As told by Jessica.

So occasionally a news story falls into my lap accidentally. I was at work when I received an email on my phone from Pepperdine’s Office of Financial Assistance alerting me that my financial aid award had been revised. Upon inspection, I realized my departmental scholarship — a merit scholarship from the Communication Division for my work at the student newspaper — had been reduced from $4,000 to a mere $2,000. Why? Because of a “guideline” dictating that institutional scholarships can be applied only to tuition charges, and my merit scholarships exceeded tuition.

I smelled a news story. Hundreds of students at Pepperdine feel the effects of this policy. Although, indeed, it exists to provide a standard of equal access to aid for all students, it doesn’t exactly send the right message to students like me. I take out loans every year to pay for my education, so the opportunity to exchange labor (the Graphic) for scholarships has been an attractive option for me every semester I’ve attended Pepperdine. The revision to my financial aid leaves me working an entire semester as Online Managing Editor for $2,000 — which I suspect is far below minimum wage for the hours I put in.

What do you think?

” I have an eating disorder. Not Bulimia or Anorexia but EDNOS (Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified). This means that I alternate between puking and starving. I also have rules. Bread has to be eaten in even numbers. Cake is evil. Carbohydrates are secretly plotting against me. Diet Coke is the elixir of youth and beauty.

My EDNOS is 19 years old. It started with Anorexia when I was fifteen. Then I progressed to Bulimia, otherwise known to some as a failed anorexic. You do the maths. I’m too ashamed to get my calculator out.

My weight fluctuates between slightly overweight, slightly underweight and somewhere in between. Which proves that my methods of losing weight aren’t that efficient, but this is not about logic. This is not about doing the right things like eating less or exercising more. This is not about being sensible or healthy or a shining example of mental health. This is not Jamie Oliver and his organic pig testicles.

This is not about looking good on the beach or wanting to be a supermodel. This is not about wanting the cute guy in the coffee shop to beg for your telephone number. This is not about sliding a pair of skinny jeans over your hipbones and laughing all the way to the check out till.

This is not about wanting attention until complete strangers force feed you Black Forest Gateau and siphon double cream into your skinny latte. It is not about deliberately pissing off the nurses by hiding your peas under your fork and stashing butter in the bed pans. It is not about starving for all the children in Africa. It is not about reading the magazines and pining for the Body Mass Index of Paris Hilton’s pet Chihuahua. This is not a conspiracy created by the Patriarchal system to oppress women.

This is about having the self-esteem of a gnat’s arse. This is the polite way of committing suicide. This is about having no life because it’s impossible to order a bowl of dry cereal in a restaurant and ask them to hold the raisins. This is about weighing pasta, cereal, raisins and anything that passes your lips, including toothpaste. This is about secrets and lies and shame. This is about not wanting to admit that you need to eat. That you deserve to live.

This is about being scared. This is about being terrified. Of everything.

This is about control. This is about sex. This is about putting relationships on hold until your thighs don’t meet in the middle and by then you have no libido anyway. This is about hiding under layers of clothing that are mostly black. This is about “Please don’t look at me and cover all the mirrors with black crepe.” This is about avoiding the camera, even at your sister’s wedding. This is about intense self hatred.

This is about needing so much that you can’t stand it. This is about having emotions that bubble up and spill out all over the carpet and stink up the whole house. This is about having too many choices and too much pressure and isn’t it easier just to keep it simple and obsess about the amount of calories in a small cantaloupe? Instead of making big scary choices that might crush you to a pulp?

This is about wanting to be safe. This is about wanting to curl up in a nutshell like Thumbelina and ignore the big bad world that’s too noisy and dangerous and can’t be trusted. This is about not trusting anyone and relying on food (or lack of) to give you an all enveloping comfort blanket when the medication bloats you up like a corpse in a river.

This is about really crappy coping methods. This is about making a choice that will quite possibly kill you. This is about failed relationships, waiting lists, devastated families, waiting lists, becoming vegetarian, becoming vegan, becoming lactose intolerant, developing a wheat allergy and more waiting lists. This is about infertility, rotten teeth, and hollow bones. This is about cardiac arrest in a shopping centre. This is about being sick. This is about not being sick enough. This is about finally being sick enough for a bed in a unit until you drop down dead and you get a mention in the local paper for being such a model student.

This is not about food. “

(via supernovasidra)

holy-moly:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

5. Never use a foreign phrase.

(via supernovasidra)

Sup followers,

My blog’s been pretty dull this summer, partly because I’ve spent a lot of my time interning at Write Bloody Publishing under the direction of El Capitan Derrick Brown (Many of you know him as one of the raddest modern poets ever.)

Write Bloody has just been offered a distribution deal that will help your favorite poets get on more library and bookstore shelves and help them keep doing what they do. The only catch is they have to raise enough money to print books for the deal (over 9,000). The good news is you can help by pledging a donation, and WB is offering some sweet prizes if they reach over $1,000 by August 15 — including books and personalized poems.

The money raised will be used to print their current catalog which includes award-winning authors such as Jeanann Verlee, Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, Taylor Mali, Anis Mojgani, Andrea Gibson, Karen Finneyfrock, and more. In addition, the money will go toward printing Write Bloody’s upcoming books by Ben Clark, Beau Sia, Idris Goodwin, C.R Avery, Laura Yes Yes, Paul Suntup, Tara Hardy and others.