What a terrific weekend! My mom has already blogged about it briefly. Now, the activity has died down and all is peaceful again as everyone crawls into bed to prepare for Monday. Ah, Monday... My weeks are very hectic, quite a lot of my free time claimed by school. Here's my planned routine for this week.
Monday: Alarm goes off at six. Whether I wake up then or not remains to be seen. Nevertheless, I know I'll be up by 7:30 to take our family's babysitting charges to school, never mind my own trek to school. NaNoWriMo should actually push my wake up back an hour, so that's a five a.m. alarm to buy an hour's writing time - assuming I stick to that. School starts at nine a.m. with sound design, an amazingly awesome class and one of three theater classes I am enrolled in this semester. We spend the class period discussing mics, amps, connectors, recording methods, and a lot more. It's just plain fun; there's a lot of hands on work and projects and the like that keep me busy as far as homework. After sound design, I have Spanish at ten a.m. What we do in this class is pretty self-explanatory. There are four other theater majors in this class, so it's not too bad. Our professor is from Puerto Rico, which makes her pronunciation difficult to understand, but she brings a lot to the class, telling us about different Spanish cultures. After Spanish is Technical Theater I at eleven o'clock. This class, taught by the department head, is arguably my favorite class of the semester. In Tech, we've been learning the basics of scenic construction: wood, power tools, hand tools, pneumatic (air powered) tools, fasteners, etc. After lunch, at one, I go to my language lab for an hour. These lab hours are spent doing Spanish exercises on the computer. After lab, I'm done for the day and normally get home around three or four.
Tuesday: The early wake-up calls continue. First up at school is history at nine twenty-five. My history prof is awesome. He loves theater majors and has been cast in productions quite often. He's got a great sense of humor. Next on the docket is Backgrounds of Western Literature. My professor holds her masters degree...and knows it. This is the prof I tire of because she gives the same lecture every day before we get to our assigned text. "When you read a work that has been translated, you are being affected by the word choice of the translator and receive the translator's opinions on said piece of work." No shit, Sherlock! On and on she goes, showing us three different translations of the same text, a twenty line segment we will analyze or, more often, stare at mutely while she points out the subtle differences in word choice between each translation. If I learn nothing else in this class, I feel sure I'll know, for the rest of my life, that reading a work that has been previously translated gives it a bent which matches the point of view of the translator. After Lit. class, I head to lunch and then go to the costume shop from 1-4. Generally, lab students will assist however needed for whatever the next production is or work on a personal project - something they or a family member/friend will wear/use. Right now, several of us are making various sizes and types of vests for the theater department to use in the future. These days, I get home around six.
Wednesday: See Monday. Lather, rinse, repeat. At two in the afternoon, I go to a writer's meeting for our improv troupe's weekly performance. At four, IMPROV at Tarleton performs. Shows last one hour. I get home around six or seven.
Thursday: See Tuesday. Lather, rinse, repeat. No lab hours. Get home after lunch if I leave once class is over.
Friday: See Monday. Lather, rinse, repeat. Lab hours from 1-4 in the scene shop. Here, I help build anything from set pieces to props to flats (false walls) or help paint. These lab hours are attached to my tech theater class and get averaged in as part of my grade. At the end of the semester, the scene shop supervisors - older students who are employees of the university's fine arts department and designate tasks/instruct lab students - will administer a proficiency test, making sure we know how to properly use all the tools in the shop.
Saturday: This weekend will not be like most. Because we have a play performing next week (Nov. 4-8) this Saturday is our designated Tech Weekend. During Tech, the entire theater department gets together to run around doing last minute preparations, builds, paint jobs, light hangs, sound checks, and anything else that isn't quite finished. It's insane and I love it all. I'll have to find NaNo time in the evening.
Sunday: For an even more unusual weekend, we've got the second annual Spirits of Erath County Cemetery Walk performed in the afternoon. Starting in '07, this is a sort of historical reenactment in miniature. Students selected from the theater department (including me) are assigned a specific person/pair that helped found Erath County and the city of Stephenville, where Tarleton is located. Different theater students get into period garb provided by the department and perform the monologues written by their peers in the local cemetery. It's a lot of fun.
Alright. I'd love to type more, but have been typing in the dark for about twenty minutes and my eyes can't take much more. What does your typical week look like?
Word count: 943
Monday: Alarm goes off at six. Whether I wake up then or not remains to be seen. Nevertheless, I know I'll be up by 7:30 to take our family's babysitting charges to school, never mind my own trek to school. NaNoWriMo should actually push my wake up back an hour, so that's a five a.m. alarm to buy an hour's writing time - assuming I stick to that. School starts at nine a.m. with sound design, an amazingly awesome class and one of three theater classes I am enrolled in this semester. We spend the class period discussing mics, amps, connectors, recording methods, and a lot more. It's just plain fun; there's a lot of hands on work and projects and the like that keep me busy as far as homework. After sound design, I have Spanish at ten a.m. What we do in this class is pretty self-explanatory. There are four other theater majors in this class, so it's not too bad. Our professor is from Puerto Rico, which makes her pronunciation difficult to understand, but she brings a lot to the class, telling us about different Spanish cultures. After Spanish is Technical Theater I at eleven o'clock. This class, taught by the department head, is arguably my favorite class of the semester. In Tech, we've been learning the basics of scenic construction: wood, power tools, hand tools, pneumatic (air powered) tools, fasteners, etc. After lunch, at one, I go to my language lab for an hour. These lab hours are spent doing Spanish exercises on the computer. After lab, I'm done for the day and normally get home around three or four.
Tuesday: The early wake-up calls continue. First up at school is history at nine twenty-five. My history prof is awesome. He loves theater majors and has been cast in productions quite often. He's got a great sense of humor. Next on the docket is Backgrounds of Western Literature. My professor holds her masters degree...and knows it. This is the prof I tire of because she gives the same lecture every day before we get to our assigned text. "When you read a work that has been translated, you are being affected by the word choice of the translator and receive the translator's opinions on said piece of work." No shit, Sherlock! On and on she goes, showing us three different translations of the same text, a twenty line segment we will analyze or, more often, stare at mutely while she points out the subtle differences in word choice between each translation. If I learn nothing else in this class, I feel sure I'll know, for the rest of my life, that reading a work that has been previously translated gives it a bent which matches the point of view of the translator. After Lit. class, I head to lunch and then go to the costume shop from 1-4. Generally, lab students will assist however needed for whatever the next production is or work on a personal project - something they or a family member/friend will wear/use. Right now, several of us are making various sizes and types of vests for the theater department to use in the future. These days, I get home around six.
Wednesday: See Monday. Lather, rinse, repeat. At two in the afternoon, I go to a writer's meeting for our improv troupe's weekly performance. At four, IMPROV at Tarleton performs. Shows last one hour. I get home around six or seven.
Thursday: See Tuesday. Lather, rinse, repeat. No lab hours. Get home after lunch if I leave once class is over.
Friday: See Monday. Lather, rinse, repeat. Lab hours from 1-4 in the scene shop. Here, I help build anything from set pieces to props to flats (false walls) or help paint. These lab hours are attached to my tech theater class and get averaged in as part of my grade. At the end of the semester, the scene shop supervisors - older students who are employees of the university's fine arts department and designate tasks/instruct lab students - will administer a proficiency test, making sure we know how to properly use all the tools in the shop.
Saturday: This weekend will not be like most. Because we have a play performing next week (Nov. 4-8) this Saturday is our designated Tech Weekend. During Tech, the entire theater department gets together to run around doing last minute preparations, builds, paint jobs, light hangs, sound checks, and anything else that isn't quite finished. It's insane and I love it all. I'll have to find NaNo time in the evening.
Sunday: For an even more unusual weekend, we've got the second annual Spirits of Erath County Cemetery Walk performed in the afternoon. Starting in '07, this is a sort of historical reenactment in miniature. Students selected from the theater department (including me) are assigned a specific person/pair that helped found Erath County and the city of Stephenville, where Tarleton is located. Different theater students get into period garb provided by the department and perform the monologues written by their peers in the local cemetery. It's a lot of fun.
Alright. I'd love to type more, but have been typing in the dark for about twenty minutes and my eyes can't take much more. What does your typical week look like?
Word count: 943
