Creative scheduling

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there 's a pair of us--don't tell
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

—Emily Dickinson

My spring semester here at Centre College has been one of great changes: in academics and also in personal growth. With the new semester, rehearsals for "Little Shop of Horrors" have begun with a vengeance, and yours truly stomps around the stage in stilettos nightly. Indeed, one question has plagued my existence since I began the show: Why do women put themselves through the pain of high heels? I've ended up with more bumps, bruises, and blisters in the past three weeks than I've received all year, but the reward is amazing. The opportunity to work on a musical that I truly love (I've been listening to "Little Shop" since I was nine) and furthermore getting to explore a character without predefined limits or restrictions is a pleasure. Since Ronette is almost always a woman, I have the chance to expand the role by creating a unique level of subtext as a man. On top of this, I am blessed to be able to act with friends that I love.

That being said, juggling the show with my academic and choral commitments is a huge challenge. The show rehearses anywhere from two to four hours a day. When you add hour and a half Centre Singers rehearsals into the mix, sometimes I'm rehearsing for as many as 4-6 hours on weeknights. Worn out, I head back to my dorm room or to the library to attend to my coursework.   Sometimes managing daily life is merely a matter of creative scheduling, and other times it involves working into the wee hours of the morning.

But my courses are wonderful this semester! Almost all of them cater to my academic interests, and it's exciting to start mixing major-specific courses in with my general education requirements. The most inspiring new course by far has been "American Literature." As you may have guessed from my poem choice, we're deep in the thickets of Dickinson's greatest works, and I've never felt more amorous about a subject. As kooky as it may sound, deciphering poetic codes of words to unlock their intended meaning is both fun and rewarding.  

Recently, it seems that through the course of my studies I've located a serious gap in my education (though I suspect that it's shared by the vast majority of American youth). As we were dissecting Dickinson's work (featured above), I began to muse on fame and celebrity status.   Was a conscious decision somehow made by the media to highlight the slowly devolving stability of Britney Spears (and other celebrity situations) over current global affairs? How did such a momentous choice slip by my attention? Somehow, I've grown into a state of complacency with my position in the world over the past few years. Admittedly, there are days when I completely forget that our country is at war, and that people are dying everyday for the cause of "freedom." Sometimes I go to sleep at night without pausing to reflect on my good fortune in being able to sleep in a bed that is somewhere safe. Thousands of Africans in places like Darfur and Zimbabwe wish for the same. I wake each morning and head to Cowan--not imagining the possibility of being unable to eat breakfast. I have never considered myself to be a political individual (I'm the essential middle-of-the-road "independent" young voter), but I'm realizing more each day that you don't have to assign yourself to a political party or belief system to take an active role in caring about the world in which you live.

Though these are conclusions that we all acknowledge, few of us take the time to act upon them. Hence, I'm making an increased effort to become an informed citizen of not only America, but of the world. (How proud Dickinson would be, to be able to still incite change, over a century later!)