A hard lesson to learn

Here I am a senior in college and have never run into what happened to me last night and this morning. I am an admitted avid procrastinator. To make a long story short and stay away from venting about one of my professors I had two papers due today, which if I remember correctly luckily has never happened in my years of college. One was a group research paper, which is the stupidest thing I have very heard of, seeing as I hate group work and I suck at writing papers since I procrastinate. Needless to say I waited until yesterday and last night to work on them both. I only had to write a minimum of 4 pages on each paper, which you would think would be easy but there was, for lack of a better word, a lot of BSing in the group paper. The other paper was a regular interpretation of a work, which can be hard depending on the work. I finished the interpretation paper last night around 8 and started on the other one. I got two pages on that one and then quit around 10:30 and went to bed. I slept until I got up at six beside the two time I woke up but I don't think I got to much sleep last night because I was stressing. I can overstress about things and that is what happened today. I got up finished my part on the group paper and went to the school computer lab to print my interpretation paper. Lesson learned - as I told mom I only have one more year left.

A humbling experience

The main reason I started a blog was to put my work out there, since I will be a writer, for people to see. Some of the work I create during my college career will only be put on my blog for free but afterward money will have to be paid for my work
In my Creative Writing class, we are having to write about an historical event for our final project. In my thinking of an historical event I am thinking of something huge like 9/11 or the wars we America has been involved in, something huge. Well, come to find out it really doesn't have to be huge but something that happened in the past, such as something family related or something little in the news. Also I found out something huge was still okay. So anyway, my mother brought up a good point and makes since is to write about what you know. Since Magnolia, Alabama is about an hour southwest of Selma, Alabama and I know Selma I chose to write a piece on the Civil Rights Movement is Selma. What I am doing is writing a fictional account of the events surrounding the the Selma to Montgomery march such as the killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson in Marion and "Bloody Sunday" My main characters are an 8 year old white girl that has a black friend. It is in the form of a journal kind of like Ann Frank with the Holocaust. Yes the whole friend thing sound like "Selma Lord Selma" but my story is going to take more twists and turns than "Selma Lord Selma", so I'm not completely plagiarising. Growing up I always thought the Selma to Montgomery march was something that happened in Selma and didn't affect me in any way so I didn't think that much about it besides what I had heard from my peers, family members, and history books. Well yesterday I found differently.
I convinced my mother that she needed to go with me and help research so yesterday I drove down after classes and met mom at the Selma co-op and off we went. At first I thought we could go to the chamber of commerce and find some info and then go to the Civil Rights Museum. Well, we went to the Civil Rights Museum first and found more info than I thought we would. I was very excited. When I first started writing this piece I ran into the problem of not knowing what an 8 year old would understand. In fact, I came out that my character understood more than what she should. Well, that problem what solved yesterday. At the museum mom and I started talking to the director and come to find out she was 11 years old when all of it happened. I'm thinking great. She had the most humbling story I have ever heard. To respect her and to get you to go to the Voting Rights Museum I'm not going to tell it on my blog but ask me in person and I will tell ya. While she was telling it I felt the spirit of what happened, she conveyed her feelings very strongly. She wasn't all yelling and shouting, but she was calm and I could feel what happened to her through her words. The whole time she was telling the story she looked out of the window and didn't even pop a smile when she told something on a liter note. Every once in a while she would look up at us, but mostly she looked out the window.
If you haven't been to Selma I highly recommend it. There is soooooo much history, not just Civil Rights. Driving through Selma you can look at the buildings and know that what they witnessed. On Dallas Avenue there is a block of churches that definitely weren't built in the 20th or 21rst century. They are so so so beautiful. Definitely recommend the Civil Rights Museum if you are interested. There are so many antebellum houses and old old beautiful houses. You can tell they weren't just thrown up in a couple of months like houses nowadays. Also, if you like cemeteries (maybe weird but I like them) the Live Oak Cemetery is awesome. It has old Spanish moss hanging from huge oak trees. There is other things I haven't mentioned. Anyway you just have to go. Hope this didn't sound like a tourism brochure.