Our Magazine!

is finally here

Well, this was fun?

It's been a long time. And an interesting time...

Sometimes this stuff get finished at 2:00 when class ends... but sometimes it doesn't get done until 11:59 at night. And then not saved until 3 days later. Or there's always that time when stuff doesn't get done and saved until like 2:04 when people are waiting for the computers, or 12:01 which makes it officially late... Oh yeah, then there was that day when we finished like 20 minutes before class ended and didn't have anything to do.... that was fun.

So this might get posted at 2..... and it might get posted at 1:59, or it might get posted at 11:59... Noooo idea.

Although, it's Tuesday.... (Hey guys, it's Tuesday which means that this will eventually be posted), which means that we don't get out until 2:05... that's cool. This won't be finished by then.

But that’s not the point. The point is: goodbye amazing people who aren’t reading this right now. And if you are, GO YOU. Not really, if you are, you probably have no life or are really bored and have nothing to do. Or, you know, both.

So, have a great life. Bye :)

-Wenlan

So Long

I could have a long, mushy, 200-word (which is a completely random number and not at all a minimum requirement for an assignment or anything.)- goodbye post, but I don't think I can stretch it for that long.

First, though, I do have a few mushy things to say.

1.)  Caitlin and Wenlan are absolutely mental in an utterly amusing, endearing sort of way.

2.) Learning about Caitlin’s bizarre, eclectic pool of interests, including but not limited to things like wizard rock and football, getting book recommendations from Wenlan, and playing mediator for the two has been a real pleasure. Even the last bit. It kept me entertained.

3.) One last recommendation for the upcoming break: Keeping You a Secret by Julie Anne Peters. Wenlan introduced me to this book, and it was pretty heart melting. No, it's not the best novel ever, and yes, you can pretty much tell what it’s going to be from the first page (or the back cover of the paperback, if you’re good at inferring, or even just the cover). The good thing is, though, you'll figure out if you don’t like it right away. But, I must say, give it a chance. The plot may be a little shaky, but it still somehow feels real.

So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish.

If you understood the allusion above, I commend you.

--Ji

I Guess This Means Goodbye............

Hey, it's Caitlin. This, I suppose is our final round of blog posts.We are in the process of finishing our magazine and we are making all the fun little tweaks in changes in design. Jiwoon, the ever perfectionist is stressing over little dots and lines. She is making our magazine more beautiful. Wenlan is writing her ASF(alternate story form). She won't tell us what it's about, so we can only guess what it will be about. It's probably a long rant or manifesto about hate or love or belief or other abstract thing. Or, who knows? Maybe she is really writing her essay about how awesome and cool I am.(This is not in the realm of possibility. Sadly.Or maybe not so sadly) Anyways, I am sure that you, the reader, will love reading about it.

I would like to take this as an opportunity to thank the people who made  this magazine possible.
We would all like to thank Mrs. Young for working hard and providing us with constructive criticism and the knowledge and tools to create this magazine. She has been a great teacher and we will all no doubt miss this class next semester.
Another shout out goes Ms. Jones, our design mentor. She has guided us and helped make this magazine what it is . We deeply appreciate her opinions and guidance and wish her well in her blooming design career path.
I would like to express my deep, deep, gratitude towards my group members. They have been a pleasure to work with and they've been awesome. Jiwoon is incredibly patient and a great designer.Wenlan... well she's Wenlan, so she's been great to work with. They both have been. I couldn't have asked for about better group memebers.

And then there's you. You. the reader, have made this worth while Thank you for taking the time to read our magazine and blog. We hoped you liked it.

Bye, now.

Words

I remember the first time I read Looking For Alaska by John Green in middle school, a poignant story with sprinkles of romance and teen shenanigans. I definitely recommend it to those of you who like young adult fiction (I do recommend a lot of these, don’t I? ). This isn’t really about the book, though. It’s mostly about books in general.

Well, words, to be more specific.

So, I’m a bit of a crier. You know, when there’s a sad scene in a book or a movie (I haven’t quite reacted that much to a song), I get tears in my eyes.

This gets me thinking, though, about the power that words have over us, and not just prose. Everything that we say to others elicits some kind of emotion. Wenlan recently made a post about hate, and how it affects people. And what is that? Hate is just a word. H-a-t-e. One syllable. Four letters. Yet it’s so powerful.

This is especially true in novels. You know, on some level, that what you’re looking at are just flat, two-dimensional symbols on a flat, not-quite-two-dimensional piece of paper. It shouldn’t mean anything, but it does. Somehow, we’ve made them mean something. We’ve given them emotional value.  We’ve given them the ability to paint pictures, to create people, and to put words in their mouths.

That’s why I think the craft of writing is amazing.

It seems so simple, when you look at it, but somehow it makes people feel.

--Ji

P.S. A bigger version of the picture at the top can be found here.
You can make your own here.