maybe why I thought I didn't really like her at first? I suppose I wouldn't say "dislike" but more... threatened? Intimidated? Scared? Those seem like more appropriate words. My meeting with her earlier today probably helped too. She, much like my fiction professor last year, really inspire me to work harder on my own writing. It makes me feel a bit guilty for being so lazy. Well, maybe not lazy (I was accused of being a workaholic this week!) but more... scatterbrained. I want to do so many things, I feel like I don't have time for all of them. But that's an age-old story that everyone's heard before.

My art professor complimented me on my eye make-up today! I've sort of resigned myself to the idea that I'll look weird no matter what I do, so I've gotten a little more adventurous with my make-up and fashion. Today I wore a monochromatic ensemble with seafoam colored shoes and inside-out eye make-up (as in I only lined the inside V of my eyes and left the top lids blank).

It probably didn't help to be dismissed by a professor a few weeks ago for not being "fashionable." Oops, there goes my self confidence!

And now I should go work on my Shakespeare paper: How Titus Andronicus is a critique on the failure of Law in both Formal Law and Vigilanteism. Sound interesting, right? We'll see...

A New Chapter for All

It's getting to be that time of year when I feel giddy and excited about the cooling weather, the bright blue skies and the changing leaves. Fall is (and will always be) my favorite season. Maybe it's because that was when school started, and despite my utmost contempt for it most of the time, I loved buying new school supplies. Well, new notebooks, anyhow. Most of the other school supplies my mom just recycled from my sister, which used to bother me when I was young but just makes sense to me now.

But those notebooks... crisp, clean and shiny white pages, a brand new chapter, a sweet blank slate. The idea that maybe, just maybe, I'll do better this year. New notebooks and sketchbooks also instill in me a sense of great potential... that I am somehow on my way to doing great and important things. It's only until I start filling them up that I berate myself and regret wasting paper and all of those forms of self-chastisement.

Fall now leaves a trace of melancholy in amongst its reds, yellows and oranges. I remember my junior year of high school, when I visited the east coast. Fresh and bright with my first love, thoughts of potential finally found, of great, grand cities bustling with stylish students swirling around my head, I came to Washington College with such a profound sense of hope, of at last pursuing my dreams. The college seemed large and wonderful, and the anticipation built up in my limbs like electric shocks. I knew that life would finally be different, better than the tiny town and smaller school I had called home all of my life.

But these last two years have been a nightmare if they were anything dream-like. I fell into the wrong group of friends, gave myself away in desperation to abusive, insecure people and in turn, became insecure myself. I'm struggling with my own sense of identity now, and what I really want to do with my life.

About an hour ago, WAC's presidential inauguration of Mitchell Reiss ended. I sang in the Vocal Consort that accompanied the ceremony, and I am lucky enough to have my name in the program. It was interesting to attend the long ceremony since many of the speakers were former senators, governors, and congressman. President Reiss is an important man, and I was struck by how much influence he really has, not only here in Chestertown, but in Washington D.C. too. I was struck by how superfluous my interests are: English and Art. Yes, I do believe they are important in some ways, but fiction or fine art are rather elitist things--someone living paycheck to paycheck is probably not going to have an interest in either. President Reiss was out negotiating with terrorists in North Ireland and North Korea. What will I end up doing with my life? Write a quaint number of books and collections? Maybe eventually sell a piece of artwork, if I'm lucky?

I know this existential moment is born simply out of my desire (or desperation) to be known, to have the attention all to myself, to be seen as a great person of... something. There are times when I wonder if I have become too ambitious, set my sights too high. It's the characters with too much ambition who are the ones who tend to fail in the end.

Pantoum

We had the option to either write a pantoum or a sestina this week in poetry. I chose the pantoum, because I already had an idea that fit with the form even before we went over the sestina. The professor made me feel as though I had copped out (not intentionally, of course), but with the distasteful thoughts of Sophie Kerr looming above my head, every little lead helps. I may have given this one up here.

Anyway, this poem is probably one of my favorites so far. In response to all the pretension and ass-kissing you see here at school (and in the real world too, I suppose). My professor said it was reminiscent of Jane Austen, which I guess is a pretty nice compliment, considering I've never read Jane Austen.

How to Win

Don’t you want to know my name?
Oh you do look nice in those shoes,
how great it is to meet you—
and what wonderful work you’ve done!

You really do look nice in those shoes,
they totally flatter your figure perfectly
from that wonderful workout you do
now. I’ve heard it’s pretty tough

to flatter a figure in that but
you always do things with such ease.
Now, I’ve heard it’s pretty tough
to get a job like yours these days,

but little things like you can easily
get what you want. You look lovely—
to get a job like yours these days
is really all based on looks anyway.

Getting what you want, looking lovely,
this is all what you’re used to, isn’t it?
You base it all on looks anyway,
but by God why wouldn’t you—

you’re used to looking fantastic so
I’m not surprised you’ve done so well.
By God, you’re amazing! Won’t you
please tell me some trade secrets?

Okay, okay, I’m not surprised you won’t,
being the absolute best in your field,
the secrets aren’t always yours to tell,
but I’m still so thrilled you’re here.

You are, by far, the absolute best.
It is so great to finally meet you,
and I am truly thrilled you’re here.
Don’t you know my name by now?

Villanelle

The villanelle I wrote for my poetry class. I like the first line and nothing else about it. It's got a lot of work, but I did have a lot of fun with this form.

Watch me cleave this cleanly
like the good meat from a ham bone.
I follow the lines, discreetly

work around joints and muscle. We
eat by the bay window,
you watch light cleanly cleave

squares of yellow on the floor. Meekly
see me butcher the meal. I won’t
follow any lines when weak

with hunger. Do it meanly,
in the way I’ve shown
you how. Careful and cleanly

showing me up, you tweak
my style and claim it as your own.
You don’t even do it discreetly,

as if you were the only one hungry
for bodies fully grown.
Stop. Watch me cleave us, cleanly
following lines and not discreet.

31 Drawing Challenge

I'm trying my luck at a 31 day drawing challenge, to see if I can really keep up my goal of "drawing every day." It's sad that I have to make that a goal... especially because I consider myself an artist but blah, whatever. I'm going to try and post the drawings I do up here, but we'll see if that actually happens, not because I haven't done the drawings but because I'm so damned ashamed of them. The first day challenge was "draw yourself" and goddamn it was awful. I think I either draw myself waaaaay too inaccurately buxom or waaaay too ugly.

So you're gettin' nothing, folks!

Talk Fans the Flame

Paterson, Book Three, The Library, Part II

Fire burns; that is the first law.
When a wind fans it the flames

are carried abroad. Talk
fans the flames. They have

manoeuvred it so that to write
is a fire and not only of the blood.

The writing is nothing, the being
in a position to write (that;s

where they get you) is nine tenths
of the difficulty: seduction

or strong arm stuff. The writing
should be a relief,

relief from the conditions
which as we advance become--a fire,

a destroying fire. For the writing
is also an attack and means must be

found to scotch it--at the root
if possible. So that

to write, nine tenths of the problem
is to live. They see

to it, not by intellection but
by sub-intellection (to want to be

blind as a pretext for
saying, We're so proud of you!

A wonderful gift! How do
you find time for it in

your busy life? It must be a great
thing to have such a pastime.

But you were always a strange
boy. How's your mother?)

--the cyclonic fury, the fire,
the leaden flood and finally
the cost--

Your father was such a nice man.
I remember him well .

Or, Geeze, Doc, I guess it's all right
but what the hell does it mean?

--William Carlos Williams

Infintesimal Things.

You know, it's really the little things that can make or it break it for you.

This past week I've been stressed myself out needlessly (but hey, it's what I do!) over my independent study video project; I'm creating a visual interpretation of Verse I of East Coker by T.S. Eliot. Despite the fact that it's nearly impossible to render a poem visually, seeing as the words of the poem itself are a beautiful and complete mish-mash of phonetics, imagery and pacing, I've gone ahead and am attempting the impossible. Hoo-yeah, I know I've picked probably the most stressful thing I could have taken on, but I'm really trying to push myself hard.

Prof. Castro has been trying to get me to realize my potential, and has been talking about me pushing myself harder and working further in expanding my artistic pursuits. I feel like he's been telling me this for the past year--and either I've been stupid or deaf (or both) and have yet to completely listen to him. I think I've also taken on this behemoth because of the fiasco of my art endeavors last year, specially that in my Creative Process class, in which I came upon a tar-pit in my artistic path and promptly belly-flopped in. Earlier this summer I came upon another tar pit, and this time I tripped and awkwardly cannonballed in. I've never really thought of myself as a perfectionist, but a few of my friends have been telling me I've been too hard on myself, expected unrealistic results and it's been causing my anguish.

I'm starting to think they are probably right.

I've never been okay with my own limitations, I want to be the best in everything all the time...how unrealistic and juvenile of me! It's okay for me to have limitations, and it's okay for me to work hard at trying to best them. To be honest, I think I am a perfectionist with a lazy streak, I whine and whine and whine about how much I hate the things I create, but hell, I don't produce all that much, and it's hard to bat a 300 when I refuse to step up to the plate! I need to clamber on top of this fear of failure. So what if I fail...what's that going to do? Sure, I don't want to just throw myself under the bus or anything, but what's so bad if I'm not perfect all the time? (Because let's face it... I am pretty perfect every once in a while...)

An anecdote from my fiction professor, Prof. Mooney, comes to mind when I talk about this. He told us in class once, that there is a brick wall of shitty ideas in our heads, one long and tall and wide. The only way to get past this brick wall is to take it down, brick by brick. You need to write out and through those shitty stories to get to the masterpieces behind it.

I've always liked that story, because it brings everyone to a similar level--everyone has the capacity to make something great, but they also have the capacity to make something god-awful.

In other news, I'm moving along in my Infinite Summer endeavor, although I am sorely behind. I'm not worried, though, I've got a few days vacation without TV or internet, so I think I'm just going to plug through that with IJ.

rE-view: Neverwhere

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


As I was just about finished with this work, I hopped on over to the review section and found this little gem which sums up quite nicely how I feel about the book as a whole. As Frankie says, there are "cliche characters, cheesy narration and formulaic plot." Gaiman is quite good at setting up a story for what could be a good and entertaining read, (he is successful in some of his other works) but unfortunately he falls flat here. I could see all the mechanical cogs and gears in this story--the quartz bead from Anaesthesia, the Marquis' character, Richard's oddly-placed boar dreams--and because of that, when the big reveal happened for each of those events, I found I was... disappointed. There was a "well duh that was gonna happen..." kind of moment.

I also think that a lot of Gaiman's work have self-insertion type main characters (ever notice how a lot of them look a little similar to our scruffy, dark-haired author?) which completely takes me out of the story. I didn't sympathize with any of the characters, and when Richard first helps Door, which starts off this entire adventure, I couldn't really believe it. All of the characters were simple devices with the wires hanging out. The villians were overwhelmingly evil. The main characters (like Door and Richard) blatantly containing sob-stories as to be ultra-sympathetic. The story was too black and white. Too predictable. The big climax was especially...well, anti-climatic.

Overall, this book reeks of "anti-mainstream lookI'msopunk/goth/hipster/differentthanallofyoufucktardswhowanttobesuccessfulorliveinsociety graaaagh!!" Jesus Christ, give me a break. Tim Burton succeeded with Nightmare Before Christmas, but now everyone wants to be a Jack or Sally. It even reminds me of how my angsty ex-roommate writes. Amatuerish and self-important. So, I would say the book is a fairly entertaining and easy read, predictable and fantasmic, an attempt at seeming different, dark and edgy, but there's not a whole lot of depth to it. It's an alright introduction to "Urban Fantasy" fiction or "pseudo-science-fiction." Young teenagers who are in love with Tim Burton will probably like this book.

View all my reviews >>

rE-view: A Thousand Splendid Suns

A Thousand Splendid Suns: A Novel by Khaled Hosseini

My rating: 1 of 5 stars



*This review does contain spoilers*

I want to begin my review by first stating that this was the first audiobook I had ever listened to, and I thought the medium was absolutely astounding. The reader was Atossa Leoni, who I thought did a wonderful job (she was also the female lead in the movie The Kite Runner) and truly brought me into the Afghan world. Her pronunciations of the names and sporadic Farsi (I think it’s Farsi) word were a nice touch that could have been lost in book form, due to my ignorance of the language. I have seen a few reviews in which they say the Farsi was distracting and annoying. Had I read this book in traditional form, I would agree. But Leoni seamlessly patches the English and Farsi together, and I thought it was a nice touch.

That being said, I can’t say I really enjoyed this book. First off, which I believe is a hot issue when discussing this book, is that it was overwhelmingly depressing. Yes, I understand that these sorts of things really did and do happen, but this is a work of fiction. Fiction writers need to understand their responsibility that they are creating works that are not real. To get a certain reaction, a fiction writer needs to take a different route than a non-fiction writer, or even a poet. Had this been a non-fiction account of two women’s lives, I would feel differently about it. But as fiction, A Thousand comes off as sentimental and manipulative. Crushing blow after crushing blow is given to the women and it becomes exhausting and repetitive. Near the end of Laila’s story, when her parents are killed just as they are about to leave, I was broken out of the illusion of the story and became frightfully aware of the work as fiction and a book.

The most of the characters are incredibly one-dimensional, and are simply there to fill certain niches: Laila as the beautiful protagonist, (let’s be honest, Mariam’s story was there to catapult Laila’s) Tariq as the beat-all-odds hero, and Rasheed as the abusive scumball husband. I do think Mariam was a little more than one-dimensional because we get a view of her from a young age, but as an adult she loses some characterization and simply becomes a symbol. Jahlil was at the beginning stages of being fleshed out, but he was only a minor character, and too, became a device to augment Laila’s Disney-style ending.

The book follows in Western ideals, which I found a little disconcerting. I will mention the issue of politics in a second, but I want to begin with the idea of morality. Now, I am certainly no expert on Islamic culture, but I felt there was a distinct aura of “westernization is great!” in the book, and a lack of insight in the ideals that an Islamic culture may have. All of the “good guys” in the book had western ideals: America is great! Education for everyone! Give women rights! Polygamy is bad! Now, personal views aside, I didn’t feel like I could take this book as an accurate account on what the people of this culture really thought. I almost felt like Hosseini was pandering to a western (American) audience, so he put in things he thought they could relate with and agree with.

This segues nicely into the idea of politics put into this story. I think, while being an interesting idea, it was not executed properly. Every section about politics, whether hearing it on the radio, by the narrating voice, or even by the characters themselves seems patchy and self-consciously shoved in. There was also a clear indication of who the “bad guys” were (the communists, the Taliban). Of course Rasheed sympathized with the “bad guys” throughout the story. There was also a lovely view of a America and Western nations, which I actually doubt was the case. Again, I’m no expert so I don’t actually know, but I don’t think Afghanistan ever really looked at America through rose-colored glasses in the way Hosseini portrayed it.

There is a bit more I could talk about, but I think this review is already long enough. Overall, I found the story clichéd, stilted and manipulative. I wouldn’t personally recommend it to anyone, but I can see why it appeals to middle-class Americans. I do commend Hosseini for trying to include so many things in one novel, but I do not think he executed it properly. Also: nearly three references to the title randomly planted in, looking like an eyesore? Yikes.

View all my reviews >>

Depends on William

So I joined the book-lover site GoodReads a while ago, and recently I discovered something called "groups" on there. On one of the threads there, someone posted an idea of a writing exercise called "dabbling," which is writing a story that is only 100 words long. I decided to try one out, and they are pretty fun for just a short little burst of writing, although that could have just been my self-regard in the fact that I made a William Carlos Williams reference in mine. Woop.

Here it is:



So much does depend on the red wheelbarrow; it depends on what I did with it last night, before it rained. It depends on what you’ll think of me, of what I did. Which I did. It’s early now; the sun is scrambling in through the windows and depending what I did last night, I’ll do today. It’s going to be a dry one. I hear the chickens outside, the horses and the pigs. They depend on me like I depend on you. And you depend on me, on what I did. Depending on if I did anything at all.

rE-view: Angela's Ashes

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Despite a lot of the hatred that seems to be around for this book, I found it quite humbling and powerful. Personally, I read it as a story of poverty, growing up and dealing with hardship instead of the "half-assed melodramatic Irish-American story" many other people define it as. It happened to take place in Ireland for most of it, yes, but the vehement rejection of this book as an "Irish book" seems to be missing the point.

McCourt deals with his father's alcoholism, and the odd complacency everyone seems to have for it, his own sense of manhood, identity, poor health, poverty, religion and sexual awakening (AKA: it's a book about growing up). There are times when I can see the dreariness of his life can be overwhelming--hell, there were times I had to put the book down myself because it was just so frustrating and depressing. But I found a sense of humility in the book, and it made me look at my own life through his lens; a lot of my "problems," I found, were quite trivial and didn't really matter in the long run. Isn't that what makes a book good and powerful, if it can affect you even through other veins of your life?

McCourt tells the story of his childhood in the delightful voice of a child, with run-on blabbling and hilariously naive logic, but he reflects on it like an old man, worn and weary with age through the passages he chooses to tell. Not all of this book is flattering to McCourt, and there are times when he deserves no pity, and yet he is still honest enough to include it. I also found the prominence and interpretation of religion interesting. I am not that religious myself, but I could almost feel the sense of hope and rejuvenation McCourt found from it, and near the end, when he recalls being broken down in one of his hometown churchs, I was nearly brought to tears. It was quite a powerful moment. I don't know if I would count this book as "one of the great classics of the last century" but it is definitely a worthwhile read and a great lesson in humility and appreciation of who you are and what you have. In the end, it's hopeful, youthful and uplifting and we all need reminders of that once in a while.

View all my reviews >>

Swimming Lessons

Last Friday I was one of three people left in the College Relations office. My two other fellow-interns left the night before and earlier that day, and most of the other employees already ran out of here for the Fourth of July weekend. I asked my boss if I could take a half-day, seeing as I had already essentially completed the WCR except for the cover and a few submissions I'm still waiting for. However, I sent my prototype design to D, and she finally get back to me yesterday, on Tuesday. Through lots of arm waggling and apologetic stares she told me it was all wrong. All wrong. After I picked up the pieces of my pride and reformatted the review (tedious and a little time-consuming, but hell, at least I had something to do!) I got back to her and she was fairly pleased with the result.

As I handed her the latest printed-out pages, I couldn't help but feel a little... herded. Corralled. She would only give me half answers of "well, you should look at... more classic fonts and texts..." and "oh well, this size, 12 points, is a little bit big, but your earlier draft was a bit small...what was it, 10 points? Maybe try somewhere in between?" Jesus Christ, if you want the Review to look a very particular way, why didn't you just give me the requirements you need and let me do it? If you want 11 point font just fucking tell me you want 11 point font instead of dancing around the subject so much. My dad told me she was probably just trying to let me learn on my own and that was her style of teaching, but I simply felt manipulated. Working inDesign has been a learning experience, but it's terrifying to just be thrown into the water with no life preserver. Not to mention after you flounder around a bit, you're just told that what you've produced is not even near what they want. I suppose it is just a little aggravating. Drown better, dammit!

Now that I'm done reformatting, I've worked on the cover and come up with a prototype. I'll need to show that to D once she's done with all of her meetings, but until then I am as bored as a lax bro in an art gallery.

However, I've been making headway on the Essay of Disaster. The author is being uncooperative, so I emailed V, Editor-in-Chief, to see if I can get this ironed out somehow, so I'm meeting her in 45 minutes. Yes, I know that, as an editor, I am only making suggestions and the changes are ultimately up to the author, but these changes come not only from myself, but from the other editor I am working with to make this essay the best it can be. Besides, if you look back at earlier editions of the review, you would NEVER find something as disorganized as this essay inside. It seems to me that the quality of the work inside the Review had gone downhill since about 2003, maybe even a little earlier, in the late 90s? The only problem is that my co-editor really enjoyed the essay as it came in, and meeting with V is kind of stepping over his authority and going straight to the big boys (or girls, in this case). I'm not all that worried about it, though, because he tried overwhelming me with corporate talk and shunting me out of the copy-editing process to begin with, so maybe it's good I'm going over his head.

I just need to remember not to take the gesture personally (he's just a young professor trying to get tenure. It's not my fault he's overeager.) and to keep the meeting with V professional. Yeah, I think this essay is something the cat dragged in from a hailstorm, but that's not really going to help it get better if I say that now, will it? Overall, I'm not terribly sure what I'm expecting out of this meeting (V can't very well make the author listen to me, even if the poor girl desperately should) but I can't help but think some sort of improvement will come out of it...probably. Maybe. Hopefully.

I also seem to love italics today, jeezus!

As a side tidbit, the WC Magazine, in which I wrote an article for, has finally come in. My name is in teeny tiny print in the inside front page under "contributors" and it's spelled wrong. Doh! I think I would be less annoyed if my name was more exotic, but "Walburg" is no "Panagopolopolous"* or "Razakazajinski."* Oh well, at least I got my name in, no?

*These are not real names and are not intended to sound racist or prejudiced whatever you want to call me. It's a joke, and I am not racist. Some names that are foreign to native ears are hard to keep in the head and even harder to spell. It's a fact of life and true for all cultures (at least I think so. Maybe Americans really are dipshits and everyone else is smarter than us).

I was called racist for the first time in my life by a fellow intern after saying the Mexican groundworkers on campus probably wouldn't choose to have that job if they had other options. Does that say anything bad about Mexicans? No. Would anybody want a different job if they were working all day outside in 100 degree weather? Probably. Just because I acknowledge there are other nationalities out there other than "American" does not make me a racist. So fuck off and lighten up. kids.

Quality-Cut Edits, Worth its Weight in Gold

I am going to come right out and say it. No hesitation. No second-guessing. No excuses.

I do not tolerate mediocrity.

That is not to say I do not realize that I, too, am mediocre, but I genuinely, completely, and unequivocally dislike sub-par production. I come with my own barrel of monkeys in the form of my perfectionism, which essentially means I get nothing creative of my own done. In a way I'm the pot calling the kettle black. However, that is not what I'm talking about, here. I am talking about the competition of production, the publication of an essay by a writer who flat out refuses to revise it because it would change the initial integrity of the thing. And because she doesn't want to "completely re-write it."

Now, laziness of the author aside, I use the term "initial integrity" very, very lightly. Whatever integrity of this essay the writer has disillusioned herself of, it is so shallow you couldn't drown in it. No, I'm too busy drowning in the excess flourish of semicolons (not even used properly most of the time), the schizophrenic dash from idea to idea, the unrelenting and irrational jumps in [who-knows-what-kind-of-]logic and the haphazardly created mask of an "experiment" to hide the true nature of this soapbox scandal.

I know I am being melodramatic here, but it is completely necessary. I don't want to give too much away about the work because, even though I feel the utmost disdain for this piece, I know the author and she is a good person, and humiliating her is not my intent. However, that being said, even the title of her work does not actually relate to it. One of the words she uses in the title has the definition of "the scientific description of the customs of individual peoples and cultures." Unfortunately, that has absolutely nothing to do with the paper, despite what the author may think.

Not only does the lack of quality of this paper makes me want to pull out my hair, but the professor I am editing with essentially has written me off as co-editor. He told me to tell the writers the overall edits they need to do, and then he would tackle copy-editing by himself. I don't know if he thinks I am not a credible source, seeing as I'm only a student and all, or if he's trying to make himself look good. He seems new this year, and half of his office was still full of cardboard move-in boxes. My frustration mounted when I went to see him last week; he even seemed to like this paper! Not only that, after the short retort from the writer about her "initial integrity," he sent me an email saying, "well, if she is truly unrelenting about her paper, I suppose we'll have to leave it the way it is."

Wait, WHAT? Are you crazy? This paper is in no condition to be published and you are going to let it be printed "as is" simply because the writer puts herself on a golden alter and is too perfect (and lazy) to edit her work? What the fuck kind of editor are you? Seems to me he just doesn't want to deal with a stuck up, irate author. He's just as lazy as she is, in my book.

In a way I am wary of even putting my name on this book. This may sound cold and shallow, but if this essay is published as is, or even with only a few edits, I don't really want to be associated with this edition of the WC Review. I look back at the old editions and they were all full of truly quality work, at least in terms of the essays. The poetry has since improved since the 90s, but man, those essays back then were the real deal. End notes ranging in the 50s to 70s, bibliographies running on for pages...these students were truly that: students. There is passion, effort and style running rampant in those old volumes. Not so much these days. Because students are "perfect" when they come into college and don't really need to be taught anything.

Before I slip too far off topic, I just want to say that even though I sound crazy with rage about this paper, I really do want it to get better. Maybe it's for my own reputation, maybe it's for the college' reputation, or maybe it's just because I want to see the proper use of a goddamn semicolon once in a while.

The Most Morose Editor

Sometimes seeing the greatness of others depresses me. It's not in the sense that I am jealous and that I wish I could be like them (because I am, and I do) but because the talent and skill these people play with appears so genuine, meaningful and universal. Anyone who reads or sees or feels those works is affected and knows it. The thought is so startlingly beautiful.

In the other room, as I write this, they are talking of "projectile shitting."

This is how I see myself; sitting in a room in between one where many people sit, and another in which only a few sit. There is a glass window built into the wall. I stare through it every day, watching them speckled sporadically around the room, drinking in their blank expressions and savoring their bored twitches. I want to speak with them, hear about their days and their conversations with one another, but I can only hear the roar of people from the room behind me. They stuff my ears with their loud voices. The sound feels like cotton balls drenched in hydrogen-peroxide. It hisses and hurts, but I know it is good for me.

In reality, I am sitting in front of a computer worth more than my car pouring through essays for the Review. Right now I feel like a critical bastard because these essays, supposedly the cream of the crop of this years contestants, are utter shit. Okay, okay, maybe not "utter shit," but they are pretty bad. Not beyond help or editing, mind you, but in the "this-is-my-first-draft-but-I'm-pulling-an-all-nighter-since-it's-due-tomorrow-so-I-just-gotta-get-this-shit-done" sort of range or, the "look-at-me-I'm-such-a-great-writer-and-you-should-be-so-impressed-because-look-at-how-many-semicolons-I'm-using!" sort of mindset. I don't know which style bothers me more (I admit that I am guilty of both types in my own right). It annoys me that this level of caliber is let into the Review, yet another essay was originally let in but then later rejected because it needed "too much editing". I simply don't understand. This is probably going to be the shortest Review they've seen in years, I guess because not a whole lot of people submitted work, or because so much was rejected. But if these are the essay that made it in, I'd hate to see the work that wasn't. Yeesh.

However, it's hard for me to take myself seriously (or maybe I'm taking myself too seriously...dun dun dunnnnn!) when I haven't submitted anything for the past two years and I'm only editing. Editing is easy. Editing is something I'm good at. But writing essays from scratch is hard. I know that. As I'm reading through the unbelievably huge number of TWO. WHOLE. ESSAYS. I'm trying to figure out what exactly the prompts were for them. Is this the final essay for an introductory art history course, or is it an in-depth compare-and-contrast essay given in the middle of the semester for a higher level Greek and Roman Sculpture class? Is this essay for Children's Literature or for Germanic Culture?

I'm not sure if it's a good or bad thing that I can't tell.

A Week of Driving

It's been a week break here in Internland, but I've now got a fellow-intern to bumble around with: Alice! But before I introduce her into this working summer, I'll digress into what I call my One Week of Complete Travel Around Maryland and Lower Pennsylvania in a Car with a Broken Air-Conditioner. And it's not over, yet!

It began last Friday, with my itching to leave work and jump onto the highway to Ocean City. I was shaky as I threw clothes into my travel bag, antsy to get out of my room and onto the road. Gotta beat traffic gotta beat traffic...

Truth be told, I did not beat traffic. Not one little bit.

I finally made it to my grandparent's trailer on 52nd street, but I had little rest, because the next day I was on my way to Travis' house, to the south of Ocean City. The following day I was off again, this time late at night to really beat the Memorial Day traffic, and soon I found myself in and out of Baltimore, thrown into the twisting and winding roads in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.

After slipping off to bed early, and feeling old, Emily drove me down to the historic district of Ellicott City the next day, Monday. I fell in love with the place. I made believe I was in a small European Town nestled into the mountains. And I finally realized the true meaning of "nestled into the mountains," with the streets bumping up to the building's faces, with boulders and rock pushing into sidestreets and alleyways and the mountain head looming up above us all. It was truly breathtaking. My desire to see Europe has increased tenfold.

On Tuesday, after a grand sushi buffet, Emily and I drove up to York, PA to see our good ol' graduate friend, Alyse. We fell asleep to Daria, excited about what the next day held: Hershey Park.

Now, I had never been to Hershey Park before, and I was not the biggest fan of roller coasters. I have been on a few before, but they still scared the crap out of me. However, with a lot of cajoling and jokes, Emily and Alyse finally convinced me to go on one the older and more tame coasters: The Comet. Thankfully there were no lines that day, so I didn't have a chance to sit there and bite my nails, wondering if I could actually do this. I just did it.

And despite the good brain-rattle I received, it was a lot of fun! Throughout the rest of the sweat-soaked day, I rode as many coasters as I could handle before succumbing to the dehydration and the nausea. I slept as much as I could on the ride back to York, but had to wake myself up for the drive back to Windsor Mills, and then to Baltimore.

On Thursday, I drove back to Chestertown so I could settle in with Alice, my suitemate and as I mentioned before, fellow intern. We had a nice heart-to-heart over Procs, thunderstorms and vodka.

Today, Friday, I will soon be leaving for Ocean City once again, this time with Ellen to go to Travis' before we travel to Selbyville for Corey's Graduation Party on Saturday. I will be returning on Sunday. After this week I don't think I'll ever want to travel EVER AGAIN.

...but of course I'm lying. I love traveling! I'm just glad I don't get carsick!

And there is a happy ending to this story! At the end of this ordeal, I've finally found out my wages for this summer! Hoorah for gettin' paid!

The Phone Interview

If there is something I fear the most in an office setting, it is definitely the phone interview. I can deal with irate bosses (mainly by avoiding them), I can deal with annoying co-workers, and I can occasionally even deal with a broken copier machine. But those phone interviews... they are my downfall.

Granted, I had never been in a phone interview before, on the interviewing side, no less! I'm a terrible interviewee, so I'd never dreamed of actually becoming an interviewer myself. But it just so happened that as I was zombifying myself with InDesign lessons on my computer, Marcia, editor-in-chief of the Washington College Magazine, (completely different from the Washington College Review) walks in and strikes up a conversation with the other two girls working in the same room as me. Just as I was losing interest in whatever it was they were talking about (I never know when to include myself in these conversations. I don't know about half of the things they say, but I don't want to be rude and ignore them, either) and the droopy, zombie-eyes were coming back, Marcia nonchalantly leans on the doorframe and turns to me.

"Hey, you want to try something new out? I'm sure you're getting sick of doing...whatever it is you do all day," she said.

Hallelujah! Don't get me wrong, I love learning about InDesign and Photoshop, but my eyes were going cross-eyed by now and my brain was ready to explode inside my head. Some of the steps were pretty tedious and even though I was becoming very accustomed to the InDesign interface, I still felt like I wasn't really learning an exceptional amount of information. Half of the pieces were already done for me and I just wanted to make something cool from scratch! "If I have to format another fake newsletter...!"

I gave Marcia a nervous smile and said, "Uh, sure! ...What do you need me to do?" I realized a second too late that she had asked me a loaded question.

"Okay, could you set up a time to interview this alum that just won an award for Chemistry? You can then write an article to put in the new issue of the Magazine. I'm not sure if you have any interest in the sciences at all, but it doesn't have to be too in-depth, and you can just ask the alum to clarify anything for you, if you've got questions." And from the mouth of Prof. Olsen from Arthurian Literature class, I had just succumbed to what is known as the RASH VOW!!!

What was I thinking? I had never interviewed anyone before, and my journalism experience comprises of a big fat zero! How would I know what to say, what to ask? And sure I'm interested in the sciences, but I don't really know anything specific about them! How am I supposed to know how the quantum mechanics of the biomolecular processes of protein-folding affect the calculations of classical molecular methods in computational simulations...?

"Sure!" I said.

"Great! I'll send you an email with info the article needs to include and a CV of the alum. Just send me back the article when you're done so I can see if it's good enough to put in the magazine. Thanks!" Marcia said, and left.

I sat back in my chair, awaiting the doom-filled email to drop into my inbox.

Okay, okay, all lightning strikes and thunderclaps aside, Marcia didn't ask all that much of me. I knew most of my fear came from my inexperience, and my irrational fear of talking to strangers on the phone. It was just something I would have to overcome if I wanted to truly become a well-rounded writer. I kept telling myself that as I saw the email come in and stared miserably at the alum's phone number for over an hour.

The two other girls in the room left for lunch, and I knew this was my opportunity to conduct the interview without feeling incredibly stupid (more so than usual) if I did something wrong. I wrote out a few questions and mentally prepared myself for another 15 minutes before I whisked up the phone and dialed the number before I could think about it twice. It rang. And rang. And rang. ohmanpleasedon'tpickupthephonepleasedon'tpickupthephonepleasedon'tpickupthepho--

"Hello?" A man's voice asked. Aw, crap, here we go!

As I bumbled through the interview, I felt like how I was probably viewed in these sorts of situations: Young, stupid, and inexperienced. And I hate that. I was grateful with how understanding and good-natured the alum was as I interviewed him. By the end I was dizzy, terrified and my heart was racing. I'm embarrassed to say this, but I was so stressed out from the ordeal that I couldn't work on the article for the rest of the day.

I felt absolutely lousy. Wow, E, you sure are a top-notch intern. I bet the one last year flew through stuff like this with flying colors. You're still floundering around in grayscale... I called my mom for some pep-talk and advice, which she gave through stories about the beehives and additions to the gardens she kept on her farm.

I guess the sort of advice my mom gives is slow-acting, because I didn't feel completely rejuvenated or sure of myself until the next morning, in which I sat down at my desk at work and just jumped into the article head-first. I finished drafting, revising, sending it out to both Marcia and the alum for editing and coming up with a final version in a matter of a few hours. Granted, my piece was edited quite heavily with changes, but at the end of the day Marcia came up to me and said, "You know, I think the piece is ready to go. Thanks."

And that was that. I had written something (with the help of others) that was officially going to be published in a printed magazine. Granted my name isn't going to actually be attached to the article (no one's is for these mini-news stories) but it still feels like an accomplishment, a step up from where I had been standing before. I may be bumbling, but I'm bumbling in the right direction.

Besides, the next day Marcia came up to me and said Meredith, the head honcho, had overheard me conducting the interview and told her I sounded very professional. I wondered if Meredith and I were thinking about the same interview, but I told myself she probably didn't hear all of my nervous giggles.

Now I'm just waiting for Marcia to give me a new assignment. Maybe. As long as there are no phone interviews involved.

Becoming an Intern: A 3-Step Process

This summer I am interning in the College Relations department of Washington College, the partner-position of my main job as Student Editor of the Washington College Review. So far the job has been easier than expected--granted, there's not much for me to work with yet, but it has been a smooth transition nonetheless.

Ironically, this entire endeavor started on a whim. I had read the campus-wide email one day second semester, and for some reason I didn't delete it, even though I wasn't particularly interested in the position. I wanted to go home this summer, see my friends, get away from all of the drama and stress I had been encountering at school that year. But there was a small voice nagging in the back of my head, probably the remnant of a conversation I had had with my mother earlier that week: "You need to get a job this summer. College tuition is going up and you need to contribute more to your education. We can't have a repeat of last summer." In the previous summer, I had been unable to find work thanks to the wonderful state of our economy.

I thought about it long and hard--and I looked at an email my mom had sent me listing a series of internships and possible jobs I could apply to. After cleaning and organizing my room, I felt myself rejuvenated and confident; ready to take on the work force and show 'em E. Walburg's coming to town!

In reality, I was sitting at my desk, despairing at my lack of money and said, "Fuck it. I might as well just send in the damn thing to make my mom happy."

I honestly believed I would not get the position. I sent in other applications, expecting to maybe get one of those, and looked toward May thinking "I wonder if Jimmy John's will hire me back this summer."

About a month and half after I had sent in my application for the Student Editor position, I get an email saying it was time to set up interviews. I blinked at my screen, trying to remember what the heck they were even talking about until I jogged my memory. Oh yeeeeah...

The day of, I was actually pretty nervous; I even put in some effort to look nice and pulled out an old white blouse I hadn't worn in 3 years and slapped on a black skirt. (Hey, I said some effort, not total effort...) Tripping my way down the Cater Walk to Prof. Volansky's office, I finally made there in one piece, passing by one of my competitors along the way. She smiled and said her interview had gone wonderfully. Great.

I get into the office, though, and find Michele Volansky is one of the easiest people to talk to that I have ever met. Comes with being an actress, I suppose, but it was still comforting. I left feeling like I had done a pretty good job, even though I spouted out some of my worries about my lack of skills in certain areas. It's one of my downsides as an interviewee; I'm painfully honest about myself, even if it makes me look bad. Still, though, I thought, "oh come on, you've got some pretty intense competition. You'll never make it."

The next day I received an email saying I was one of the top three finalists for the position. I was stunned. I was doing so much better than I ever expected and now I had something invested in this. There was a followup interview, and a week went by. I walked into work one day (also College Relations. I had had an in and didn't even realize it!) and was speaking to one of my superiors about my hopes to get the Student Editor position. She blinked and said, "But you have it already."

I stared and said, "what?"

She looked a little peevish and said, "Oh, Michele didn't tell you yet? You've got the position. But I suppose you aren't supposed to know yet since Michele didn't email you. Please don't tell the other competitors, they..." but I had stopped listening by then.

Me? I got the position? Really?

I was giddy and completely relieved that I wouldn't have to freak out looking for a job this summer. Granted, I would have to spend all that time in sleepy little Chestertown but hey, I would be making money and putting a fantastic addition on my resume. I called my mom in a rush, all smiles and shaky fingers, spewing out a hundred words a minute. Her reaction?

"Oh, that's nice! So does that mean you won't be able to work on the garden this year?"

Realization

Ugh, without my glasses it looks like I have an emo haircut. WUT.