Fragile!

I am in a fragile mood today. My mom came and helped me pack up my dorm room so I can just drive home on friday. My walls are bare, the floor is cold and I have one set of clothes. I realized I just (hardly) survived my freshman year of college. I realized how much I've grown--high school parties suddenly are lame and I do not look forward to living with my parents for two months after being on my own. My life is here--in Milledgeville--where I have re-built my reputation and taken control of my actions. At this fragile state I am in, I am forcing myself to write a research paper in the library without breaking down and who comes to my rescue but Matt.
I want to write more, but I have never been the writer to write about my emotions.
Emotions+writing=my goal for the summer.

Chapter 7: Writing a Literary Research Paper

This chapter lays out "how to write a paper" in a very straightfoward way.
Find sources, evaluate them, write the paper and don't plagiarize.
Easy enough...except for all the other stuff you have to think about when writing a research paper. This chapter bullets everything I'll need to remember about sources and how to use them.

When finding sources I need to remember:
a) Books are best. Start with them--they're more general,
b) Periodicals. Journal articles are peer-reviewed, written by researchers and experts of the field they are writing about. They are more specific on whatever topic.
c) Online. Easy to find. Tough to cite.

When evaluating I must think about:
a) What are the credentials of the author? The author is everything--either they know what they are talking about or making it up--and I don't want made up junk as evidence for my thesis.
b) Publication variety--I want more variety--not just books.
c) Is the publisher respectable? It's important. Highly regarded publications weigh more in terms of expertise, making my thesis stronger.
d) host of an online site. We all know that online hosts can be trashy--making sure that the host of a site I am citing is not trashy is important.
e) How current is the source? Relevance can be an issue, yes.
d) Appropriation to my topic. This is probably THE most important thing to remember when finding sources. I tend to get enthralled by something that interests me that kind-of relates to my topic rather than something that will push my argument to the next level.

Working with the sources.
Quote, paraphrase, and comment. Easy enough. Sources are there to help make an argument, not stand alone.

Writing the Paper.
The hardest part by far. The book gives steps on how to start. Of course, start with a thesis and then organize your evidence to support it-that is half the battle. I often tend to get overwhelmed by so much evidence and ideas that I don't know where to begin. Writing, editing and proofreading come last, which to me, is the easiest part.

The next section talks about plagiarism.
We all know plagiarism is bad. Don't be stupid and cite your sources.

Next: MLA Format.
This part gets me EVERY TIME. I look it up for every paper I write. This guide will help me in citing the various sources and what to cite and what not to cite. (Don't cite common knowledge.)

The Shakespeare Studio's March Madness

The Shakespeare Studio presents:
Alice in Wonderland

The play took place at Autrey Mill, Summerour House. Characters were walking around and talking to people--it really felt like the audience was in Wonderland. In a creative endeavor, the scenes took place in different parts of the house and with the division of the audience in half, the scenes happened at the same time. There were three Alices, which was not confusing as you think it might be. One half of the audience started outside the house and Alice sleeping in front of a tree and the other half started in the backyard of the house with Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-Dum. With each scene, the audience would follow Alice through the house (and the Alices would switch off or see themselves running around--which added to the Wonderland feel) and the characters often spoke directly to the audience.

I started with sleeping Alice in front of the house, and I will say it was a very well done beginning. Sarah High was Alice in this scene and her innocence captured the audience when they saw her curled up next to the tree. We were all a bit confused when she told us to come through the gate and sit down, but we soon were used to moving around. The birds stole the next scene in the Pool of Tears with their caucus race--all of them were so bird like and hilarious--the duck, Frankie Webster, was so funny. Daniel Bryant as the Dodo was perfect--his bird character was perfect--I really can't pinpoint was so perfect.

Melissa Reynolds as the caterpillar stole the show--people LOVED her. Her caterpillar was so well done, people were not afraid to laugh. She refreshed old lines by approaching them differently.

The fro footman was cute--he made the most of his part. The Duchess--Courtney Emery--captured the audience's heart when she told us to enter the house (because it was a little chilly) and she was beautiful. We all of the sudden had a new Alice--Rachel High, Sarah's sister--in this scene. The scene was funny in subtle way, and the baby turning into a pig was very well done.

The chesire cat appeared next--Tori Bennett--whose smile was perfect for the role. She was funny when supposed to be and looked light on her feet like a creature. She was also perfect for the role.



The mad tea party followed. The characters were funny and the table was beautiful (they moved us outside to the courtyard for this). What stood out to me was that they rapped twinkle twinkle little bat--it was hilarious.



Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum appeared next. They joined us in the courtyard after Alice (Serena Mcracken, this time) showed us where to go. Dee and Dum were two girls-- a nice mix up from fat boys--who were funnier as girls, I believe. Audrey Clavijo and Erin Guresso NAILED IT in other words. Their scene was tight and really really really funny. They entertained. And played off the audience's reaction so naturally.

We were taken back into the house where Alice was playing croquet with the Queen. The red queen's face was scary, as it should be, but her presence was gentle.

The mock turtle and the gryphon sang and danced--a mix up for the audience--and the mock turtle's jokes were the funniest to modern day humor.

The trial was visually pleasing with all the characters in front of us, but a bit anticlimactic. The end is done well with everyone twirling around Alice shouting OFF WITH HER HEAD and then leaving the room.

The perfect ending of this show is that Alice pulls a Ferris Bueller--she asks why the audience is still here--the show is over.

All three of the girls who played Alice were beautiful and perfect--they had the innocence and the playfulness that Alice has in the book. Their diction was perfect--I understood every word that came out of their mouths and was interested in what they had to say. Their ability to work together was genius. They didn't try to out-do each other, but glued together and learned from each other to create Alice.



The costumes were beautiful and the creatures masks were wonderful. The lighting of the house and the set was so creative and interesting. Pink and green lit up the front of the house while the inside of the old house lit up in a very real way.

However, the whole production seemed unorganized. All the actors seemed a bit flustered and the audience was completely confused. The show was sold out and often there was no place to sit. Of course, it was opening night.

The shows were sold out every night if the run--moral of the story: people like to watch what they know. Running a theatre means catering to the audience.

March Madness

The timeless classic by Lewis Carroll has made a huge comeback in the entertainment world this year--or perhaps I'm just noticing it more.
Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass have always been one of my favorite stories (or two of my favorites if you consider them separately). Lewis Carroll's works have always fascinated me in the way he talks about nonsense in a way that makes such sense. The creatures that talk and the people that sing and recite poetry creates such a magical world before there was Harry Potter. With the sudden Alice craze, it is easy to compare the movie and play versions of the story.

Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland for the screen opened yesterday, which I am excited to see, but will likely be disappointed.
The Shakespeare Studio, a non-profit community theatre in Johns Creek GA, also opened a play version of Alice.
And, last but not least, the professional Alliance Theatre is playing Alice Through the Looking Glass March 31-May 2.

Will these versions serve justice to my favorite classic?

Chapter 6: Writing About Plays

Theater: The art that lives.
Plays: The Text that keeps Theater from dying.

Theater is an ancient art. Aristotle, considered the earliest literary critic of Western civilization in the fifth century, made drama's elements very clear. He said the elements common in all drama are:
1) Plot.
The art of drama is the art of storytelling in a visual way rather than an oral way. With no plot, there is no story, which makes for no play. (Although some people can pull off a play without a plot--take Shakespeare's "All's Well that Ends Well" for example.) Drama relies on visuals like set, expression, props, music in some cases, to tell the story in the best manner.
All's Well That End's Well
(So there's a girl who likes this guy who does not like her back, and there's a funny guy with an instrument, and there's a girl then there's sex? And then people cry and laugh and the girl gets to marry the guy because they had sex, but he still does not like her.....what??)


2) Characterization.
Characters use dialogue to make the plot as well as action. By creating unique characters with very specific nuances or ticks makes the play enjoyable and entertaining to watch. This also captures the essence of a character in a way that oral storytelling can not do. Relates to diction.

3) Theme.
The theme of the play is the same as the theme in a piece of literature--it is seeking to comment on human life.

4) Diction.
Playwrights use diction to create such characters, using certain phrases or words that only that character would say. Comedic characters often have witty remarks to bounce off tragic hero's emo monologues.
One of my favorite characterization is the making of Hamlet in " Hamlet" by Shakespeare.
Hamlet speaks about his inner and outer emotion and his plot. Sometimes he speaks to himself and other times he speaks to the audience. What makes his character so interesting is that the audience never knows if he is tricking them or being honest. He speaks of not trusting anyone and of pretending to go mad. Through monologues, the audience wanders if he is really mad, letting them into his head, or messing with their heads. This role is important for an actor to be a visual for the audience. Just by reading the text, a person does not gt the whole experience of the genius or craziness Hamlet is creating.

5) Melody.
At the beginning of theater, plays often had a Greek chorus that would sing or chant the dialogue of the play. That tradition broke with a stage-hog named Thespis, and theater would grow creatively from then on. Jumping a few years to the English Renaissance, famed playwrights like Shakespeare and Marlowe used iambic pentameter to write, making a steady beat, a melody. Today, melody is not sought after in plays (except in musicals).

6) Spectacle.
This refers to what we actually see onstage. Costumes, actors, sets, lights, all the works. This part of theater is the most exciting for most people. It's when the words jump off the page and into a colorful world in front of you.
Most people " see" plays differently in their heads while reading it, which is what makes it possible to do plays over and over again and never have the same show twice. The spectacle is the part artistic directors manipulate to make the story visually pleasing.

Chapter 3: Common Writing Assignments

Writing about writing is one of the hardest things for me to do.

First you have to summarize in your own words. For me, I know the plot and the key points, but putting it on paper is tough. It's like the summary is floating around in my head and I know it, nut telling someone else the plot line is tough. Have you ever tried to tell someone a story, got halfway through, and then said "no, no wait--I forgot something!" Well, that's what its like for me when writing down a summary.

Explicating is even worse! Making my thoughts clear--its so difficult! I can pick up on figurative language and syntax but it seems obvious to me, so expressing it in my own words seems redundant--like I'm missing something.

Analysis is my favorite. Picking apart the the characters and their layers and why they are the way they are. Brilliant.

Compare and contrast: Easy. There is always something similar within works and always something that is not. There are so many aspects to a story that gives so much room to compare and contrast. For example, characters, plot, imagery, symbolism, etc.

Essay exams: This portion of the chapter really helped me think about writing in class essays and how to approach them. Being prepared with the material is a definite plus when it comes to writing the essay. Rushing through an essay is something most people do, but sometimes taking too much time on an essay kills your score. Outlining your essay in your head is important under pressure--most people can't handle it.

Chapter 1: The role of good reading

Learning to read takes a lot of work. We have to learn the alphabet and the sounds certain letters make and of course there are exceptions to every rule. But now, we have to learn to read correctly, as reading in depth and analyzing the work.

Rereading is something I have always taken for granted, but important to do especially if you don't understand what the author is talking about. It's worth the time and energy to reread if it helps my understanding.

Critical reading: Annotating. Love and hate it. I love it because it makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something and picking apart the author's work into my own words. I hate it because it's time consuming and sometimes there's just no reason to annotate.
And when it comes to using reference materials, this is something I definitely don't do on a regular basis. If I don't know a word, and the person I'm studying with doesn't know it, then it stays unknown. But this is a really bad habit. It takes three seconds to look up a definition on google so I should really start taking advantage of that.

Asking questions about the text is the hardest part because you have to think of the questions before you can answer them. Most of the time we subconsciously ask and answer the questions we have about the text while we are reading it. But more in depth questions take a little time.

When it comes to questions about the author, finding out about the author's life makes their work that much more interesting to me even if their life had nothing to do with the work.

When reading, cultural context does come into play and it is important to know what the culture was like during the author's time to understand a work sometimes. For example, things are very different now than they were in the 1800's and the book uses the example of attitude toward death then and now--it's really different. Back then it was a fact of life-people dropped like flies. Today, there is a cure for everything. Therefore, a piece about death today might contrast sharply with the tone of a piece about death back then.

It's so important to know who the listener is in a work, just as it is to know who the speaker is.

Reading is no longer reciting your ABC's or memorizing a Dr. Seuss story that your mother has read to you 213 times. No. Reading is for big kids now.

Chapter 5: Writing about Poetry

Poetry is word melted into song. Rhymes and iambic pentameter are like music to my ears, like a steady heartbeat that speaks out loud. Analyzing poetry is half the battle to writing about poetry--first, you have to know what it means. Dissecting the poem line by line is helpful to understanding what the author's message is. Sometimes, the rhythm of the poem can have a message too, though. for example, when Shakespeare breaks the steady drum of iambic pentameter, it breaks the pattern, signifying a change in the character's words or intent.
Not all poetry is easily understood--sometimes we miss the point the author was trying to make completely. But we still interpreted the poem in a way we comprehend, and that is what makes poetry interesting. People always have their own interpretation to a story.
Writing about poetry is putting our interpretation of the poem into words. It's analyzing what the poem means and the author's intent.

Excitement. Adventure. Spec-Ops 27: Literary Detective.

Have you ever wanted to change the ending of Jane Eyre or take a vacation into Wonderland?
What about meeting Hamlet or chatting with the Chesire Cat? Have you ever wondered what it would be like if books were treated as gold and the boundary line between fiction and reality was softened?
Jaser Fforde has. And he creates an epic adventure in this world full of mystery in the Thursday Next series.

I began with book one--The Eyre Affair, the introduction to a world full of strange ohenomenon such as Chronoguards going rogue, neanderthals conducting trains, and secret Shakespearean works being discovered. The New York Times calls the series "Harry Potter for adults."
I fell in love with the Eyre Affair and its witty humor. An excerpt from the book:
"Why is a raven like a writing desk?
Because Poe wrote on both.


People who know literature will enjoy this series as it alludes to so many other books. It's difficult to stop reading: I read it in all my spare time while on the boat in Germany.

The leading lady, Thursday Next, is a sketchy character--I never could get to the point of knowing exactly what she was going to do. It kept the story interesting, but also a bit aggravating when she would do something that seemed completely out of character. But it doesn't ruin the enjoyment of the book.

She is a Special Operative-27: Literary Detective. There are other divisions in SpecOps that are equally as imaginative and most are mysterious. She finds a way into Jane Eyre to defeat an arch enemy, and ends up changing the ending of the book (for the better.)

I haven't felt this way about a book in a very long time, and all I want to do is read.

The story gets even better in the second book, Lost in a Good Book, as Fforde continues to layer the characters and plotline with small circumstances mentioned in the first book. Thursday dives into and out of books and meets all sorts of characters that jump from their book to the real world.

I want to be Thursday Next. Except not as sketchy.

Actors are people too.

Cecil Blount DeMille. Legend in the theatre world, maker of the film world. His autobiography is very well written and inspirational--I highly recommend reading it. DeMille started one of Hollywood's first film studios out of a barn out of a pure love of producing and directing. He came from a theatre loving family and attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts--a highly prestigious acting school in New York (now also in LA.) He learned other actors philosophies on acting, but stayed true to his own. He believed the director should guide the actor instead of making the actor into the director's puppet.

Actors are people too. The way DeMille describes acting in his autobiography is the most perfect way to describe the art. Any actor would agree (if they're any good).

"Onstage, you are protected by your role. It is not you there on the boards; and yet through your role you are in contact daily with the changing audience, you are projecting something to them, it is you who are making them laugh and cry, fear and hope. You learn to play on them as on a great organ; and their response, that indescribable feeling of contact and communication that a responsive audience gives an actor, is one of the most satisfying of human experiences."
-The Autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille

These words beautifully articulate the feeling from inside that actor's cannot describe. The craft of acting is here for a reason, and DeMille makes that reason concrete with these words.

Acting is not just a form of entertainment--its and art. It's a craft. It's a comment on social problems. It captures the essence of people and who they really are.

You mean I can study the world?!

The most newsworthy happening at GCSU this week is the addition of a Geography major to the curriculum--which is pretty neat. I took the article to write for our school newspaper, the Colonnade, knowing that it's what I wanted to write about.

Sometimes in a staff meeting, you hear a slug for an article and you know in the pit of your stomach that it's the article you need to write about--no matter how boring or how depressing. (Like an article on how the school was 30 people away from breaking a Guinness World Record for the largest rock, paper, scissors tournament in the world, and how those 30 people were eating lunch at the dining hall and felt that their presence didn't count. jerks.)

So this morning I was fortunate enough to interview Dr. Doug Oetter, coordinator of the geography program. I went in reluctant of what I was going to talk about with him, because I didn't understand what a geography major does for a person or what you could do with it. It seemed useless to me--like a theater major.


But Dr. Oetter loves geography. His passion for geography is like that of Romeo and Juliet's passion for rebellion. He explained that geography is the study of the world and its citizens. His philosophy of geography is that people in the US need to learn the ways of other countries and people to make our hometowns better places to live. People's behavior will change for the better when they understand the way other parts of the world work, and become better students, better citizens.

I never realized that you can do anything with a geography degree. As Dr. Oetter says, "the skills of geography are applicable to city planning, travel, civil service, pursuing law and government positions."

It's odd how people work. For example, I never would have thought twice about taking a geography class--it didn't matter to me. But when I spoke to Dr. Oetter today, I saw geography through his eyes. The passion and excitement of learning about the world--its people, the culture, the reason and rhyme. My own imagination sparked as I thought about the world. I think I might take a geography class.

So here's the thing: I have my friends at home who have known me since middle school, but when we moved to college, we went our separate ways. I moved to Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville, Georgia while my overachiever friends applied to Yale, Davidson and Brown. It's not that I couldn't get in to those schools. I just didn't want to go there. And the application process was too much work.

Anyway, I moved to GCSU and became best friends with two people--Matt and Brent. I always had a huge group of friends that all knew each other, so transitioning to having two people that I did everything with was a different experience.

Brent is your typical movie buff, so the first two months I knew him, our conversations centered about movies because he didn't know what else to talk about.
Matt is your intense but outgoing computer nerd who can talk about anything from the paint on the wall to his emotional involvement with the universe.
I rounded the trio out as the theater/dance kid. 'Nuff said.
Of course, we had a fourth counterpart that joined us most of the time--Bryan. Bryan was Matt's roommate and added flavor to the group with his crude humor. He's the kind of guy that's shy, but a badass with combat boots.

College life has its quirks. The first weekend I was at school, I was walking around campus with some other people celebrating a birthday, when a guy who was intoxicated came up. He was upset because his friends forgot his birthday. One of the girls I was with offered a piece of cake to the drunk guy, and said we would lights some candles for him and everything. The guy looked at her and said "I don't smoke candles." And walked away. He wasn't being funny. He was serious. It made me wonder what went on in that slow brain of his.

At first, college seemed like punishment. They make you live with a bunch of people your age, feed yourself on your own, do your own laundry, oh and if you want to stay, you have to make A's, B's, and C's. Except if you worked hard in high school and are one of the fortunate ones to have HOPE Scholarship. Then you have to make really great grades to keep it.

But college has its benefits. Like Study Abroad, coffee shops, and getting to control the temperature in your room. That's the best.

Chapter 4-Writing about stories

When it comes to storytelling, the elements of fiction are what make each story unique. Characters are the most interesting because making them 3 dimensional takes work from the author and often have the most story to tell. In "The story of an Hour," Mrs. Mallard is the antagonist and her opinions matter most to the reader because of the way it is written. The other characters, especially Richards' are characterized by their actions rather than thoughts like Mrs. Mallard.