After spending the last four years of my life pulling all-nighters writing code and analyzing data, I have officially…started all over again, in a different body, with a completely different degree program that’s about as 180 as you could get from what I know.
Yes, the fall semester has officially started, which means that I’ve spent the last few weeks moving in, doing freshman orientation stuff, and getting settled into classes. Kaitlyn’s probably right that at first she was busier than me running Clint's life, but I think at this point I might have her beat.
But let’s start with the beginning.
The actual process of moving in was relatively
straightforward, helped by Shannon and "Clint" getting along. That
little date night seems to have warmed Shannon up to Kaitlyn-as-Clint, and we were able to get my things up to the dorm without any fights or passive-aggressive comments. Also helped that I didn't bring a lot with me, preferring my dorm room be a little more minimalist. Only thing beyond the clothes, extra sheets, and school supplies I brought was a fridge and some DVDs from Rylee's collection. Didn't even bother with a TV, which I had been tempted on, but ultimately everything's on streaming these days. Shannon apparently approved of the minimalism, having initially expected Rylee to want to drag almost everything with her to college.
"Well, I'm only going to be in this room for a year," I said, appreciating the irony of the double meaning of that statement.
It was around then that my roommate showed up. Her name was Sydney, and when it comes to potential college roommates I think I lucked out. She was a business major and came off as kind of quiet and studious. Like, call it stereotyping, but I doubted the girl in square frame glasses and a cardigan was going to be up at one o’clock in the morning listening to conspiracy theory videos and death metal albums like my first freshman roommate did.
There wasn't much of a chance to hang out, though, as after all the move-in it was just a string of "freshman experiences" to help get us "integrated": convocations, initial meetings with our first-year experience courses, tours of campus pointing out important locations, floor meetings with the RA. It was practically smothering in how much the university didn't want to leave us alone this week, enough that when the opportunity for some off-campus trips and parties came up on the weekend I decided to just crash in the dorm room and recharge.
That's when the real challenges began: theater classes.
I had really hoped that I could get away with padding out my schedule with mostly gen-ed requirements, but my advisor and the acting course instructor, Dr.
Price, was pretty persistent in saying the schedule was optimized for a clean pathway to graduation. At least Rylee had not taken up a musical theater concentration like Dr. Price had wanted: having to learn to sing and dance on top of the acting would have been a practical death sentence to Rylee's GPA.
Not to say that her GPA was exactly safe and sound right now, at least for her major.
But before I get into that, fun fact about theater courses: there's a dress code. First day of every single class we were told we would be moving a lot and so to dress appropriately. So now my work-out clothes are basically my everyday outfit. I initially tried to change before and after class, but I gave up on that after the first week and now just throw a pair of jeans and t-shirt over them.
Anyway, inconvenient dress code aside, what's the course content like? Well, it varies.
Intro to Backstage is, well, learning about the backstage part of a production. Of all the courses this has probably been the easiest one for me to get into, being a lot of learning about technical aspects of managing the backstage area, getting some hands-on experiences with the equipment, things like that. With a little room for electives next semester, I might pick up one of the advanced stage production courses just to have something to ground myself in.
The second course I had to take kind of surprised me because what do you there is an entire course on the voice?! Scratch that, two courses on it, there’s another one next semester. At least right it's mostly going over a lot of the same things that Rylee had written for me as part of the workout routine, like breathing techniques and practicing my diction and projection. Will say, though, Rylee's got a good set of pipes. If I had been taking this in my real body, I'm sure I'd have developed sore throat issues by now.
The final course, however, is the real killer: Fundamentals of Acting I. As I said earlier, my advisor is the instructor, so there's a whole extra level of pressure to doing well, and so far I think I'm coming in under expectations.
The thing is, though, part of the course is actually ok. If you ask me to read something, write a summary and analysis of what it said, and then quiz me on it? Sure, I can do that all day. Even if the subject matter is more theories of acting rather than how to properly perform a regression analysis, I like to consider myself literate enough to do that.
The performances, though, that’s where things start to fall apart.
Sometimes they're small, like these little "A/B" scene things we get asked to do where we pair up with a partner and perform a little scene then experiment with how our acting choices change it. Think how screaming out "Oh my god" gets you a very different vibe than saying it like a mean girl."
Other times, we're having to do sample monologues from some piece, and down the road during "Meisner" week we'll be expected to do improv.
Regardless of the type of performance, though, I tend to get similar feedback: "too restrained", "not experimental enough", "overthinking", "missing the timing". In short, everybody thinks I'm too stuck inside my own head and afraid to let things out. I'd argue that my brain's just too overloaded with already pulling one performance that it's rude to ask me to do another one on top of it. Regardless, Dr. Price has definitely noticed there's a gap in ability between what I do in class and what the real Rylee did in her audition tapes. She's willing to chalk it up to freshman nerves, but I still think my main hope for this course is acing the paperwork side of things will make it up enough to get a passing grade: Cs get degrees, after all.
Still, the classes aren’t all bad.
I was kind of expecting a cut-throat competitive environment
like you’d see on the tv-shows, but so far that doesn't seem to be the case. I mean, don’t get me wrong, they'd probably be at least a little giddy if someone literally broke a leg while competing with them for top billing on a show, but they'd at least sign the cast and wish you a speedy recovery. Or maybe I'm just so clearly not a threat no one sees the point in going all mean-girl on me and just leaves me alone.
There's at least one girl, Paige, I'm pretty confident is just genuinely friendly with everyone, and I didn't even have to wait till class started for her to declare we were besties.
It was that first weekend, going to the gym my one exception to crashing out in the dorm the whole time. I was in the locker room and had just finished undressing when this blonde girl rushes up to me all excited. Apparently, Paige and Rylee had met during the mandatory freshman campus visits that Rylee had gone to before Inn. They were both theater students - though Paige apparently is double-majoring in arts administration - and the two hit it off well enough that they had meant to keep in touch the rest of the summer. I had not been informed of that, however, so I was instead left to flounder in confusion at this random stranger chatting me up while I was half naked. My confusion didn't seem to hinder her, however, and soon enough she was asking if I wanted a workout partner.
I was really tempted to politely decline, my inner introvert already feeling exhausted at the idea of someone so cheerfully bright hanging around me all the time. But I don't know, something about those blue eyes glimmering with excitement broke me down, and I ended up agreeing to it. Now my phone is constantly blowing up with text messages and invites to study or go out and do something. My first time around in college I didn't really do a lot outside of studying so, I don't know, maybe having someone more outgoing around me might be a good thing.
- Caleb/Rylee
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