Freshman Reflection: Who are you?

#15: Maybe You Don’t Know Who You Want to Be

If you’re anything like me, you probably don’t know who you want to be. You maybe know what you want to be, but who is a pretty big question. College is often billed as a great place to figure out who you are and so far for me it has been. Every introduction is an exercise is self-definition. “Hi, I’m a History major.” “Hi, I do student theater.” “Hi, I play football.” “Hi, I’m from New York.” Consciously or not these moments merge to form a sense of self that is free from as much of your baggage as you want it to be.

That being said, college should not just be a place to find out who you are. Why? Because its an expensive and work-intensive way to find yourself. A weekend retreat or a year hitchhiking in South America could be equally effective and doesn’t come with the price tag. Granted, I can’t think of many people who go to college for this reason. It tends to be a byproduct rather than an intent.

Freshman Reflection: An Expensive Nap

#104: Go to Class!

It's important. It's why you're here. It's expensive. Going to class is the single most important thing you can do, along with homework and sleep. (Just don't let sleep interfere with class.) I missed one class first semester. It was a large lecture and I was missing it to sing at an event, so I figured I karmicly I was covered. I'd just grab the notes from someone else and that would be that. Jump forward one week: I need to buy tickets home for Thanksgiving and can't find if that particular class was cancelled or not. So I email my professor. His response, "As I mentioned in class the other day, we will not have class." Well...now me professor knows I skipped. It was embarrassing. So, in short, go to class.

Freshman Reflection: Persistence

#5: Persistence Can Take You Far

College is confusing and a lot of the people there will have no idea who you are. But you're going to want/need to get things from these people. That is often difficult given the first point. This is why persistence is important. (Also, it's important in the grand cosmic "life" sense, but we'll start with getting things.) My first-semester stint as a reporter for the school paper put me in the position of needing things. A lot. Usually a quote or an interview with some fairly senior member of the administration who didn't really have time for me. And here I learned the joy of the cold email. "Hi Dr. Important. My name is..." If you send enough of them, someone is bound to reply. And then you talk to them, remembering to ask who else you should speak with about this. Rinse and repeat as needed.

Room 428

Two eyes stare out
As the sky explodes momentarily
A smile twitches and then the world goes dark
The shining beacon on the hill is all that remains
Steady red glow warding off devils and jets

Two eyes stare out
Thunder shatters the silence
Only to be overpowered by the steel snake
Making its plodding way across the field
Rain pelting its windows and hers

Two eyes stare out
at the same clouds
at the same rain
at the same world
As two eyes stare out, stare back
Torn and joined by lightning flashing
Across a sometimes shared sky

Freshman Reflections

            They never tell you everything you need to know. This sentiment is wide-spread during finals, often directed at professors and TAs who didn’t highlight (or who did highlight and then you slept through) that one crucial piece of information on the final. In fact, this absence of surety is a hallmark of the college experience. Not sure where that obscure seminar room is. Not sure if the food at the dinning hall is fish or chicken. Not sure what you’ll be doing in four…now three years. Not sure who’ll you will be when you walk out those gates.

            As a way to combat that sense of not really knowing what the hell you’re doing, countless books have been published on college. This time last year, as a soon-to-be freshman, I picked up one or two of my own. They were informative (sometimes), funny (sometimes), but mostly they served to calm my nerves. Others had done this before and escaped relatively unscathed. Why couldn’t I? I arrived on campus a few months later, those trusty bibles packed away among my things, and promptly forgot about them. Life moved too fast those first few weeks to pick up a book, let alone one not assigned for class.

            Luckily for me, one of the books that was assigned to me for class turned out to be another ‘tips and tricks’ book, much like the ones gathering dust in my dorm room, that would help me start solving the what the hell am I doing conundrum. Entitled What They Don’t Teach You in Film School, it is a book of 161 strategies for making your own movie. Now pretend that said movie is instead your life and you will have an understanding of why this particular book is so helpful when it comes to getting your life together.

            As a way to reflect on my first year at college (wow…it’s over already…) and to hopefully share some whimsical, dare say, wisdom, I’ll be writing a series of reflection pairing life advice for freshman and filmmakers. I can make no promises about its accuracy, relevance, or usefulness. But I can promise words (and maybe even a few pictures). Make of it what you will.  

An Unholy Sonnet

They tell me what we prioritize speaks volumes about what we care about. I guess that leaves me with sleep first, food second, and theater and school tied for a distant third. They also say that you can do only two of three things well in college: sleep, study, or party. It seems I have chosen the first two: a major in sleep with a minor in homework. It is very rewarding, but I wonder if I should add a double-major...?

As the semester (and my first year at college!!! AHHH!!!) winds to a close, I am a bit nervous. Nervous about finals. Nervous about summer school and what I'm doing with the rest of my summer. Nervous about what I'm doing with the rest of my life. You know, your normal Tuesday. When you talk about anxiety as a dull, throbbing nervousness that never quite goes away, what they are really referring to is the last three weeks of the semester. And I cannot even begin to imagine what the seniors must be going through right now. 

Batter my heart, three-person'd God

The storm of pillows
Slaughters innocent dreamings
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new
A night, unspent restless

Forks clash with knives
As the work around the left flank
Fried chicken valiantly dying before
Vegatables uncooked and untamed

The thunderous din drowns out the cries
Of warriors celebrating a week well-fought
With papers laid to waste
They pour libations to their liberation

Batter my heart, three-person'd God

Twenty Six

We stand mute, unmoving
On a corner in Boston
The whole world packed onto the sidewalk
Wanting to reach out
Wanting to help
Yet we remain trapped behind pixel walls
We keep looking at pictures. Trying to make it real.
But it isn't.

Yet there they go
Running on, into the fire
Those whose capacity to meet a challenge
May well be limitless.
There are still so many heroes.
Tears of joy and grief mix
For humanity torn and affirmed
In a single tragic moment

At moments like these
Words stand empty.
But love abounds

Oh God…"like these"
There can not be moments like these
We can not let them be so common place
So ordinary that they get "these"

At this moment
Words stand empty.
But love abounds

Sure on this Shinning Night

Sorry for the rather long dearth of posts recently. If you haven't guessed by now, whenever I'm working on a show everything else falls to the wayside. But, having just closed and struck Spring Awakening (which was amazing!!!!) this weekend, I can finally return to the glamorous world of actually getting my homework done. I've finished my Greek translation completely for the first time in a few weeks, written a exhibit proposal on eighteenth-century naval art, and am about to dive into some good ol' utilitarianism. Normally philosophy homework calls for Concerning Hobbits. Tonight, in celebration as it were, I've gone in search of something a bit 

different.