The Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 has not only been a conversation piece, but a versatile and functional tool in my student journalist arsenal. I’m the first to say that I’m not tech savvy. I don’t have internet access on my phone, my laptop is more than fours years old and I still have an iPod Shuffle. However, I was able to operate the tablet with ease and care. It fit slimly in my beat-up old backpack on my way to school or work and helped me through stressful times — and there were many of those.

Elissa Schappell’s “Monsters of the Deep” is one of eight darkly comedic short stories that follows an interconnected cast of female characters from her second novel “Blueprints for Building Better Girls.”

Elissa Schappell, co-founder and editor-at-large of Tin House Magazine, visited Alkek Library Feb. 23 to speak and sign copies of her book, "Blueprints for Building Better Girls".

Schappell, Tin House literary magazine co-founder, made her novel debut with the PEN/Hemingway Award finalist “Use Me,” 10 short stories about the experiences of a young woman.

It’s a break from their children, husbands and significant others. It’s a time to emotionally vent.

The desire to incorporate more creativity in the lives of San Marcos women has brought hundreds of mothers together for weekly meetings at various locations in town.

Mothering San Marcos began as an opportunity for current and former members to read the book “The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity” by Julia Cameron. Members would read a chapter in advance and discuss it as a group each week.

Laura Ellis-Lai, English lecturer, said the book is about finding one’s inner artist. She said the group wanted to find and create their own unique identity outside of being a mother.

“I felt like this lactating machine,” Ellis-Lai said.

Conversations and a new outlook evolved among group members after reading the book.

The Texas State student-produced play “Donor Child” investigates the mayhem and mischief that ensues after an incident involving a children’s theater teacher and a child.

Ian Downing-Beaver, “Donor Child” writer and playwright graduate student, became inspired to write his first full-length production after working as a ZACH Theatre children’s education intern in Austin.

“Any playwright will tell you that a play is never finished,” Downing-Beaver said Prior to his ZACH Theatre internship, Downing-Beaver interned for the Sherman community theater, Theatricks! He also worked as an assistant teacher at a daycare center.

“I included every terrible story you hear about children,” Downing-Beaver said about the 75-minute farce.

Claire Parker, directing graduate student, was asked by Charles Ney, theater and dance professor, to direct “Donor Child” last September. Parker said she read the script and thought it was hilarious.

To more than 200 Texas State photography majors, a picture may be worth a thousand words. However, the Texas State School of Art and Design is in the early stages of reworking the photography curriculum. 

Jason Reed, school of art and design associate professor, said in an email that the photography minor has been removed because the school of art and design did not have enough classroom capacity to have both photography majors and minors.

Reed said the removal of the minor will better allow students who are photography majors to enroll in the courses they need to graduate. He said the curriculum is being restructured to provide an easier transition from the photography introduction course to thesis work.

Reed saidAccording to Reed, the new curriculum will continue to include historical and traditional photography processes, such as darkroom film development, as well as digital technology.

In 1969, University of Texas at Austin students were not granted access to birth control unless they could certify that they were six weeks or less from marriage. University officials worked to acquire information they could share with students about contraceptives and abortion. UT alumna and attorney Sarah Weddington provided legal counsel to representatives to limit the possibility of being prosecuted as accomplices to the crime of abortion.

“I thought I was the only person who was willing to work on this case for free,” she said.

Weddington was 26 years old when Roe vs. Wade was first argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. A year later, she became the youngest person to win a Supreme Court case.

Dana Smith had Texas State Desegregation Celebration Black History Picnic audience members close their eyes and imagine they were seven years old, sitting with their mother in the last two rows of a segregated bus. A man steps onto the bus and sits in a seat on the same two rows. A voice from across the aisle tells the man, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Smith described a typical occurrence for African Americans when she was a child. The fear of having to get off the bus and be left stranded if a Caucasian person wanted a seat was always looming.

She urged African American audience members to speak with their relatives about their segregation experiences.

“Some of them might want to talk to you, some of them might not,” she said. “We have wounds that haven’t healed. They’re not bleeding anymore, but they’re not healed.”

Longboarder Tyler Threadgill leaned left then right as he “carved” his way down a hill in Canyon Lake last April. The continuous “S” motion helped him control and maintain speed – until the board gave out under his feet and he fell backward on the gravel road, shirtless and helmetless.

Threadgill, marketing senior, began longboarding his sophomore year of college at the advice of his roommate Travis Ahern.

With a borrowed board, Threadgill “bombed,” or skated down a hill in a straight line, for the first time with Ahern off Wonder World Drive. The experience proved to be a positive, adrenaline-filled one.

He soon bought his own board.

Alumni Caleb Straus and Dustin Johnson tried to change the world as children by remaking scenes from popular movies with a VHS camcorder. They are working to conquer the world as adults through their Austin-based multimedia company with “The Storybook,” sequel to the apocalyptic thriller “It’s Over.”

“I don’t know how many action figures we set on fire as children,” Straus, company co-founder, said.

The multimedia company, Snout Productions, grew from a Snout Recordings label logo. This logo was created when Johnson, co-founder of the production company, scanned his nose against a Xerox machine for a Texas State Technical College class project.

Austin-based documentarian Heather Courtney chronicles four years in the lives of small-town childhood friends in the award-winning movie “Where Soldiers Come From.” The film begins with their decision to enlist in the National Guard after graduating high school, and continues through their deployment to Afghanistan and their adjustment back to civilian life.