But Really, That’s Exactly What Happened

The day after Peter and the Starcatcher came to a close, I packed my bags (and my grandma’s car) in one night and left at 5am to fly away on a plane. Bless the weather and functioning aircrafts because there wasn’t a single delay! That was a huge relief because the minute I walked off the plane I called an uber, rode it straight to Santa Clara University, lugged my bags into Unity Commons, dropped them at my feet, I was greeted with a binder, and I went straight into a 3-hour meeting for LEAD. What a great and chill “welcome back” right? It sure elevated my heart rate!

“I didn’t burn my pasta!”

Some wonder, “What is LEAD?” and “Why did you leave for school two weeks early?” Ah, good questions! I am a LEAD scholar which means I am recognized as a first generation student that is a part of the LEAD program to help students like me be successful while in and beyond college. All first-year LEAD students come to school a week early and work with the LEAD staff on preparing for college as they start their classes early. And to answer that second question, I was hired by SCU to be a LEAD Seminar Peer Educator this year! We spent a week training, planning, and getting ready for all our new students, and then a week before classes start we had LEAD week! There are 30 staff members and five of us were in charge of leading all the large group activities. Mind you, that is five of us trying to control and manage 90 people for 3 hours chunks every day. We were in charge of things like HUGE icebreakers, a scavenger hunt across the whole campus in the midst of a pouring down thunderstorm, running our annual Olympics, and leading diversity and inclusion forums. Needless to say, it’s an exceptionally meaningful and unique program that I am so honored to be gaining from and giving back to at the same time.

Thank You

Thank you, dear friends, for all the wonderful memories already! There are too many pictures and laughs to count! Thank you for all your love. I cannot wait to see what comes next for us this year. Two of my fondest moments thus far is LEAD week and Emma and I going to the Glow Party at the Globe!

Week One and Week Two in One Page, Go!

Fun fact: SCU does not run on dates, we work by counting our weeks. For example, right now it is the weekend before week 3.

Week 1 Thingys

I was asked by my professor Aldo to do a short film with him, and of course, I said yes! I’m not usually a film person, but being on set was really fun and I immediately got thrown to work. I was asked to be their Production Assistant which I gladly accepted, and then within and hour I was promoted to Script Supervisor which was one of the best learning curves I’ve ever had: I got to know how the professional film industry works real fast. A few days later, I auditioned for Aldo and not only got cast in the mainstage production of The Foreigner, I have been asked to understudy the lead! I am quite intimidated as I am the only underclassman in the cast! On a different note, this quarter I have registered for a mightly load and some really interesting classes! I am currently overloading with a total of 23 credits? Something like that. For this ten week run, I will be taking Introduction to Production, Voice Speech and Presentation, Biblical Women and Power, Spanish II (the death of me), Playwriting, Private Vocal lessons, dropping in on Advanced Modern Dance Technique, as well as team teaching LEAD Seminar. I’m tired just writing that run on sentence! Needless to say, with the exception of Spanish, the work I will be doing this quarter is so intruiging and fun for me, I don’t mind the load. Besides classes, the Globe (the theatre co-ed fraternity house) had an AWESOME blakclight party with some neon glow happening! It was a great way to reunite with friends and kick off the new year!

Week 2 Shenanigans

I didn’t burn my pasta! This weekend I made myself some late night pasta with my handy dandy rice cooker that can apparently do more than just cook rice. It was so exciting! I was so happy that I called my grandma while I was making it, which she can attest to. It was delicious! Another fun announcement, with Kusanovich Dance Co. of San Francisco, I am performing a stunning modern piece and sharing the stage with five other beautiful dancers called Attica Nocturne at WestWave Dance Festival in SF! Our piece starts with reading an Attica prisoner’s journal entry and dissolves into a beautiful nocturne piano arrangement that is ever changing and is full of swells and releases. We are concentrating on the injustice of prisons and the way it severs connections with those they need while creating loose connections with those that harm them. During our dress rehearsal, our choreographer allowed us one by one to step out and watch the whole piece, and it made each one of us cry. Something I love about dance is that it tells the stories of those who cannot speak, and it shows us what cannot be said with words, but only felt. What I have only very recently found while studying modern techniques is that modern dance can be intimately relatable and humanizing for the audience and the dancers. As artists, we have the freedom and must have the willingness to contort our bodies into shapes we aren’t used to seeing or feeling. With that, we get across to the audience a message that is so blatantly raw and clear to the eyes of the viewer while our society tells us we are not allowed to make such honest and vulnerable movements and lines in the real world. I find that with technology and texting, communication via text is the first way we think to react to something, but sometimes the strongest message is the one that uses no words at all. But it says so much more. Oh, and our costumes don’t breath and they make us really sweaty.