Going-Ons. (Or Does Truth Really Matter?)

Unbelievable. I graduate in three weeks. Three more weeks and I never have to go to school again. I can't wrap my mind around it.

These three weeks will be v. busy.

I am, however, in the last stage of my writing portfolio. I am v. relieved. I only have to write the introduction, print it out, and get it bound! The title of the entire portfolio is Analysis and Discovery: Literary Criticism and Journalism. I want to share it with people, but I know no one would be interested in reading 120 pages of my work. What about 60 pages of essays, though? You'll be smarter when you're done, haha.

I had an excellent experience with my portfolio director. Christ. Remember how stressed I was about finding a director six months ago? I need to lighten up. I couldn't have picked a better one, though. I think we made a great team. We seemed good at coming up with ideas and understanding what the other was trying to say. I'll miss this professor, at least! By the way, we're still looking into getting one of my essays published. Fingers crossed! The essay is "Patriarchal Traditions: Gender Privilege in The Left Hand of Darkness."

And, oh! How cool is this little tidbit. A major interest of mine is witness literature. Look into it. I talked about it with this professor some, and she read an essay of mine on it. She told me today that I sparked her interest in the subject and partly inspired her to concentrate a large portion of one of her classes next semester on witness literature. Awesome!

We talk about books some, and she's going to lend me Night by Elie Wiesel (which is witness literature), to see what I think. Her reaction was mixed (at best, probably).

I'm lending her The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, which is one of my top favorite books: "I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth." It revolves around the Vietnam War, but it's about so much more, too. Highly relevant for today, too. Almost freakishly so. And not just because of the war, but because of issues that arose when James Frey admitted that his book A Million Little Pieces wasn't all "fact." How much does the "truth" actually matter when telling your story? If I went through something, what if I could only make you understand how I felt if I told the story in a slightly different way than what actually happened? Is this story "fiction," even though the real "truth" of it was the emotion, not the events? Anyway, read it, kids. Which reminds me, I need to read In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. That's truthful fiction. Or fictional truth. It's too bad I'm leaving school soon, or we could start a book club, haha! Take that, Oprah.

Oh, I am so proud of myself! For the first time in years, I wrote fiction yesterday! Eek. None of it will make sense on it's own, so, no, I'm not showing anyone (although I think it's witty and clever and fabulous! Haha, no, I'm not modest. Except I really am, I just put on a show, I don't really think it's fabulous!). It's just bits and pieces of a larger story. Possibly something novel length? I want to write it so bad. Please don't let this bug go away any time soon, because write now I have to get back to essays I'm writing for school. But this story...I just wanted to write, so if I didn't know the exact word (OR NAME) to use, I just put "____" as a placeholder. Me = huge dork.

I feel like talking. Someone come online! Sarah, why don't we ever call each other! Oh, right. It's ridiculous long distance.