Life stuff! Yay!

I've finally come out of my little funk involving what the hell I want to do after college, and I feel awesome. For  a while I'd been toying with the idea of declaring a minor in either business or marketing, and then I came up with the idea of what kind of company I'd like to create. It's a new kind of clothing company, stemming from a recent design movement that I'd like to bring into the mainstream. I hope that that can actually happen! I won't go into much detail about that here, since I'm slightly paranoid that someone could see this blog and take my ideas. Anyway, at my school, there's a program called E3 that runs for a full year, and it's an entrepreneurial minor. At the end of that year, students pitch their businesses to people who can fund them, and a few of them get their startup that way. If I'm still going with this business idea when I'm a senior, it'll be time to double-minor and see if that works out! For now I'm just planning to sign up for Principles of Business as soon as I can, which is the beginning class for both of those minors. Wheee!

Eight Days Until Opening Night!

Has anyone seen that movie The Devil Wears Prada? I'm fairly certain that my life has become a less extreme version of that. I like being the errand girl for the show because it's just going out to take a walk and do some shopping. In some cases, that's awesome! But if you don't find the right thing, or if only three of the vests actually shipped, all hell breaks loose. I'm completely serious. One would think that maybe the vests could have been ordered a week or so earlier to allow for a buffer, but we're showing the director everything tomorrow and they're not here. I asked the man at the store what he could do, and he said that he could get one from a local store by Friday at the earliest. Although I knew that the designer would have my head for that one, vests can't just pop out of the ground! Even if they could, I doubt that they would just happen to match the other three. When I got back to the costume shop, I was bitched out because apparently I'm just supposed to "make it happen" despite the fact that shipping takes time. And then I was handed some money and told to find a strapless bra, which the stores conveniently didn't have. I bought the one that wasn't returnable, because it was the best that I could find. Of course it wasn't exactly right after all. At least this part will be over in a couple of days!

A Realization

I don't think I want to be a costume designer after all. At least, not now. Maybe, in a while, I'll change my mind, but I'm realizing that there are a lot of differences between the other costume design students and me. I don't jump at the opportunity to work on three or more shows per semester; that scares the crap out of me! I need time to do my homework, and now that my homework is design-related, I'd like to focus my extra-curricular attention to things outside of theatre. There's this expectation that, being a design major, I should interview for every student production, and have a job in the costume shop or the craft room. In high school, I had enough time to get all of that design stuff done, but now, it seems like I'm always missing out on hanging out with my friends because I was working on the show. Only a few of the theatre people here even talk to me; my friends are all writers, marketing majors, and film majors. I feel like that says something about my true place in the world, and I liked theatre so much more before I got into this pre-professional stuff.

I'm not blaming this realization on just the one bad experience that I'm currently having. As I said in my post a while ago, the designers that I'm currently working with are people who don't particularly like me. It's not easy, running around to keep on top of paperwork that changes every five seconds, and then not having everything listed because we don't have clothes for every costume. I can't guess for either of those things, as people's roles change fairly often, and yet it seems that that's the source for everyone treating me like I'm slow. Yes, it does take time to type something out, and I can't write while I'm adding rows to an Excel document. I respect the fact that everyone's tired and cranky because we kept working instead of eating lunch, but it's not like I'm better off than that, either. As of tomorrow, I'll be free in two weeks!

After those two weeks are up, I'm not sure what I'll be doing. Maybe it's time to figure out a minor in something unrelated to theatre, since I have to major in that for the sewing classes. Marketing could be a good idea, if I'm going to pursue the idea of just making stuff and selling it for a while. I'm going to send my resume to a designer in the grade above me, who's been running a business for a few years already. Working for her would be very flexible, as it's just sewing work to help her get stuff done for the orders. I might also see if the craft room wants me to do stuff, but I'm not sure how that will work halfway through the semester. I'm just not free during shop hours until this show is over. I'd like to get more involved with film, either as a designer or an actor. I'm not picky about that! The only thing that matters in the next two weeks is survival. I want to get my work done for the show without failing my midterms or having an emotional breakdown in front of everyone, and I'm going to fight for that.

Sophomore Year So Far

I feel like I have a lot to say, so here's everything, in chronological order (hopefully). 

Being an orientation leader was amazing. For four days, we did all kinds of training exercises, and it was like being in a tiny version of my school because there were about 170 of us, all representing different majors. I met a lot of new people, but I think it was mostly good for strengthening my relationships with acquaintances. This included one of my suitemates, who had been brought into our group by a mutual friend.We had a little conclusion-of-orientation celebration today, so that's officially over.

I've met with all of my classes once at this point, and I'm pretty sure I don't have any classes that I dislike. The first one was psychology, which I was skeptical about because it's a gen ed requirement, but the teacher seems like a pretty cool guy. The only person I knew in that class was some guy that I vaguely remember from my first-semester freshman writing class, but I don't really mind. Then, there was World Drama. Having seen the syllabus for that, I was concerned that the professor would be really strict and awful because there's tons of homework. On the contrary, he's just a guy who's not quite fully qualified as a professor yet, and he's missing the next few classes because he's getting married. Someone else is taking over, though, so I only get out of class once. On the second day of classes, I had History of Fashion and Decor, followed by Costume Design 1. Super exciting! They'll be pretty challenging, probably, but I'm looking forward to them. Neither one is a sewing class, but they'll be very helpful when I'm actually costuming a show.

I do have one show, which is being performed from October 18-21. Midterm week is tech week, oh boy! It's Grapes of Wrath, and I'm second assistant costume designer/wardrobe assistant. The starting point. I'm okay with that, at least I've made it to that starting point! I've never gotten the impression that either of the other designers like me, but maybe that will change with this project. They haven't needed me yet. I think my main task is something like "supervise the freshmen on the costume crew." I was on costume crew last semester, so I can deal with that. 

My living situation is about 12536456897 times better than it was last year, due to the absence of a certain pothead suitemate. I'm friends with everyone who lives in my suite, and that's great. At the same time, life can be a little frustrating.  I love them all, but they're so busy all the time! I'm only busy on a show-by-show basis, but I don't sign on to every show ever because I'd never have time to sleep. And they're always talking about joining sororities and getting jobs, which I think I couldn't handle while I have a show. The only reason why I could ever see myself joining a sorority would be if that's where all of my friends were, because I'd join out of loneliness. Sometimes, it's very lonely around here. Other times, people make plans to go out and do cool and interesting things, only to bail out because they're too tired. But I'm not tired; I want to have a life outside of this white box that I live in. I've done what I can to make it less blah, but it's still just a white box of a room. I'm sick of just sitting around watching movies every weekend, because that's all that anyone ever wants to do. Maybe I just need to train myself to do homework in places that aren't my room, because i think that spending too much time in my room last semester kept me feeling depressed for a longer time than I should have been. I'm determined to stay away from that unfortunate mindset from last semester, so I need to distract myself any time I think that it's coming back to me.

I'm done with everything! :D

I have to go to two of my classes tomorrow, but they're not really finals in the general sense of the word. I just have to discuss what was learned in class, and watch other people do presentations. My giant research paper of doom was turned in on Friday. I really, really hope that that teacher does not think I just wrote a bunch of fluff, especially when my concept was partially her idea. The thing was for my literature class, and we had to make some sort of connection between one novel and two short works from the class. So, being all fashion-minded and stuff, I mentioned that I always end up visualizing what the characters wear in the stories. This caused my paper to be about creating a "signature look" for each of the three heroines of the stories I chose. No one else did anything like that, and my paper had three extra pages, because I scanned the costume renderings from my sketchbook to give a visual aid for what I discussed. It was actually pretty fun, in the end. Just stressful. If she doesn't like my writing style, I'm pretty much screwed, but hopefully the unusual aspect of my topic will help.

The sad part is that that's the closest I've come to costume designing all year.

I get to go home on Friday, so I'll probably be spending my time saying goodbye to people in between watching all the episodes of TV in the world. But yeah. Semester of suck has been conquered. At least it was better for the last few weeks!

Bright New Day

It's taken me this long to be able to tell myself, "you had a lot of fuck-ups this semester. So what?" When it came to a point where I couldn't decide why I wasn't happy, I realized I could give it up. Some of the events were my fault. Some of them weren't. I've learned from my mistakes. I'm not going to let them influence me so much anymore. I probably should have made more of an effort in the classes I didn't like; I've always struggled with that, and apparently it didn't improve in college. Maybe I should have limited my alcohol intake that one night. Withdrawing into my room probably wasn't the best way to overcome things. Someday, a guy won't flake out about me, like all the guys from this semester.

 A lot of things haven't gone my way lately, but everything for next semester seems awesome so far. I'm living in the building I wanted, in a single, sharing a suite with five close friends. All of my classes are things I wanted to take, as opposed to just one this semester. I'm starting class at noon every day, and don't have class on Fridays. I know plenty of people whose classes and/or housing got completely screwed up for next year; I'm one of the lucky ones. In three more weeks, I'll never have to be woken up by the loud TMI complaints of my pothead suitemate. I'm pretty sure 4/20 will be hell at this school, but hey, at least it'll be a good story!

Last weekend I decided that I could just stop stressing about all that, and focus on not getting too overwhelmed by final projects. I feel so much better now.

And then the tables turned

I'm feeling really bad about something that happened over the weekend. I went to a party at BC with some friends, stereotypical college kid stuff. I do that once in a while. But this time, at the beginning of the night, I hung out with Leah's boyfriend's roommate for a bit, this really shy and awkward guy. I thought we were  just talking, he seemed like someone I could be friends with. Apparently it was surprising that he was even talking to me, because he doesn't usually talk to people unless he knows them well. So that happened, and I didn't really think anything of it. We played a game kind of like beer pong together, and sometime after that Leah pulled me aside. She told me that he said he'd been hitting on me all night, which was completely news to me. I told her that I wasn't attracted to him that way, and returned to the party. I've always thought that dating someone more awkward and quiet than I am would be a problem, so it wasn't going to happen.

I don't think I really talked to him for the rest of the night, but apparently he saw when I was with a sleazy Northeastern freshman. At the beginning of the night, that kid seemed really annoying, loudly wondering what we Emerson kids would do with our majors. By the point that I was talking to him, though, I was too lazy to go anywhere to avoid him. I don't really remember that much of what we talked about, just that he had his arm around me, and I couldn't decide how I felt about it since I wasn't attracted to him either. Leah got me away from the Northeastern kid, and sent my friends and I back to campus because it was really late. She later said that it was because the Northeastern kid looked like he was about to kiss me. I'm glad she didn't let that happen, I already have one thing to regret from that night.

I'm such an asshole. I never wanted to be that person. I don't really know how much it affected him, but I still feel like a jerk. I didn't mean to break that guy's heart, especially since I know how much that sucks. Next time, I won't be such a dumbass. It probably is better to actually hear in words that someone isn't interested than to just witness them hanging out with a different guy. Granted, my judgment was way off by that point, but it doesn't excuse what I did.