Saturday, December 3, 2016

An act of LOVE

Graduation should be one of the marks or achievement of one's study journey or life. After nearly 2 decades of studying life, I graduated. Interestingly, I am not the one who see my graduation as something special, it was more like a show to put on, or another costume to get on and take some 'character photos'. Well, at least i have a gown to put on and see how i would look in it.. another play- pretend event.

  Maybe that's because I was not into the life of the program i was in in the past few college years. I was really going to school just for doing it and i could not wait to get out of it everyday so i could get on with my life. I guess the non-school part of my life is more fascinating and attracting.Let me summarize it for you, i did not feel a single bit that i belong to my core college. And I'm not surprised.

   Let me tell you in whisper, I think I have the strongest sense of belonging to the program i was in in Long Island , New York.  Oh Stony Brook, If i could wear that bright red graduation gown, I wouldn't hesitate to put it on and be a happy proud college student. Yeah, I am more attached and feel more included in that school than the one i was in for years.



  Anyways, if I were going to dig into the details, I would not be able to finish this blog without making it too long. What i want to share in this post after two months of not posting anything is that I freaking love one of the classes i was in during my study there. Like, LOVE. Yeah, I don't know how you can really love your classmates in a class when you just see them twice a week for two hours each time. It never happened before and i didn't expect it would. I think that's the magic of stage. Strangers become friends and friends become families.




  Acting, was the class' title. I was not in the first class as it was jammed at first and I luckily grabbed my spot later as someone dropped the class during the add-drop period. So there i was, in my second class. I was not expecting anything from this class during my first lesson. There i was, probably in my white Christmas sweater and winter boots, walked in a space with black bricked walls, (actually everything in black) , three tiers of auditorium chairs and a huge space in front of it.

   There was once a sweet girl whose name i could not recall now, she was being extra nice in my first acting class. You know, girls remember every compliment. We had a little get-to-know-each-other sort of ice breaker activities and i don't really remember how i teamed up with her. So after asking and answering questions, our teacher asked each team to introduce your new friend to the class. And so nicely of her of just chatting like 5 minutes to me, she was speaking oh-so wonderfully of me, not about the things i talked, but like a personality compliments. And there i was, standing there introducing her basic information that i gathered while she spoke so highly of me demeanor.  Thank you.

   During our classes, we did lots, i mean lots of crazy acting activities, if you did not know and walked past our classroom, you'd think you gone to a zoo or an asylum as we would be pretending to be different kinds of animals running around in the room. One of the exercises i remembered was somehow touching each other and we had to do something according to that, and i think that was like the first bit of our bonds to grow and ice to break among us.

 For the first assignment, we had to a scene with a partner. I got teamed up with a guy from Korea who looked much like a teddy bear in my opinion, or a koala. (Well you get the idea.) Because we both missed a class. Ha. I remember we were playing as reporters discovering something and to do that we spent time to discuss what to do. We didn't spend too much time together discussing it as he totally trusted my directions as he didn't have any acting experience but still we spent some time getting to know each other which was rare in my college life. We became closer because of this assignment and he once walked me to the mail room afar which was really nice.



  So rolling on we had our second assignment doing another scene, this time with teams of three, and in between lessons, lots of other activities that we could do together with everyone in the class. There were moments where i learned from watching and there were some nice moments which the class teacher, who liked me very much, gave me compliments and directions to become better. Sometimes, being put under the spotlight can really keep you with pressure to drive you to become better and better.

  There was a favorite activity of our class - improv. I remember how just about 15 of our students went all in for the activity. We were pretending to be driving in a car, unscripted, and let it happen. Each time a student jumps in the scene and one would go out, creating a new story. I was totally in it and had so cool chemistry with the classmates and what really satisfied me was i felt like i was really in a car with them and also i made the audience laugh. I didn't think i have the humor to do that but this class changed my perception and reminded me of what i was capable of.

  


   Our class was so fun sometimes we would hide and turn the lights off just to scare the teacher... Fun times... And the teacher also grew closer with us as she started to flaunt one day as one of the students said he liked her scarf.

 Acting 105, it is a class that I don't want to miss because of the fun and people. In our last class, we had to do our monologue as a final examination. Since i had to go early for the Jimmy Fallon Live in the city, i had to leave early. As sad as that, i didn't have a chance to say a proper goodbye. So as I walked out the classroom, to my surprise, i said loudly to the room, "I Love y'all". because that was what i felt.

  Since when do you say "I love y'all" to a class...I have to say that was one of my favourite class, or actually, a group of nice, adorable, interesting, fun people i had spent with in this short term of study life.

 There I was, a strong sense of belonging college student. even for a short glimpse of moment.



(dorm made lunch by myself)