Residents gather for storytelling

What was promised to be 12 stories in two hours turned into 11 stories in just under the allotted time, but the Collins Living-Learning Center coffeehouse crowd was no less enthusiastic about the first ever “Collins Storytelling Project” on Friday.

The event brought members of the Collins community together to tell and listen to stories and was recorded for WFHB’s Saturday broadcast of “The Porch Swing.”

“I’ve learned not to have expectations, but Friday night went beyond them,” event
organizer and sophomore Will Mruzek said. “Even though it was story after story, it was still entertaining.”

Mruzek said he estimated more than 50 people in attendance. There were no empty seats in the coffeehouse, and students without seats gathered on the edges of the room.

Storyteller and graduate student Julie Rawe said she thought it was a successful event.

“There were an amazing number of people in the coffeehouse for a Friday night before Thanksgiving,” Rawe said. “That goes to show that people really are interested in connecting with members of their community.”

Story content varied from family and friends to politics, love, birth and death.

Freshman Shannon Manley shared her experience of making a tattered pillow from scraps of her mother’s fabrics during the time her mother was in the hospital with lung cancer.

“The pillow was ugly, but I didn’t worry because I had a time limit, even though I didn’t know what that time limit was,” Manley said. “When your life is in shambles, be spontaneous and stitch it together, even if it’s not pretty.”

Sophomore Michelle Gottschlich attended the storytelling project.

“It was like those ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul’ books but 10 times better, especially since you see these people around every day,” she said. “I couldn’t pick a favorite. Every story was so different.”

Mruzek said he received an overwhelmingly positive response to the event and that he and fellow organizer and sophomore Barton Girdwood hope to continue with the
storytelling project.

“We hope to do another event by the end of the semester or early next semester,” he said. “The stories made the event. Without the storytellers, it wouldn’t have been what
it was.”