The Theater 'n Me

I am standing behind the double doors, the loudspeakers blurting out the lines I know so well. Romeo, then Tybalt, then Mercutio. Now me. It is my turn. My chance to step onto the stage and perform. My lines are going through my head. My queues appear to be laid out in front of me. I have done this show so many times. Sure I’m the youngest kid in the cast, but that doesn’t matter. It is all for squat if I blow it out there-all the work, all the practice, all for nothing. Theater is all the mind. You can conquer all the fears in the world if you have what it takes up hear. Right here….right in the brain.

Like I said above, I have done this show ten times-but for some reason, I am no less nervous then I was nine nights ago. My hand is still twitching. My palms are still sweaty. My face is still fire hot.

There it is. There is my que. Benvolio enters with knife drawn. I have my props. I have my lines. I have my ques. I have everything I need. I push through the double doors. I’m on.

Wait. Stop. Go back four hundred years.

Have you ever wondered about the history of theater? Have you been sitting in a seat watching a show, being blown away by the performance and wonder how this all happened? I know I have. In fact, when I looked at the history I noticed that the 1600s was the most influential century in terms of changing the way we view theater today. So many things that we see when we experience theater were invented in the 1600s. The language. The actors. The theater itself. So many things that today we take for granted when we see a play were invented 400 years ago.The 1600s was a critical century for theater. One of the most famous playwrights of all time wrote many of his plays in the early 1600. The first proscenium theater was built in 1618. The first example of woman being incorporated into theater occurred in 1660. Read on to learn how the 1600s shaped today’s theater.

To be or not to be. This is one of the most famous phrases in the English language. And who is more fit to have coined but the 17th century poet William Shakespeare? Shakespeare taught us so much about the art that we now call “theater.” Shakespeare taught us that language is everything. The play Hamlet first hit the theaters in the year 1601. This play is filled with many beautiful, almost musical lines cloaked in several different depths of meaning. For example, let us take the line that we talked about above. The whole passage reads: “To be or not to be, that is the question.” On the surface, this line can be read as a witty, even whimsical image of a boy prince spewing nothingness about the basic meaning of “being”. It appears to be a great example of the kind of nonsense that people today call “teenagers”. However, if you read the same passage again, on a deeper level you will find Hamlet (a teenaged prince) is contemplating whether he should live or die. “To be” is to live. In this one passage you can see how powerful language can be. Shakespeare showed us that having levels of meaning in your language can intrigue the listener. These “double entendres” are common place in theater-and so are so many other language techniques that Shakespeare taught us. Along with language, Shakespeare is known for having great characters. Each play that William Shakespeare wrote was filled with many complex characters. Let’s take the play “The Tempest.” The Tempest, first performed in the year 1611 and thought to be Shakespeare’s last play, has three kinds of characters: The evil, the good, the funny. Today, every major show have these three types of characters. Although Shakespeare wasn’t the first person to come up with the “Good, Bad, and the Funny” character technique he is one of the first to incorporate it into everyone of his shows and he is one of the people who made it famous. So, as you can see in the two examples above, Shakespeare influenced us with his language and his character styles. This is what today’s theater has learned from Shakespeare  and this is one of the many things that theater has learned from the 1600s.

One of the most beautiful things in theater can be the theater itself. Many of the theaters that are being used to this day are built off of the Teatro Farnese. Teatro Farnese was built in the year 1618 by a man by the name of  Giovanni Battista Aleotti. His goal was to build a baroque style theater. And that is exactly what he did. This is one of the first examples of the kind of theater that we see shows in today. The curved stage. The surrounding boxes. The ornate ceiling. All of this is part of what is today called a “proscenium” theater. To quote the website history of theater “ Teatro Farnese was an Italian baroque theater...cited as a prototype for the modern playhouse.”As was written in the above paragraph, the 1600s not only the kind of plays that are seen today, but also the kind of theaters that people would view them in. The Teatro Farnese changed the way people viewed theater. Theater (after the Teatro Farnese) became a much wealthier man’s game. It was a place where the rich would go to hang out on a Saturday weekend. The baroque style made the theater more ornate-even to the point of being fancier. This changed the entire dynamic of theater. It turned into a place where the upper class spent their time. With that said, at this point it should be clear to you that Teatro Farnese changed the entire environment of theater. Today, when you go to see “Love’s Labour’s Lost” in the local playhouse, ask the manager who built the theater. He probably won’t know that it was inspired by Giovanni Battista Aleotti, but you will.

The 1600s was a critical time for the development of theater. It changed the way we write plays, the way we direct plays, even the way we see plays. From William Shakespeare to Giovanni Battista Aleotti, the 17th century was critical for theater no matter how you look at it. All the world’s a stage, and the 1600s built it.

“Nice job man.”

“Yeah. Well done Hank. Another great show.”

“Thanks guys. Well done to all of you. Am I gonna see yall tomorrow to?” I ask.

“You know it.”

“Yeaserie!”

“All right. I’m outta here,” I say as I pack up my stuff and exit the theater.

The theater has always been a special place for me. It has always been a place where I feel pure comfort. Every fear, every problem, every crisis comes to a halt when I am up on the stage. And that’s why I love it. The stage is where I do nothing but be me.

As I look back at the 50 year old play house, I can’t help but flash back to the past. The era of Shakespeare. The decade of Aletto. The time theater was being created: The 1600s. Boy what an era! What a time to be alive.

As an actor, I am not only fascinated by what happened to theater itself in the 1600s but also immensely fortunate to be taking part in an art that was invented by some of the most humane people in the earth.

They had what it takes up here. Do I? Only time will tell.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Battista_Aleotti

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teatro_Farnese

http://www.glencoe.com/theatre/Timeline/timeline_content.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Proscenium

http://dailyglean.salebooks.com/2013/06/bardolatry-or-brouhaha-shakespeares.html

http://www.paesionline.it/parma/foto_dettaglio.asp?filename=2356_parma_interno_del_teatro_farnese

The Frustrations of Sharing a Doc

Our class did a project in Cultures class called "fame". Each class was separated into different groups to study a different country in it's feudal times. The countries were England, the Byzantine Empire, China, and Japan. My class got Japan. We studied Japan and did a presented on it for an hour about it and when the other classes presented about other countries we took notes and got ready for a test. To get ready for this test which had been nicknamed the "final fling".

A little while ago I had an idea. I would make a doc and each class would put all their knowledge on the country they studied into it. So when we took the test we would all have notes that had been made by people who studied the country for 2 months. I made this doc and it went quite horribly, a few of my classmates were kicking people off of it and people were getting mad at me thinking that I had kicked them off.

Then the teachers got involved and everything got a lot more complicated. They mixed stories up, told me that someone was angry at me (though it was probably a mistake), and basically made a bit of a mess. They were trying to make things better though. So in the end the teachers told me to write an email to the whole class and then put everyone on view.

So my teacher says that I should write about my experience sharing a doc with the whole class and what happened once teachers got involved. So here's what I think. I think that the teachers were right that maybe it was to early to share a document with the whole class. There are still people who find it funny to mess with people and to try and get a reaction out of them. In this case it would be the kid who kept kicking people off of the doc. And some people are just not ready to not give into a temptation and start a fight. And when the teachers got involved the relatively simple problem of people kicking other people off the doc got a LOT more complicated.

So next time I want to make notes for a test I'm probably just going to share it with a few of my friends and try to stop things before a teacher gets involved. At least with this incident the whole thing ended in less than 2 weeks. I think the reason why I didn't put everyone on view or just shared it with a few of my friends is because a lot of people made it seem like the test would be super hard and we would need a lot of help and because my class had less than a week to prepare for it.


Image Sources:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5423609XKzbpOnW2GDOrRmavliZWbzvdy66vvUU5GohlA7R3k8A3kh6zlvD7O6cJ2VKJ06tSqMTj4yXRkHnen_FXujlHksLjCvrjtGc6oW6av1C_hC4PTCpXesrXT3JGDCbAcazeznHM/s1600/frustration.gif

http://www.imore.com/sites/imore.com/files/images/stories/2010/11/Google-Docs-logo.jpg

Win or Lose

Tournaments: long twelve hour days where you either lower your ranking, or you win. To win you need many things. There are many reasons why you can lose. You beat a team in your second game, but then you lose to someone way worse in the afternoon. Life is hard on the court.

When you win it feels great. everyone wants to win, and when you do it really boosts your spirit. It’s easier to win a game if you win the game before that. The winner is hugely dependant on skill, but you can beat a team that is better than you, if you are in the right situation. Volleyball is truly a team sport, where the winner is the louder, more excited team with the better mindset. You have to have talent to win, but talent can only take you so far. My team does best in these situations because when your energy level is up, you have more of a reason to win.

Losing is frustrating. But it happens. For some teams it’s a lot. Others (very rarely) it’s quite the opposite. But the most frustrating thing is when you lose in the game that counts. At some earlier tournaments, if you lose a certain game, you will have to stay and play a lot more because you lost. It happens, but it’s equally irritating every time.

Then there’s the time off court. There are many different things you have to do, depending on what you need at that moment. During some of your breaks, you have to ref, which is always dull. And a lot of people are involved in reffing. Not just the coaches, but the players (depending on the situation) will have to be the second referee (or as it is more familiarly called down ref), use the score sheet, score board, libero tracking, and flags. The other people on the team get a quick break, just to come back and ref the next set.

Some tournaments can be really hard… but they really help you become a team. Obviously, you improve on your skills. But it’s also a team bonding thing. For some big tournaments, you have to drive somewhere for hours, and then stay in a hotel for a night (or more if it’s a long tournament). Some of it is fun, some of it isn’t. Overall, the tournament is a thing of wonder. Excitement, happiness, disappointment, tiredness, and frustration. But in good times and bad, win or lose, we’re a team.

Image Sources

http://www.kellogg.edu/daily/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/KCC-volleyball-vs.-LCC.jpg

http://www.volleyballadvisors.com/image-files/volleyball-quotes-2.jpg

http://24.media.tumblr.com/15ec3c2d9c07139ef7486eb314b5a614/tumblr_mgjdttzhZ61r9nl9to1_500.png

Running

I started running when I was six. I originally got into it because I was becoming good at soccer and I needed to be able to run faster and farther. At first, running wasn’t a usual thing, I would run on and off. The amount I was running was good enough to get me through soccer, but I started running more because I could. It was like a personal challenge to see how far I could go.

When I was 8, I debated quitting running. I had started lacrosse and I was very active anyway so I no longer needed it for soccer. For about 3 months I didn’t run, and I had no intentions of doing so ever again.

Around that time, my mom started running. Although when she started she wasn’t very fast, her persistence and determination was amazing. She would go out every morning for hours. After seeing her determination to be a runner, I got inspired to continue running. Instead of continuing short distance running,  I started doing long distance. At first, I hated it. It was boring and hard, and I hurt after doing it. But after seeing my mom’s effort, I was determined to keep doing it. I started running very frequently, and soon I started really enjoying it.

I thank my mom now for getting me into running, without her, I would have never succeeded without her, she inspired me to keep going no matter how much I didn’t want to run. I realize now how important running has been for me. It has taught me to never give up. I also really love doing it, it was a chance for me to clear my mind and really think about things.

Homework, The Controller of Our Life

What do you do in the morning? I wake up, brush my teeth, shower, eat breakfast and then drive to school. I double check my homework, because if I have missing homework, my teachers will make me write a email home, and I will get in trouble by my parents. Why should I care? Isn’t school the place to learn, and outside of school is free time to do what I want? Well, if I don’t do my homework then my parents don’t let me do Sports, which is what I want to do with my free time. I want to do good in school and please my parents, but I only want to do good in school, literally. Shouldn’t I spend my free time doing what I want, and not trying to do homework just to please my parents? Welcome to my world.

The point I am trying to get at, if you can’t already see is that our life is being controlled by school all day. There are two different sides to the story. When you ask your middle school head, she will say that school takes seven of the fourteen hours of your day that you are awake. That’s half the time you are awake. When you ask Logan LaPlante, who was in this TED talks video, he would strongly disagree. I believe in the latter. It is true that you are in school seven hours a day, but you are driving to and from school for a hour of your seven hours of free time. So now you are down to six. You have two hours of homework, or the average teen does. So now we are down to four hours of free time. If you participate in any other school club/activity/sport then you have about one hour a day doing that. So quickly we have whittled ourselves down to three hours. We all need to eat, so breakfast and dinner amount to about an hour and a hlaf of homework a night. So now I have one and a half hours of free time. Now if your parents make you do chores that’s another half an hour. So the average kid has about one hour of free time, of the fourteen waking hours. 

Now why would anyone do this? Well for me, it is because I want to impress the people I care about. I want free time to do what I choose, but I want to impress the people I care for. I need to find balance, but how. The only way to do it is to do my homework, but then I don’t get to pursue what I love, lacrosse. I like the idea of Logan’s to hack my learning, or even better, hack the system. 

I don’t mean to hack it by using a computer,  I want it to be hacked by words. The teachers blame the homework load of having too little class time, but to me they are just taking the easy way out. Instead of giving us hours of homework, why don’t they just make their teaching more efficient? This way, we can get more done in a class period. Also, if they need to teach us so much in a year, why don’t the teachers lower their expectations? How about we shoot to be done with Trigonometry by the end of highschool, not Calculus, then in College you could take Calculus. 

What I am trying to get at is the teachers could improve, so the balance is easier for us kids. Now, the reason I think that learning should be changed is when I had a conversation with a high schooler, he said that very few people actually do homework, and he spends his weekends catching up on sleep. This made me realize that their is no balance, you can’t have it both ways, which is why I choose to attack learning in a different way. If there was no homework, then we colleges would have a better look into our personalities, and who we actually are, because we would be doing things we love, not homework. 

 School takes up much more than the seven hours it tells you, as I just showed. I have shown that it is nearly impossible to keep balance in our lives as we know them right now, and that the reason homework is a big deal is because our teachers haven’t adapted but made us adapt. I don’t think that we need to reform our learning, we just need to make it better.

Sources: http://www.easybib.com/cite/view/list/1383078625_52701ae19f7d82.64119068/style/mla7

The Start Of Swimming

The Start of Swimming

I started swimming when I was about 18 months old.  I swam at children of the sea, a program that helps kids learn the basics of all four strokes.  My first experience in the water was the mommy and me classes.  My mom tells me that I didn’t like to get in the water at first, but once I was in it, it was hard to get me out.  

Later when I was about 7 years young, I had an amazing instructor who I loved very much.  Her name was Claire.  She decided that being a swimming instructor wasn’t the job for her and decided to leave.  My mom tells me that when Claire left, I would loathe swim practice.  I would spend half of the practice time crying my eyes out on the side of the pool not wanting to get in.  My mom would have to come and calm me down, but 

I insisted that I would not get in unless Claire was there.  

I finally got over that Claire wasn’t coming back.  I continued with my lessons at Children of The Sea for a few years.  During the summer, I would participate in a swim team that was at our local health club.  Ever so often I go to the health club with my family to do certain activities and in the summer, we are sometimes there when the swim team is practicing.  Now, I wouldn’t even consider that a swim team, its more of a time to play, with a few laps of swimming sprinkled in.  This swim team was the birthplace of my swimming career.  

My mom enrolled me into the Tualatin Hills Swim Team when I turned nine.  I have been on the team ever since and I greatly thank her for signing me up for it.  It has filled my life with joy and I have found that if I am ever stressed or feeling depressed or angry, that I can go to practice and all of those feeling will go away.

Swimming teaches me new things about myself as well as life lessons everyday.  It has taught me to be disciplined.  If I want to get better I have to work on the little things like my underwaters and technique of the stroke instead of being able to be so big that I can just power myself through the water.  If I want to make those things a habit then I have to be disciplined about them. I have to do them every time an opportunity arrives.  

Gentle Giants

Slowly and silently gliding through the water, the majestic creatures hypnotized me.  My hands and face pressed up against the glass of the aquarium tank, and my gaze fixed on the gentle giants.  I was just three months old, when my mother and grandparents took me to the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium.  Swaddled in my mother’s baby bjorn, I kicked my legs with excitement as I watched the manatees swimming in their enclosure.  Every time my mother attempted to walk away, I would scream until I could see the manatees once again.  Little did they know, this would be the beginning of a life-long passion of mine.  My grandfather bought me a stuffed manatee from the zoo gift shop.  Once I got home from the zoo, my mother laid the manatee on the ground next to me, and I immediately rolled over, grabbed it, and fell asleep.  From that moment on, she has been by my side.  My parents thought I would lose interest in the manatee after a couple of hours, just like all of my other stuffed animals; however I did not. In fact, from that day, I haven’t gone to sleep without her.  Too many times in the washing machine caused her eye to fall out.  A little superglue did the trick, and it remains in tact to this day.  After two years, the manatee’s fur began to wear thin from too many hugs, and my parents feared that it would be destroyed, so they asked my grandfather to buy me a backup manatee, just in case.  My parents hid it in the closet, but one day, I bounded down the stairs beaming with excitement with one stuffed manatee in each arm and I shouted “TWO manatees!”   My parents sighed and shook their heads, but could only smile.  When I was old enough to walk, I would carry her around on my head, like a coonskin cap.  Ultimately, when it was time for me to start preschool, my parents convinced me that she was agoraphobic, so I wouldn’t insist on bringing her to school.  Since then, I have added twelve more stuffed manatees to my collection.  I have been fortunate enough to experience real-life encounters with the manatees.  When I was seven years old, I had the opportunity to swim with the manatees in the Crystal River.  Although it took almost two hours to find one, it was worth the wait because I swam with a mother and her calf-- a once-in-a-lifetime experience.  I returned to the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium when I was ten years old, and stood in the very spot I stood when I first saw a manatee.   When I was eleven years old I had the privilege of participating in a behind-the-scenes encounter at Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo, and saw the manatee rescue and rehabilitation tanks.  I fed the manatees lettuce and cabbage and watched one of the employees feed a baby by a bottle.  Every year, I visit my grandfather in Florida, and I wait in anticipation for another opportunity to be reunited with my beloved manatees.

As some of you may know, I have been sick the past few days and have had almost no interaction with people outside my house, therefore I was not able to not post.  My post will be Thursday, January 30, 2014.

Time Management, Procrastination, and Homework

By Katie Wei
Time management is very important when you get higher and higher in your grade levels. The older you get, the harder the work becomes, and the more work you get.  When we were younger, without a care in the world, and frolicking in the grass, we didn't care about homework. We did it when we came home, then went out to play. It was great! Until now.
After school, we all have activities to go to. Dance, soccer, piano, you name it. When you procrastinate after these long, exhausting activities, it all just drags, and then the next thing you know, you're doing all your homework at midnight. This is when time management comes in. Your agenda is like your best friend. You should always write down when you have time to do homework, and when you don't. It is also helpful to write down what obligations you have, like your after school activities. 
I remember one day, I was feeling lazy. So I procrastinated. That was a very stupid thing to do on my part. First, I got in trouble when I told my parents that I had to do all of my homework on sunday night. It was nice during the weekend when I didn't have to do anything at all, but when sunday night came, I regretted everything I had done.
Overall, just be smart with this, and don't do things at the last minute. If you have a long period of time to do a project, be smart and space things out. Unlike what I did. 

Lifelong Learning

"Being ignorant is not so much a shame 

as being unwilling to learn."

-Benjamin Franklin

From when you're in the first grade to beyond graduating high school, you will never stop learning. I am not talking about learning in school or by searching something on the internet. I am talking about learning from experiences, tiny things that you catch when you’re talking to another person, doing your job, or even walking in a hallway. You will always be learning.

Benjamin Franklin, a politician, musician, scientist and author. The list goes on and on. He was a smart man, and whenever he asked a question, he would do everything in his power to answer it. Take for example one night, he was sitting outside in Philadelphia. He was waiting to see lunar eclipse, but a storm had moved over to his location. Most people would just call it bad luck, but Benjamin Franklin asked “Why did I not see the lunar eclipse?” He found that there were strong winds from the Northeast, but when he talked to his brother in Boston, he was told that the storm had come after the lunar eclipse which was strange because, Boston is Northeast of Philadelphia. Benjamin concluded that clouds and storms do not always follow the strong winds. This theory is one that majorly influenced modernday meteorology.

Benjamin Franklin was a learner. His discoveries were made, because he learned from the little things. Like a cloudy day and a talk with his brother. Without Benjamin’s love for learning, a lot of the things we take for granted would not be here.So how can you be Benjamin Franklin? Well you can’t, but you can atleast do what he did best. Learn.

Donald Kausler’s book, “Learning and Memory in Normal Aging”, suggests that people who are actively learning throughout their lives have a longer lifespan and have less effects of aging than that of a person who did not actively learn on a regular basis. So not only is learning teaching you, preparing you for events, and helping you through your life, but it is also healthy for you.

An old Albert Einstein told others,

“Wisdom is not a product of schooling, but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.”

From when you are first born to when you are at your final breath, your brain is always ready to learn new things. So next time you see your grandfather, or you look up at the sky, remember to learn from it, and you will grow wiser and wiser.

Sources Cited:

• http://www.quotesforthemind.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/People-grow-through-experience-if-they-meet-life-honestly-and-courageously.-This-is-how-character-is-built.-Eleanor-Roosevelt-Famous-Experience-Quotes-with-Images-%E2%80%93-Learning-from-your-Experiences-in-Life.png

• http://cdn-4.lifehack.org/wp-content/files/2013/07/Wisdom-is-not-a-product-of-schooling-but-of-the-lifelong-attempt-to-acquire-it..jpg

• http://i.ebayimg.com/t/Learning-and-Memory-Normal-Aging-Donald-H-Kausler-1994-Hardcover/00/$T2eC16dHJH!FFmE6I0mZBRsK8oBy5g~~_35.JPG 

The Rubik Cube

This is a video of me solving a 4x4x4 Rubik cube in fast forward:

The main reason why solving Rubik cubes for me are fun and challenging is because of its massive number of permutations and the strategy aspect of it. When I got introduced to the 3x3x3 version in 1st grade, I was awed by it, and wondered if it was even possible to solve it. I finally solved my first cube during the summer of 2010. It took me 2 days, even with the instructions. In fourth grade, I began to cut down my time to 5 minutes. The algorithms took a while to memorize, but I got them down. Over the next 2 years, I gradually cut down my time. Sometime in 2013, I came up with a bypass to cut about 30 seconds down on my time, reducing it to my current time of 90 seconds. My all time record is 57 seconds.

Solving a Rubik cube is very related to solving a math problem. When it is scrambled, it looks complex with the only way to solve it being with trail and error. Same with math. When you get a large, bulky equation, like (43.85x-67.3536y)(34.998z-87.110022)=0 and 43.85x-43.85y+z= 1032.3501, you think that only by substituting random values you will solve it. With the correct algorithms, though, you can solve a 3x3x3 Rubik in around 90 seconds, or a 4x4x4 in 5 minutes. In the math problem, you note that either 34.998y-87.110022=0 or 43.85x+67.336a=0, by solving that you get x=4.02432, y=2.62, and z=2.489. Are you following me? If not, that's OK, just keep reading. These puzzles require logic, reasoning and practice. When solving a cube, you use a series of logical steps most of the time, and innovate new algorithms. In math, you also have to reach a goal with logical steps. When you see a shortcut, you don't have to stick with the procedure, you could use that shortcut. As with anything, practice makes perfect. If you keep practicing, you will get better.