Matt Gallets lives in an ordinary apartment in Buccaneer Village decorated with a couple of plants and the smell of baking bread. “Baking bread,” Gallet said, “is great for relieving stress.”
Stress, however, doesn’t seem like a major factor in this student’s life. Gallets, who was born in Jamestown, N.Y., 23 years ago, is attending East Tennessee State University because, through storytelling, he said he hopes to make people happy. ETSU’s master’s in storytelling is the only one of its kind in the nation.
The stress involved in getting to ETSU is another story. Gallets packed all of his belongings into one backpack and caught a bus to Johnson City, Tenn., a city where he knew no one.
As it happened, Gallets boarded the southbound bus on Aug. 14, 2003, the same day a major northeastern power grid failed. The same power outage hit most of the northeast as well as parts of Canada and had the streets of New York flooded with people walking home from work.
So a trip that would normally take 15 hours took four days. Gallets had to spend a night in Cincinnati, where, “There were times I would pretend to be asleep, holding two knives under my arms,” he said.
Before coming to ETSU to pursue his master’s, Gallets received a bachelor’s degree in English from the State University of New York at Fredonia. His ambitions were at first “pretentious,” he said.
“I was very interested in oral tradition and Norse and Greek mythology,” Gallets said, “and I liked the idea of presenting them in their original form.”
Odds Bodkin, Gallets’ favorite storyteller, reflects these early ambitions, he said. “[Bodkin] tells ancient Norse and Greek myths and he does them to original guitar themes, and that’s really cool,” Gallets said.
These ambitions changed, he said, once he began the storytelling program. “Telling,” Gallets said, “is a way to make people happy, at least for a little while.”
The stories Gallets enjoys telling today are those that “are completely amazing or have had profound effects on my life,” he said.
The material for these stories comes from many sources. Things hidden in the past are what Gallets said he looks for. “I get material for my stories by keeping my eyes and ears open and reading a lot,” he said, “and the kinds of things I look for may not be what you are looking for.”
Gallets’ stories bring to life the misadventures of his childhood Boy Scout troop, as well as poignant, curious tales of aimless young adults.
Telling to children, as well as adults, he said, can be equally enjoyable but for different reasons. Adults can understand more complicated situations, but, “There is nothing more fun than a room full of lots of excited children,” he said.
As a graduate assistant in ETSU’s Child Care Study Center, as well as a member of the Tale Tellers, a traveling storytelling group organized through ETSU’s storytelling program, Gallets tells stories in daycare, elementary, middle and high schools, as well as at group homes.
At the Child Care Study Center, Gallets helps with a research project which is probing the effects storytelling has on children’s language growth. Gallets, with others, goes to schools and tells stories while other children simply read the stories themselves. Afterward, the children are questioned to gain an idea of how much each group learned.
“When I go to schools to collect data, I tell stories and basically play with the kids for about 30 minutes,” Gallets said. “It’s the most fun job in the world.”
“I think Matt’s favorite part is hanging out with the kids,” said Julia Iverson, who works with Gallets on the project.
Gallets will base his graduate thesis on his research for the center, but doesn’t necessarily plan to use his storytelling experience in the future. “I am thinking about teaching in some capacity, and I think I will use [my storytelling experience] then but I don’t plan on becoming a professional storyteller.”
Or, storytelling may lead Gallets to other pursuits after he graduates in May. “I hope,” he said, “to get a job on the beach teaching windsurfing to beautiful women.”
Failing that, he could at least bake them some bread.

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