OSMA

Well, the Ohio Scholastic Media Association wasn't very kind to The Elm Leaf this year. We only got third place for a high school newspaper, which is kind of discouraging seeing as it's my senior year. On the bright side, I won an award for one of my Sports articles.

I'll recap some of the more hilarious moments of my time at OSMA this year:

1. Evan and Peter's pants: I went to elementary school with the editor-in-chief of the Hoban Visor (which coincidentally won first place for news magazines...not that I'm jealous or anything). At the conference, he was wearing these really obnoxious checkered pants. I also went to school with one of the Visor's writers. He was wearing these bright green pants. So, when Hoban won and the editor-in-chief went up to collect their plaque, one of our writers said, "Don't worry, Meghan. You win in style." I felt better (:

2. Names: Our editor-in-chief has really awful handwriting...and that's being nice. On almost every single one of our individual awards, our names were misspelled. Yeah, even mine. You're reading a blog written by 'Megan Cuprez.' Some of the other funny misspellings were Simon for Simone, Turner for Turk, Salin for Sain, and Miller for Muller.

3. Games: While every other newspaper was at the official OSMA banquet, we decided to chill in the student center and eat our own dinner. While we were waiting for the awards ceremony, we played this game where one person writes a sentence, then the next person draws a picture based off of the sentence. Looking only at the picture, the next person has to create their own sentence about the picture and so on. Let's just say that one round started with the sentence, "[Advisor's name] slapped Simone, then turned angrily toward Katrina and yelled, 'Hide the food!'" and ended up as, "The viking hit the waitress." Maybe you just had to be there...

4. Costumes: On Friday, a girl wearing a full-on Alice in Wonderland costume walked through the Kent State student center. We thought it was really cool, so we were all staring. Saturday's costumes weren't quite as...shall we say 'safe'. There was a group of kids dressed up as the characters in Pokemon. No, I'm not kidding; they went to a newspaper competition dressed as Pokemon. One guy was Ash, one girl was Misty, and another two kids were Bulbasaur and Tremont (I think that's what they said they were, anyways). The problem was, the two guys who were actually Pokemon were in these green, skin-tight bodysuits. It was a little disturbing, but amusing nonetheless

5. Saturday adventures: By the time Saturday noon had come around, Simone (our Editorial page editor) and I were the sole Elms girls left at the convention. We drove up and down Main Street in Kent for a half-hour to find a place to eat. Finding none, we decided to turn around and go back to campus. Long story short, we got very, very lost and I was driving like a maniac. We have entitled the journey "Simone and Meghan's wild ride."

Twas Brillig And The Slithy Toves

I know, I know. I'm awful. But you know what? I've been really busy lately. I was sick on Wednesday, I had play practice Thursday, and yesterday...well, I don't really have an excuse for yesterday other than the fact that there was a Criminal Minds marathon on A&E.

Every year in English class we do a unit on poetry. Always in April. Wanna know why? Because April is Poetry Month. I'm a little disappointed in my AP Lit teacher, though. I think we should have been studying poetry for months now. That's what my class struggles with and half of the objective questions on the AP exam are poetry-related. Sure, it's good that we've read 12 classics already this year, but I still feel unprepared poetry-wise.

The entire school is participating in a "Coffeehouse Celebration of Poetry" this coming Tuesday. The students get to choose their own poems and either read, recite, or do an art project based off of it. For some reason, my mind went straight to Lewis Carroll. I'd read a poem by him my freshman year for Poetry Out Loud (thank GOD we're not doing that this year) and read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass junior year. I've seen both Disney Alices, an Alice from the 90s, and the new SciFi Alice (which is fantastic, just so you know). I have this odd fascination with Lewis Caroll and his works that I can't explain. I even wrote one of my college essays about him. So guess which poem I chose? Jabberwocky.

Can someone please explain to me why I'm so entralled with this man? I mean, he was a pedophile for God's sake. Why should I like him? Ahh well. Sometimes, you just can't explain why you like the things that you like. Cest le vie.