Wow, this blog is WAYYYY overdue. I was planning on blogging about my Story Studio experience when it ended, which was in June, but I have been caught up in... Well.. Summer. My summer has been a whirlwind of dance(I made it into a junior company!!!), early morning cross country practices(I have achieved 4 miles!.. But almost got killed by a car doing so), orthodontist appointments(I only have to wear my retainer at night now), graduation parties(including my own), a choir "tour" to Minneapolis, a mission trip to Joplin Mossouri for tornado relief(literally the best week of my summer and possibly my life),concerts(Jason Aldean & Kelly Clarckson at Wrigley, One Republic at Rivinia, and this Saturday Taylor swift!!! At Soldier Field which I will be attending with Clare H.), and few breaks in between. So a lot has been going on and a lot has changed, but I still feel like I've done nothing. I forgot everything, literally EVERYTHING that has to do with math. I'm being dead serious right now, I forgot how to multiply and divide negatives. I am Mrs. P's living nightmare. I only broke my clarinet out of its case three times max this whole summer, and band camp starts this week. Yes, band camp with psyco Mr. matter, and did I mention that it is FOUR HOURS LONG EVERY. SINGLE. DAY?!?! It makes me want to cry just thinking about it.
I also have only been to the pool only 3 times, the beach zero times, and I've only been on one bike ride. And there are three weeks until school starts. Not to mention that I am starting high school. I don't think that will really set in until the first day. I'm half expecting to walk straight to Mr. Miller's awesome homeroom, where Mr. miller himself will tell the class some random fact he learned or something he saw on the news last night. But sadly, this is not the case. Instead I will be thrust into a big scary fish tank which holds schools of big scary fish, and big scary sharks, and then there will be me: a mere minnow just trying to make it to my next class alive. Add my inability to keep calm on top of all of this and you have one certifiably insane person. Ok so I'm exaggerating a tad bit, but in my defense I am a writer and I have been told that it is good to exaggerate numerous times. So I guess I wouldn't call myself certifiably insane, but just... Insane. And that is not an exaggeration.
So on a happier note: Story Studio. It's downtown somewhere. It was only a five day long writing class, but they supplied us with a month of knowledge. The two teachers themselves are writers, and they were very sweet and helpful. They covered everything from building a character, to parts of a story, to writing and analyzing poetry(which of course I had already learned from the wonderful education I had in eigth grade language arts:) ) All in all it was a great experience and I would definitely do it again.... Except for one little problem. I have a gargantuan fear of public speaking. So on the last day when we were told to present something that we'd wrote during the class to all of our "parents, siblings, grandparents, the hobo on the street" as one of the teachers had said, I was more than nervous. I won't go in to the details, but I'm happy to say that I held it together... until the car ride where I cried the whole way home. It's not that I wasn't happy with my short story, I was very proud of it actually, but I'm not the type who shows off the things they're proud of in front of large audiences. But aside from that last day, the camp was a blast, and if I miraculously overcome my fear of public speaking by next summer, I'll definitely do it again.