Say "Yes!" To The Dress!

I'm super excited for tomorrow. It's been kind of the one bright spot in all the sucky-ness of the past couple weeks. Tomorrow...I'm going to try on wedding dresses! I'm planning on choosing the one tomorrow and getting the process of buying it started. I couldn't be any more excited! I'm also planning to invite my grandmothers to come and share in the experience. (Plus, tomorrow I'm finally getting a new phone, and a smart phone at that!)

Nothing like wedding planning to cheer a girl up. I'm watching Say Yes To The Dress to celebrate.

A Hard Week

This past week has been an incredibly tiring and difficult one. I am down to the wire on my publishing institute applications, and losing almost two weeks has really sucked.

Last week, I found out that my great-grandpa, who lived in Arkansas, had congestive heart failure and was being given days to live. No one really knew what would happen, but my parents decided to make the drive down to see him one last time, and I went with. I got to see and talk with him on his last good day, last Tuesday. He later got worse and was moved to a hospice. I came back to Peoria Thursday night, and he passed away Friday afternoon. I hadn't planned on going to his funeral, but I knew I'd regret it later if I didn't. So on Sunday we made the drive again, and I spent through Wednesday in Arkansas.

I haven't gone through this, really at all, in my lifetime. I have very young parents, so I've been blessed to grow up having all of my grandparents and 3 great-grandparents around. I don't quite know what's proper to think or feel or say to people. It's just hard. 

Since I've been gone almost two whole weeks, I have so much to do that's adding to the stress and emotion of it all. Not only do I have to catch up in my classes, but I have to hurry and start/finish the applications to the publishing institutes. 

I suppose I write this mostly to vent, and to also explain why I haven't been around and haven't been doing any more planning for the future, but I sincerely hope no one else goes through this this semester. 

Broadside

There's no real news in my planning, but I thought someone out there might be interested in what I'm doing now.

Publishing is a very city-based industry, so living in Peoria makes it very difficult to get any real experience that will help me once I get to New York. That’s the main reason why attending a Publishing Institute like the one at NYU is so important.

However, I do what I can here to at least get some experience. I work for Hilltopics, Bradley’s alumni magazine, doing copy editing, office work, and some writing. Even better than that, though, is that this year I was selected to be the Editor-in-Chief of Broadside.  Broadside is a student run organization; we are Bradley’s literary arts journal and publish two journals a year featuring student poetry, short stories, drawings, paintings, photography, and other works of art and writing. It’s a huge responsibility, but it’s reinforced completely why I want to be in publishing.

As Editor-in-Chief, I’m involved in every stage of putting the journal together, and I plan events that keep students interested in Broadside and further showcase students’ artistic endeavors.

I’m getting really excited about the things we have going on this semester. The first week of March we’ll be having an open mic night, followed by a showing of a related movie (probably Dead Poets Society). In April, just before the spring journal is released, we’ll be having a release party where people can get early copies before the rest of Bradley.

If anyone who reads this (and is a Bradley student) is interested in submitting a piece of writing or art, visit bradley.edu/campusorg/broadside or email me!