Finally, at the end of the fifth week of school, here is my post about how school is going this semester. That's a pretty good indication of how school is going. In short, I feel like I'm drowning. As soon as I finally feel I've got a bit of a handle on things and I can get my head up to take a breath, the current of senior year pulls me back under and I just wind up with a burning mouthful of salt water. I've carved out about two hours on Friday afternoons (aka, right now) to just give myself a break and do whatever I want, but I spend the whole time feeling guilty that I'm not doing schoolwork.
A brief rundown of my classes this semester:
Collaborative Studies in Theatre - This is affectionately known as the class from hell in the Theatre Department, mostly because of the amount of work it requires. Over the semester, we have three projects on three shows, and we work with different people for each one. Currently, I'm the "director" for a production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and I have to work with my "scenic designer" and my "costume designer" to choose a spine (the main action of the show) and a concept (we're doing Cirque du Soleil) and then do all the research that our "job" requires...so I'm researching Forum (its history, significant productions, its authors, dramatic criticism), directing musicals and farces, Ancient Rome (with particular emphasis on slavery and women), social history of the 1960s (when Forum was written), and anything about Cirque du Soleil that I can get my hands on. Then I have to use my "scenic designer's" sketches and outline the blocking for the entire show. Everything has to support our spine and concept and the playwrights' intentions. For someone who hates group projects, this class is a joy.
Tap III - I love this class, it's just exhausting!! My tap technique has really suffered over the last couple of years, so I'm getting the chance to go back and review some basics. It's taught by the new dance teacher, Greg, who is completely wonderful. I sweat buckets every time!
Seminario español - This is a really interesting class so far. The focus is on immigration and everything that that entails: the decision to leave home, the journey itself, adjusting to a new world, cultural and subcultural identity... We get a very interesting perspective on it because the professor, my adviser, grew up in Puerto Rico and came to the U.S. for grad school in the early '80s. The class is very small and I'm friends with everyone in it.
Dance in America - One of my least favorite classes ever. It's like dance history for non-dancers, and I'm in it because I missed the Dance History class required for my minor while I was in Ecuador. The teacher is odd and super-pretentious and tries so hard to be politically correct that he often comes off as racist. At least he'll admit he's a snob about what constitutes "good dance," though. It's super boring and the teacher picks on my friend Loee and me all the time because he knows we're dancers.
Ballet IV - Another class that kicks my butt every single time, but I'm loving it! It's also a return to basics for me, in a way, and the teacher is really wonderful about making corrections, explaining things, and answering questions. I'm now regretting most of my high school years, when I put way less effort into my ballet classes than I should have.
Dance Production and Performance - This is another class taught by Greg, the new dance teacher. It's a lecture class, but he gets sidetracked all the time into awesome stories of the years he danced with the Rockettes or various national tours he's been on. We have one project for the semester that keeps building and building on itself. Each person has to act as the producer for a show (a dance concert, a recital, a musical, whatever they've chosen) and plan the entire budget and logistics. It's really interesting so far, although it's a bit frustrating because I usually don't have time to call places like hotels and rental companies during business hours.
In addition to all that, I'm working in the scene shop in the theater four hours each week for Backstage Experience credit. I get to do everything from putting together spiral staircases to taking seams out of curtains to painting sets to bringing lights down from the catwalks. It's fun some days, but it's also exhausting and usually dirty, sweaty work.
I also have my senior Honors thesis, which I haven't really started on because I'm feeling kind of lost about it. My project is essentially developing a business plan for a small dance company, because my sister and I have a dream of starting our own company someday and neither of us knows anything about business. And that's the issue with me getting started: I don't know anything about business. And because the thesis is not something that's due immediately, I never seem to find time to work on it, so I feel like it's constantly looming over me. It's just so frustrating. I joke about wanting to drop out of school all the time, but there are days when I really wish I could.
To end this post on a happy note, something fantabulous happened on Wednesday. I was packing up my things after Collaborative and I heard one of my classmates, Annika, whom I don't know very well, talking to someone else about a book called Looking for Alaska. I freaked out and asked her if she'd read any of John Green's other books, and she said no, but then she said something about being a Nerdfighter, and I shouted, "You're a Nerdfighter?!?" and then she said, "YOU'RE a Nerdfighter?!?" and it was completely fantastic. Everyone was staring at us like we were nuts, and we just kept babbling on about John and Hank and YouTube and pizza and LeakyCon and everything. That was most definitely the highlight of my week!!
Friday, September 24, 2010
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Labor Day baseball!
I love Labor Day, because I'm lucky enough to go to a college that still takes the day as a holiday, so it's like a Monday that's not really a Monday. This year I stayed at school for Saturday and Sunday and then drove to Pittsburgh on Monday morning for an afternoon Braves-Pirates game.
It's only about two-and-a-half hours to Pittsburgh from school, and I was a little nervous because it was my first time driving out of state by myself, but I was fine until I got into the city. This was my third time going to Pittsburgh, and the previous two times my dad got totally confused on the way out because of construction and closed streets and other nonsense. This time, I got lost on the way into the city. Apparently they've just re-numbered all of the exits to coincide with miles on the actual road, rather than distance from the city limits, as they used to be. My GPS, Lucille, was telling me to take exit 7A, and there was neither a "7" nor an "A" to be seen on any of the signs. So I just drove around for a while, totally lost, crossing the river to the wrong side and winding up in residential areas, while poor Lucille worked really hard to get me back on track. The problem with Pittsburgh is that there are so many places where you have to make a turn from the far right lane and then half a mile later you have to make a turn from the far left lane and it's just not possible!
I survived, thank God, and finally made it to the stadium. I allowed myself almost an hour of extra driving time, so I still had a while to wait in the parking lot for my family.
My dad, my sister, my grandma, and my aunt drove up from Central Ohio and picked up my cousin Matt at his fraternity house. (He goes to Carnegie Mellon University.) We had all had to laugh, because my dad, my sister, and I all had on our Braves hats (of course), Grandma was wearing her Tigers hat (because she's from Michigan and we took her to a game in Detroit last summer), Matt was wearing a Giants shirt (because he's from the San Francisco area), and Aunt Kathy forgot her Braves hat so she bought a Pirates one to keep the sun out of her eyes. It was too bad my sister hadn't worn her Cubs shirt, since they're her other favorite team!
PNC Park is really a beautiful stadium, and we had fantastic seats (between 3rd base and home, about fifteen rows back). The weather was perfect, probably the best baseball weather I've ever experienced. It was a good game, but the final score was a disappointing 3-1 for the Pirates. They're already eliminated, and we totally should have beat them! There were at least two occasions where the Braves had the bases loaded and were unable to get a run in. Our up-and-down offense has been the biggest issue this year, and we're really going to need to pick it up if we're going to make the playoffs, let alone win the division. The Phillies scare the crap out of me, and as of today they've taken the division lead by a half game.
Matt and I spent the whole game talking about every aspect of baseball, from the "battle royale" that's coming with this postseason, to great bloopers that we've seen in person or on video, to reminiscing about games we've been to together. He told me about the NLCS game where the Giants clinched the pennant in 2002, which he attended. SO COOL! We watched the right field scoreboard for other games obsessively, glorying in the Phillies' loss to the Marlins. (Matt also wants the Phillies to crash and burn, because the Giants are in second place in the Wild Card race.) Unfortunately, the Phils and Marlins had a double-header that day, and the second game didn't turn out to our liking.
Matt, my sister, and I also had a blast gauging the trajectories of the balls flying into the crowd. I'd never seen so many fouls into the stands before! Early in the game, a ball landed about five rows in front of us, and two guys dove for it. One came up with the ball, and he shook hands with the other guy and gave him back his hat, which had been knocked off. Then the guy who got the ball noticed the other man had three little girls with him, and he gave the ball to the girls! Our whole section applauded his generosity, and the dad bought the nice guy a beer when a vendor came around. Maybe two innings later, a ball went way up into the first deck, right above us. I was watching my left side to see if it would come back down, and it came down on my right side and bounced away! Matt was like, "BALL!", but I didn't see it before it was gone. It went forward, though, about five rows, and wound up with the guy who had given up the first ball!! That's karma for you. It was an awesome thing to see!
I'll write again soon and talk about how school is going. I desperately needed to write about something happy, today, though, so you got this instead. (That should give you an idea of how school is going.)
It's only about two-and-a-half hours to Pittsburgh from school, and I was a little nervous because it was my first time driving out of state by myself, but I was fine until I got into the city. This was my third time going to Pittsburgh, and the previous two times my dad got totally confused on the way out because of construction and closed streets and other nonsense. This time, I got lost on the way into the city. Apparently they've just re-numbered all of the exits to coincide with miles on the actual road, rather than distance from the city limits, as they used to be. My GPS, Lucille, was telling me to take exit 7A, and there was neither a "7" nor an "A" to be seen on any of the signs. So I just drove around for a while, totally lost, crossing the river to the wrong side and winding up in residential areas, while poor Lucille worked really hard to get me back on track. The problem with Pittsburgh is that there are so many places where you have to make a turn from the far right lane and then half a mile later you have to make a turn from the far left lane and it's just not possible!
I survived, thank God, and finally made it to the stadium. I allowed myself almost an hour of extra driving time, so I still had a while to wait in the parking lot for my family.
My dad, my sister, my grandma, and my aunt drove up from Central Ohio and picked up my cousin Matt at his fraternity house. (He goes to Carnegie Mellon University.) We had all had to laugh, because my dad, my sister, and I all had on our Braves hats (of course), Grandma was wearing her Tigers hat (because she's from Michigan and we took her to a game in Detroit last summer), Matt was wearing a Giants shirt (because he's from the San Francisco area), and Aunt Kathy forgot her Braves hat so she bought a Pirates one to keep the sun out of her eyes. It was too bad my sister hadn't worn her Cubs shirt, since they're her other favorite team!
PNC Park is really a beautiful stadium, and we had fantastic seats (between 3rd base and home, about fifteen rows back). The weather was perfect, probably the best baseball weather I've ever experienced. It was a good game, but the final score was a disappointing 3-1 for the Pirates. They're already eliminated, and we totally should have beat them! There were at least two occasions where the Braves had the bases loaded and were unable to get a run in. Our up-and-down offense has been the biggest issue this year, and we're really going to need to pick it up if we're going to make the playoffs, let alone win the division. The Phillies scare the crap out of me, and as of today they've taken the division lead by a half game.
Matt and I spent the whole game talking about every aspect of baseball, from the "battle royale" that's coming with this postseason, to great bloopers that we've seen in person or on video, to reminiscing about games we've been to together. He told me about the NLCS game where the Giants clinched the pennant in 2002, which he attended. SO COOL! We watched the right field scoreboard for other games obsessively, glorying in the Phillies' loss to the Marlins. (Matt also wants the Phillies to crash and burn, because the Giants are in second place in the Wild Card race.) Unfortunately, the Phils and Marlins had a double-header that day, and the second game didn't turn out to our liking.
Matt, my sister, and I also had a blast gauging the trajectories of the balls flying into the crowd. I'd never seen so many fouls into the stands before! Early in the game, a ball landed about five rows in front of us, and two guys dove for it. One came up with the ball, and he shook hands with the other guy and gave him back his hat, which had been knocked off. Then the guy who got the ball noticed the other man had three little girls with him, and he gave the ball to the girls! Our whole section applauded his generosity, and the dad bought the nice guy a beer when a vendor came around. Maybe two innings later, a ball went way up into the first deck, right above us. I was watching my left side to see if it would come back down, and it came down on my right side and bounced away! Matt was like, "BALL!", but I didn't see it before it was gone. It went forward, though, about five rows, and wound up with the guy who had given up the first ball!! That's karma for you. It was an awesome thing to see!
I'll write again soon and talk about how school is going. I desperately needed to write about something happy, today, though, so you got this instead. (That should give you an idea of how school is going.)
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