Helen Keller~Thoughts on College

“I began my studies with eagerness. Before me I saw a new world opening in beauty and light, and I felt within me the capacity to know all things. In the wonderland of Mind I should be as free as another [with sight and hearing]. Its people, scenery, manners, joys, and tragedies should be living tangible interpreters of the real world. The lecture halls seemed filled with the spirit of the great and wise, and I thought the professors were the embodiment of wisdom... But I soon discovered that college was not quite the romantic lyceum I had imagined. Many of the dreams that had delighted my young inexperience became beautifully less and "faded into the light of common day." Gradually I began to find that there were disadvantages in going to college. The one I felt and still feel most is lack of time. I used to have time to think, to reflect, my mind and I. We would sit together of an evening and listen to the inner melodies of the spirit, which one hears only in leisure moments when the words of some loved poet touch a deep, sweet chord in the soul that until then had been silent. But in college there is no time to commune with one's thoughts. One goes to college to learn, it seems, not to think. When one enters the portals of learning, one leaves the dearest pleasures – solitude, books and imagination – outside with the whispering pines. I suppose I ought to find some comfort in the thought that I am laying up treasures for future enjoyment, but I am improvident enough to prefer present joy to hoarding riches against a rainy day.” 

The Escape

by: Jessica Lewis

I sit here day after day, 
Watching the laughing monsters. 
These monsters hide beneath their extravagant disguises. 
They say that they are teenage girls yet they are so inhuman. 

One by one I have had to watch friends disappear into their trap. 
Their sticky, dirty fingers covered in the filth of lies and deception 
Pull them in and never loosen their grasp. 

Here in the courtyard all I see is hideous faces, 
Trampling feet. 
So I close my eyes and reimagine the world. 
I picture the flowing field surrounding me
As I lay down in the knee high blades of grass for my refuge. 

The world went in slow motion 
As a butterfly landed on my nose. 
There was so much sunshine embodied in this tiny creature. 

With no time to relax, 
The school bell rings. 
Though faint and distant, 
It pulled me back into reality. 

Sadly, the show in my head was over, 
There was no standing ovation.

Monsters on a Beautiful Day

by: Natalie Medina

I sit here day after day, watching the laughing monsters. 
I see a blue butterfly. 
So faint and distant.
I found an escape from the stress. 
The world in slow motion. 
Bringing me back. 
I hit so hard. 
Pulling me back to the surface of reality. 
Faces and feet were all I could see. 
One by one, i have had to watch friends disappear. 
They were all sunshine inbodied in tiny bodies. 
Slimy faces and dirty fingers. 
They would get no standing ovation. 
I guess that is the reality of human creation. 
So inhumane yet so real. 
People can be mean. 
Sometimes we all just need a place to lean. 
A place to laugh, a place to smile. 
Some can not help but breakdown. And lose everything they know.
Forgetting everything right before the test oh say it ain't so. 
The stress overwhelms us. 
Help save our happiness, your happiness. 
Our childhood at risk. 
We all need a break sometime. 
To sit on the soft grass 
And watch the monsters pass. 
To somehow find beauty within the madness.

Black Paint

by: Tegan Henne

In sea of people
She sees your eyes
Sending chills down her back
He
Used to speak to her in ways that 
no human ever could
She felt him
Fading away into darkness
Black paint on canvas
The smell, sickening to her
Left a sweet aroma to the world
So much life, she gets up
She smiles

A Life After Living

by: Grace Claywell

Standing in this world all free of dust, my shining blue eyes bleed

With emotions for the timing of my crash that filled the night sky

Also filled the hearts of those that felt the aftershock.

Time stood still as did my heart while I looked upon the tree,

The cushion to my fall, the keeper of my emotions, but

The tree felt no pain, only me.

Rain floods in through the windows as my shinier-

Than-the-sun hair falls down poetically and creates a blanket over my

Chest now soaked with red and clear alike.

I stared into the nothingness of the roots of the tree and

I was pushed by the darkness, shoved about until I was freed,

Never knowing until the moment of my escape that I had not managed it alone.

There stood a person, shielded by the night, ungendered,

Unknowing, all-seeing, a trace of gold thread

Slowly cracking the tightly knitted darkness.

This person could exterminate the evil in this world,

Tell the mountains to move, the seas to part, and so they would,

Their unique opportunities and talents those of grace and immortality.

My soul went with this all-knowing figure, leaving

Behind the world I previously knew, and together I was unafraid, watching

As my lifeless body slowly disappeared from view.

We Know what we are, but not what we may be

Katie the caterpillar only dreamed of becoming a butterfly. She has seen it happen before but some don't turn out so pretty. She feared that she would be an ugly butterfly like her family was. Her parents and even her siblings all were brown and black with no beautiful colors. It was time to go into her cocoon. She fell into a deep sleep in her brown wrapped cocoon. When it was time to come out of her cocoon she was terrified. It was the slowest process she had ever been through. Finally, she broke through her cocoon. She was so excited to see herself. She looked in her mirror. She was in awe. She was albino. She didn't know if she loved or hated it. Her first thought was that she could paint her own wings with paint her mom got her. She could changed her look everyday if she wanted. First she had to show her family. Being the butterfly she was, she shyly came into the room. They were in awe at her beauty. She was the most beautiful butterfly they had ever seen. All colors of the rainbow, even glitter somehow.