At last the time is upon us: Finals. Sort of. They're so close I can almost taste them. (Which, though, I might add, isn't something one should do with one's finals.) I long for the hour close at hand when I might say
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting...
Things I have to do before winter break (written a few days ago):
- One more radio show -- "A Christmas Carol"
- Perform a scene from Chekov's "Ivanov" for class
- Finish the SPSS Project for Statistics
- Finish an application for Sound Designer for next semester's musical, "Urinetown" (CMT -- Clark Musical Theatre)
- See the play "Anything" by Clark student playwright Alex Kump
- Attend one more meeting for CCN (Clark Cable Network)
- Attend one more meeting for ROCU (Radio of Clark University)
- Finish acting in student filmmaker Sam Harnish's short "Pool Shark"
- Submit journal and final homework assignment for Astronomy
- Submit final homework assignment for Statistics
- Submit written assignment for Actor as Thinker
- Take final exam for Astronomy
- Take final exam for Statisics in the same room as the Astronomy exam, but some hours later
- Attend about a week's worth of final classes
- See friends (?)
- Eat 28 more times.
Now that list may look imposing and impossible to complete, but I'm pretty sure I can do everything if I just eat every other day and sleep in the library.
What's new in Statistics: SPSS project.
This is a major assignment that the class has been steadily learning how to complete by using the computer program IBM SPSS Statistics in our discussion sections. We were given a table of values for various conditions regarding 1450 newborn children, such as whether their mothers smoked or drank, and such, and were given the assignment to analyze such hypotheses as "there is a correlation between mother's drinking and premature birth."
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What's new in Astronomy: How to use a Geiger counter
So, back in the day, there was a certain type of Fiesta dinnerware that was colored the most striking orange. One might even say, a radioactive orange. Because the dinnerware's glaze was made with uranium. The company was forced to discontinue use of this color by the U.S. government in 1944. Because the uranium is contained in the glaze, it's pretty harmless, but it's still not a great idea to, you know, eat with it regularly, or, as Prof. Les Blatt said, "keep it under your pillow every night."
But, to Geiger counters. Prof. Blatt brought out a mug of this Fiestaware and examined it with a Geiger counter. There were some serious beta particles coming off of that thing. Which is how Geiger counters work: every click one hears is a beta particle shooting out of a decaying atom. Prof. Blatt referring to the counter lying far away from the mug: "Every once in a while you'll hear a click -- that has nothing to do with the radioactive source [inside the counter for calibration] -- that's just the cosmic rays that're hitting us all the time." It's nice to know that there's nowhere to hide from the constant bombardment of space radiation that's all around us.
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Expect one more blog post from this guy before the semester is up.
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Saturday, November 17, 2012
The Universe Is Expanding
I think my feelings regarding the past week's Astronomy classes can be summed up with this clip from Annie Hall: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U1-OmAICpU
I would say that this certainly is an exciting time to be involved in astronomy, but that's only because I'm such a naturally enthusiastic individual. My peers tell me that my zest for education is exceeded only by that of life in general. Still, despite the wonderful times in which we live and the advances in modern telescopy which enable us to view galaxies and star-stuff many unfathomable fathoms distant, one can't help but wonder if astronomers weren't a bit more boss a few decades ago. To help prove the point of the bossness of these astronomers, I submit to you the following five photographs of Edwin Hubble, namesake of the Hubble telescope, proposer of a theory of universal expansion.
First, we see a humble Hubble sitting over his desk, surely after a long day's astronomizing, having a smoke while examining a photographic plate of the stars:
Nothing so unusual about that. Until you realize that Hubble didn't put the pipe down for anyone. He couldn't be bothered.
Here's Hubble at the telescope, observing and chilling out. (Courtesy NASA)
Here's Hubble with his cat, Nicholas Copernicus:
http://content.answcdn.com/main/content/img/scitech/HSedwinp.jpg
Here's Einstein observing something astronomical, while Hubble hangs back to learn from the master. Astronomer Walter Sydney Adams appears on the right:
http://www.interactions.org/quantumuniverse/qu2006/images/discovering_image_05.jpg
And just so everybody knew he wasn't an egg-head, 6'2" Hubble also broke records on his high-school basketball team:
http://chicagomaroon.com/2009/04/10/before-revolutionizing-astronomy-hubble-helped-rewrite-record-books/
Here's an article about Hubble's cat (who apparently didn't like Aldous Huxley: http://huntingtonblogs.org/2012/11/hubble-and-copernicus/
Meanwhile, back in Astronomy class... Professor Les Blatt explained different astronomers' calculations for the age of the universe as being between 13.6 and 13.7 billion years, "but what's 100,000 years between friends?"
Also, check out CMT's production of "Spring Awakening" in Atwood Hall tonight at 2PM and 7PM. It will rock your world like no other musical has ever before.
I would say that this certainly is an exciting time to be involved in astronomy, but that's only because I'm such a naturally enthusiastic individual. My peers tell me that my zest for education is exceeded only by that of life in general. Still, despite the wonderful times in which we live and the advances in modern telescopy which enable us to view galaxies and star-stuff many unfathomable fathoms distant, one can't help but wonder if astronomers weren't a bit more boss a few decades ago. To help prove the point of the bossness of these astronomers, I submit to you the following five photographs of Edwin Hubble, namesake of the Hubble telescope, proposer of a theory of universal expansion.
First, we see a humble Hubble sitting over his desk, surely after a long day's astronomizing, having a smoke while examining a photographic plate of the stars:
Here's Hubble at the telescope, observing and chilling out. (Courtesy NASA)
Here's Hubble with his cat, Nicholas Copernicus:
http://content.answcdn.com/main/content/img/scitech/HSedwinp.jpg
http://www.interactions.org/quantumuniverse/qu2006/images/discovering_image_05.jpg
And just so everybody knew he wasn't an egg-head, 6'2" Hubble also broke records on his high-school basketball team:
http://chicagomaroon.com/2009/04/10/before-revolutionizing-astronomy-hubble-helped-rewrite-record-books/
Here's an article about Hubble's cat (who apparently didn't like Aldous Huxley: http://huntingtonblogs.org/2012/11/hubble-and-copernicus/
Meanwhile, back in Astronomy class... Professor Les Blatt explained different astronomers' calculations for the age of the universe as being between 13.6 and 13.7 billion years, "but what's 100,000 years between friends?"
Also, check out CMT's production of "Spring Awakening" in Atwood Hall tonight at 2PM and 7PM. It will rock your world like no other musical has ever before.
Friday, November 9, 2012
# 33 on the list of Places One Would Rather Not Get Snowed-In: A Theatre
Last week, Worcester was hit with some nasty weather of the hurricane/tropical storm variety. Not as bad as that which struck New York and other more coastal locales, but the administration still cancelled classes over it. Two days ago we were hit with some inches of snow. This was nothing over which to cancel classes. It only merited the sending out of snow-plows across campus at 5 AM to the chagrin of, I daresay, nearly every student who resided within earshot. After having watched a video on GLOBAL WARMING for Astronomy, I'm convinced that, as Alanis Morissette told me, "This isn't your grandma's climate." Unless your grandma grew up, alternately, in the Bahamas and Alaska, in which case, it might be exactly the same.
In the past week I've spent about 30 hours in a theatre, so it's difficult for me to consider other classes as being more relevant than that which is called Technical Theatre. As I alluded to last week, my life has successfully meshed the course proper with the play's production. (I use the term "play" in this instance to refer to "Miss Julie," a 19th century Swedish play by August Strindberg.) Though the class has moved into the area of stage management this week, I'm still in audio central. Last night was the show's opening and, despite a number of technical glitches from more than one area, it was pretty good. At this point, having mixed all the sounds and music needed, and having gotten rid of the bits that weren't along the way (a lot), and having set all the correct cues in the computer, all there is to do during the next performances is press a button on the assumption that the actors will do the same thing they did the night before. They usually do.
But stage management, right? Last class I took, like, four pages of notes which essentially boil down to how to structure one's time and get everything done. I think I'll incorporate the basic structure into my next book, "How to Say Yes: Getting Everything Done with Positivity," and then work the opposite angle with the sequel, "How to Say No: Getting More Things Done After You Don't Have Time for Anything Anymore" It's a working title.
Basically, what you need to know is that, 1) to get everything done that you want to, you need to attend to items that are at once important and not urgent before they become important and urgent, and they will, and 2) You can only affect what's within your sphere of influence, and nothing else. Worrying about things that you can't immediately influence will only cause you stress, make your hair fall out, and lead to unhealthy eating habits. As you work on those things that you can easily influence, your sphere will grow and you'll become more powerful than you could ever imagine. Like Godzilla with a clipboard.
In the past week I've spent about 30 hours in a theatre, so it's difficult for me to consider other classes as being more relevant than that which is called Technical Theatre. As I alluded to last week, my life has successfully meshed the course proper with the play's production. (I use the term "play" in this instance to refer to "Miss Julie," a 19th century Swedish play by August Strindberg.) Though the class has moved into the area of stage management this week, I'm still in audio central. Last night was the show's opening and, despite a number of technical glitches from more than one area, it was pretty good. At this point, having mixed all the sounds and music needed, and having gotten rid of the bits that weren't along the way (a lot), and having set all the correct cues in the computer, all there is to do during the next performances is press a button on the assumption that the actors will do the same thing they did the night before. They usually do.
But stage management, right? Last class I took, like, four pages of notes which essentially boil down to how to structure one's time and get everything done. I think I'll incorporate the basic structure into my next book, "How to Say Yes: Getting Everything Done with Positivity," and then work the opposite angle with the sequel, "How to Say No: Getting More Things Done After You Don't Have Time for Anything Anymore" It's a working title.
Basically, what you need to know is that, 1) to get everything done that you want to, you need to attend to items that are at once important and not urgent before they become important and urgent, and they will, and 2) You can only affect what's within your sphere of influence, and nothing else. Worrying about things that you can't immediately influence will only cause you stress, make your hair fall out, and lead to unhealthy eating habits. As you work on those things that you can easily influence, your sphere will grow and you'll become more powerful than you could ever imagine. Like Godzilla with a clipboard.
Friday, November 2, 2012
Sounds of Loudness
There comes a time in every student's life when he or she just doesn't feel the same enthusiasm for class as at the beginning. This is what we call the end of the honeymoon phase. In the beginning, everything's new and exciting. What'll the course be like? Will I be challenged to my full potential? Is this the class to take me into a glorious future of bioinformatics or, dare I dream, education? It happens sometime after the middle of the term when the weight of the work becomes tangible and real. "But wait," I hear you cry, "You're a theatre major; surely there isn't that much work to be had with such a relaxed course of study!" Attend a moment and I shall reverse this notion while deftly weaving together a tale of academia and extracurricula.
Scene opens on a computer lab containing the students of the TECHNICAL THEATER class. They've been given an assignment involving the manipulation and distortion of sound effects to create a scene from a production of "H.M.S. Pinafore vs. the Pirates of Penzance from Space." The scene begins with the two ships firing upon each other, one with traditional canons, the other with lasers. Also, the Pinafore is crewed by barnyard animals, while the Pirates are robots. Pretty standard.
One of the more important elements of sound manipulation I've learned while working on this project is that of panning, which is the placement of the sound from right to left, or center. The point isn't just to find sound effects on the internet and place them one after the other in the program Garageband. There're all these little bits that need to be taken care of -- fine points that you don't notice when you're watching a movie, for example, but which make the scene completely believable movie magic.
I've had some experience working with sound for high school and college theatre productions, but usually with live microphones, so sound editing is a sort of brave new world. Add to that the radio programme on which I appear every week (for which many a sound effect and manipulation are needed every show), I find myself surrounded by sound.
Move forward, now, into Clark's upcoming production of "Miss Julie." (Three guesses for the technical capacity in which I find myself engaged regarding this show.) Last night, at a rehearsal which took the typical too long length of time for a show a week away, I offered up some song mixes for a scene of dancing, revelry, and debauchery. Imagine a bunch of drunk servants tipping over furniture and chanting a German drinking song for about two minutes, highlighted with a creepy Stravinsky track plus pre-recorded audio of that same drinking song playing as loud as possible and you might get a bit of an idea of where the scene is going. But that's just two minutes of the thing. That's just the part I had finished before the rehearsal yesterday.
A couple hours in, the director tells me that he wants some ambient noise throughout a different scene, so my technical theater professor and I mix about thirty seconds of background ambience characteristic of a drunken summer's night (this took about an hour and a half -- too long). The director takes a listen and proclaims that he thinks it'd be a good idea to have this sort of ambience play throughout the entire show. After a half-hearted attempt at convincing him that this is a bad idea, and that there shouldn't be ambient noise on stage for almost two hours, I consulted with my tech theater professor and left with directions to loop a lot of sound. Come tomorrow's rehearsal, there may not even be need for the sound I'm going to work out tonight, but I enjoy the work and do it for the love of the theatre, and if anyone ever needs two hours of ambient summer sounds, I can hook you up.
The point is, though the honeymoon phase is over for such classes as those which I've above described, this is the time when one can really learn what the class is all about, and find those hidden aspects that make the whole course of study meaningful and worthwhile, for now and for the future.
Scene opens on a computer lab containing the students of the TECHNICAL THEATER class. They've been given an assignment involving the manipulation and distortion of sound effects to create a scene from a production of "H.M.S. Pinafore vs. the Pirates of Penzance from Space." The scene begins with the two ships firing upon each other, one with traditional canons, the other with lasers. Also, the Pinafore is crewed by barnyard animals, while the Pirates are robots. Pretty standard.
One of the more important elements of sound manipulation I've learned while working on this project is that of panning, which is the placement of the sound from right to left, or center. The point isn't just to find sound effects on the internet and place them one after the other in the program Garageband. There're all these little bits that need to be taken care of -- fine points that you don't notice when you're watching a movie, for example, but which make the scene completely believable movie magic.
I've had some experience working with sound for high school and college theatre productions, but usually with live microphones, so sound editing is a sort of brave new world. Add to that the radio programme on which I appear every week (for which many a sound effect and manipulation are needed every show), I find myself surrounded by sound.
Move forward, now, into Clark's upcoming production of "Miss Julie." (Three guesses for the technical capacity in which I find myself engaged regarding this show.) Last night, at a rehearsal which took the typical too long length of time for a show a week away, I offered up some song mixes for a scene of dancing, revelry, and debauchery. Imagine a bunch of drunk servants tipping over furniture and chanting a German drinking song for about two minutes, highlighted with a creepy Stravinsky track plus pre-recorded audio of that same drinking song playing as loud as possible and you might get a bit of an idea of where the scene is going. But that's just two minutes of the thing. That's just the part I had finished before the rehearsal yesterday.
A couple hours in, the director tells me that he wants some ambient noise throughout a different scene, so my technical theater professor and I mix about thirty seconds of background ambience characteristic of a drunken summer's night (this took about an hour and a half -- too long). The director takes a listen and proclaims that he thinks it'd be a good idea to have this sort of ambience play throughout the entire show. After a half-hearted attempt at convincing him that this is a bad idea, and that there shouldn't be ambient noise on stage for almost two hours, I consulted with my tech theater professor and left with directions to loop a lot of sound. Come tomorrow's rehearsal, there may not even be need for the sound I'm going to work out tonight, but I enjoy the work and do it for the love of the theatre, and if anyone ever needs two hours of ambient summer sounds, I can hook you up.
The point is, though the honeymoon phase is over for such classes as those which I've above described, this is the time when one can really learn what the class is all about, and find those hidden aspects that make the whole course of study meaningful and worthwhile, for now and for the future.
Friday, October 26, 2012
Thinker as Actor as Thinker as Actor as...
In a play an actor must always play multiple characters. A character isn't (shouldn't be) 2-dimensional. In day-to-day life a person must put on all kinds of masks, use various sorts of voices to match prior schema -- pre-determined actions for certain social situations. Exempli gratia, consider you're having a conversation in a public place, say, a popular study spot (any study spot that is also popular probably isn't very apt for the task of study, but that's beside the point). Your friend is very concerned about his relationship with somebody, so that's what's at hand. Eventually, some other person comes over and joins the conversation. Woah! What just happened? Was there a noticeable shift in how you continued conversing? Hint: there was.
When you and your friend were talking alone, you were both more or less natural with your speech and manner. Here's the kicker: if interaction is observed, it becomes performance. And the great thing is, there doesn't even have to be a physical audience for such performance to begin; the performer merely has to imagine one. In psychology, we call this the imaginary audience (quel suprise). It's what happens to teenagers when they're worried about looking cool and fearing embarrassment around every turn. There's also something psychologists call the spotlight effect, which is almost the same thing.
A quote from my Statistics textbook: "The spotlight effect refers to overestimating the extent to which others notice your appearance or behavior, especially when you commit a faux pas. Effectively, you feel as if you are suddenly standing in a spotlight with everyone watching. In one demonstration of this phenomenon, Gilovich, Medvec, and Savitsky (2000) asked college students to put on a Barry Manilow T-shirt that fellow students had previously judged to be embarrassing. The participants were then led into a room in which other students were already participating in an experiment. After a few minutes, the participant was led back out of the room and was allowed to remove the shirt [thank goodness]. Later, each participant was asked to estimate how many people in the room had noticed the shirt. The individuals in the room were also asked whether they noticed the shirt. In the study, the participants significantly overestimated the actual number of people who had noticed." (From "Essentials of Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences," by Frederick J. Gravetter and Larry B. Wallnau, 2011)
I'm going to write a self-help book with a title that I know will sell a million copies. I'll call it, "Nobody Cares: Empowering Yourself by Eliminating the Imaginary Audience." Half Joking. Give it ten years.
Part of what the class Actor as Thinker is about is how to internalize cognitive processes so that you're actually thinking as your character would, and not as someone standing on the stage worrying about what the audience is thinking. Forgetting the audience is difficult; to do so one must interact with the other characters onstage and have a vested interest in what they have to say. You have to listen to them, otherwise your next line has no motivation. The chemistry and emotional interactions of the actors is just as important as the script. Sure, you can have one without the other, but you'd end up with either a book on tape or a silent film (both are reasonable pastimes, but they're not theatre).
The mind is complex, and getting in touch with it onstage takes some time. I'll leave you with a dramatic exercise of the mind: emotional scales. Close your eyes and think of a time in your life when you were neutral -- no sadness, not really happy -- just content. This is 5. Now think of a time when you were a little miffed about something. You were just less than content. This is 4. Think of individual memories to take the places of 3 down to 0, with 0 being incredibly depressed and angry. Come back up to 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, becoming less angry and more okay with things. The next memory, for 6, is one where you were just a little happier than content. 7 is happier, and so on to 10, which is the happiest moment you can remember. Come back down one step at a time until you're again resting at 5. Checking in with emotional memories from time to time can give you the necessary tools to feel what your character's supposed to feel in the scene, because your character has as many characters inside him/her as you do. Spooky.
When you and your friend were talking alone, you were both more or less natural with your speech and manner. Here's the kicker: if interaction is observed, it becomes performance. And the great thing is, there doesn't even have to be a physical audience for such performance to begin; the performer merely has to imagine one. In psychology, we call this the imaginary audience (quel suprise). It's what happens to teenagers when they're worried about looking cool and fearing embarrassment around every turn. There's also something psychologists call the spotlight effect, which is almost the same thing.
A quote from my Statistics textbook: "The spotlight effect refers to overestimating the extent to which others notice your appearance or behavior, especially when you commit a faux pas. Effectively, you feel as if you are suddenly standing in a spotlight with everyone watching. In one demonstration of this phenomenon, Gilovich, Medvec, and Savitsky (2000) asked college students to put on a Barry Manilow T-shirt that fellow students had previously judged to be embarrassing. The participants were then led into a room in which other students were already participating in an experiment. After a few minutes, the participant was led back out of the room and was allowed to remove the shirt [thank goodness]. Later, each participant was asked to estimate how many people in the room had noticed the shirt. The individuals in the room were also asked whether they noticed the shirt. In the study, the participants significantly overestimated the actual number of people who had noticed." (From "Essentials of Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences," by Frederick J. Gravetter and Larry B. Wallnau, 2011)
I'm going to write a self-help book with a title that I know will sell a million copies. I'll call it, "Nobody Cares: Empowering Yourself by Eliminating the Imaginary Audience." Half Joking. Give it ten years.
Part of what the class Actor as Thinker is about is how to internalize cognitive processes so that you're actually thinking as your character would, and not as someone standing on the stage worrying about what the audience is thinking. Forgetting the audience is difficult; to do so one must interact with the other characters onstage and have a vested interest in what they have to say. You have to listen to them, otherwise your next line has no motivation. The chemistry and emotional interactions of the actors is just as important as the script. Sure, you can have one without the other, but you'd end up with either a book on tape or a silent film (both are reasonable pastimes, but they're not theatre).
The mind is complex, and getting in touch with it onstage takes some time. I'll leave you with a dramatic exercise of the mind: emotional scales. Close your eyes and think of a time in your life when you were neutral -- no sadness, not really happy -- just content. This is 5. Now think of a time when you were a little miffed about something. You were just less than content. This is 4. Think of individual memories to take the places of 3 down to 0, with 0 being incredibly depressed and angry. Come back up to 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, becoming less angry and more okay with things. The next memory, for 6, is one where you were just a little happier than content. 7 is happier, and so on to 10, which is the happiest moment you can remember. Come back down one step at a time until you're again resting at 5. Checking in with emotional memories from time to time can give you the necessary tools to feel what your character's supposed to feel in the scene, because your character has as many characters inside him/her as you do. Spooky.
Friday, October 19, 2012
Homework, Social Life, Sleep: Choose Two
Let's talk Psychology, homework, and sleep.
Though the events of last Wednesday are hazy at best, I think it went something like this:
7:12 PM -- A member of the cast of my radio show had to skip that evening due to excessive homework. This was problematic because another member had already declined the day before.
7:35 PM -- While having an emergency production meeting with my co-producer I call the last cast member, aside from ourselves, to say not to bother coming to the show that evening because "Dexter and I are going to find something to do by ourselves."
8:15 PM -- With less than an hour before showtime (and after my first idea to do Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First?" is shot down) we decide to do Stephen King's short story "1408" because we figured there was enough dialogue between the two characters to pass it off as a radio drama ). Then again, there was an awful lot of narration, so we decided that one of the two of us needed to be the narrator -- me, because Dexter wanted to be John Cusack. Fine, but now we need someone to play Samuel L. Jackson's part. (For those not in the know, these were the actors who played the two main characters in the movie adaptation of the same title.) "I have an idea: can Samuel L. Jackson be a woman?" The answer was yes and, thanks to a persuasive 30-second conversation, the cast was made.
The show went a bit longer than usual and, remember, we only had three cast members. By the end, my voice was having difficulties and there are some unfortunate sounds of water being gulped at the end of the recording.
I know what you're thinking, where does Psychology fit in here? It doesn't, that's why I was up 'till 6 AM doing a homework assignment that usually would've been completed over the course of two days.
11:30 PM -- Statistics homework
Now, I'm not sure whether my method of doing statistics homework is unusual, but I don't think it's typical. After about a decade of struggling with mathematics classes I finally decided to change part of the way in which I do the homework. Before I begin working through any calculations I write (type) the entire problem out. While this may be a time-consuming method of doing things, it helps in a way I attribute to cognitive momentum (a phrase which I just made up, but which has probably already been coined by psychologists the world over). The idea is that you do something easy -- transcription -- and while reading over the problem a couple of times you can start to get vague notions of where it's going and of what kind of answer to expect. Additionally, it's extremely helpful when checking my work after it's been graded. If there's just a bunch of numbers and symbols on the page I find it difficult to find where my errors lie. If, however, everything is typed and worked out line by line, it's easier to find the faults. Usually, for me, it's an error in transcribing from the book where I do something like write a 3 where there should be a 2 and have the whole problem get messed up at step one.
Continuing on with what I mentioned in my last post, I've decided that it'd be a capital idea to write an entire statistics text book using zombies for all the examples. Throughout the book there'd be a natural progression from Chapter One's discussion of outbreak to Chapter 12's on the complete annihilation of humanity.
Try this: To evaluate the effect of a zombie virus antidote, a sample is obtained from a population with a mean of μ
---
Bonus Class Update
In Technical Theatre the class became Foley artists. A Foley artist is someone who makes sound effects for movies with whatever's lying around. Named after Jack Foley, a guy who used to do the sound effects for silent movies, Foley is in virtually every modern movie because the same microphones that pick up actors' voices can't always pick up the needed sound effects. Foley becomes especially necessary in epic motion pictures with explosions or arrows whizzing by or sword fights. Pictures like "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers," a scene from which we watched in class and for which we proceeded to make sound effects using whatever was lying around. You want the sound of castle walls exploding and chunks of stone falling to the ground? Try large plastic bowls falling accompanied by blocks of wood. The sound of armor-clad orcs marching? Try two people marching on hollow steps while jangling chains. It went better than I make it out to have.
Bonus list: the five measurable qualities of sound: Duration, Pitch, Location, Volume, and Timbre.
---
Make sure to get thyself to CMT's Cabaret this evening in the Grind to hear some great show tunes sung by your colleagues.
Though the events of last Wednesday are hazy at best, I think it went something like this:
7:12 PM -- A member of the cast of my radio show had to skip that evening due to excessive homework. This was problematic because another member had already declined the day before.
7:35 PM -- While having an emergency production meeting with my co-producer I call the last cast member, aside from ourselves, to say not to bother coming to the show that evening because "Dexter and I are going to find something to do by ourselves."
8:15 PM -- With less than an hour before showtime (and after my first idea to do Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First?" is shot down) we decide to do Stephen King's short story "1408" because we figured there was enough dialogue between the two characters to pass it off as a radio drama ). Then again, there was an awful lot of narration, so we decided that one of the two of us needed to be the narrator -- me, because Dexter wanted to be John Cusack. Fine, but now we need someone to play Samuel L. Jackson's part. (For those not in the know, these were the actors who played the two main characters in the movie adaptation of the same title.) "I have an idea: can Samuel L. Jackson be a woman?" The answer was yes and, thanks to a persuasive 30-second conversation, the cast was made.
The show went a bit longer than usual and, remember, we only had three cast members. By the end, my voice was having difficulties and there are some unfortunate sounds of water being gulped at the end of the recording.
I know what you're thinking, where does Psychology fit in here? It doesn't, that's why I was up 'till 6 AM doing a homework assignment that usually would've been completed over the course of two days.
11:30 PM -- Statistics homework
Now, I'm not sure whether my method of doing statistics homework is unusual, but I don't think it's typical. After about a decade of struggling with mathematics classes I finally decided to change part of the way in which I do the homework. Before I begin working through any calculations I write (type) the entire problem out. While this may be a time-consuming method of doing things, it helps in a way I attribute to cognitive momentum (a phrase which I just made up, but which has probably already been coined by psychologists the world over). The idea is that you do something easy -- transcription -- and while reading over the problem a couple of times you can start to get vague notions of where it's going and of what kind of answer to expect. Additionally, it's extremely helpful when checking my work after it's been graded. If there's just a bunch of numbers and symbols on the page I find it difficult to find where my errors lie. If, however, everything is typed and worked out line by line, it's easier to find the faults. Usually, for me, it's an error in transcribing from the book where I do something like write a 3 where there should be a 2 and have the whole problem get messed up at step one.
Continuing on with what I mentioned in my last post, I've decided that it'd be a capital idea to write an entire statistics text book using zombies for all the examples. Throughout the book there'd be a natural progression from Chapter One's discussion of outbreak to Chapter 12's on the complete annihilation of humanity.
Try this: To evaluate the effect of a zombie virus antidote, a sample is obtained from a population with a mean of μ
---
Bonus Class Update
In Technical Theatre the class became Foley artists. A Foley artist is someone who makes sound effects for movies with whatever's lying around. Named after Jack Foley, a guy who used to do the sound effects for silent movies, Foley is in virtually every modern movie because the same microphones that pick up actors' voices can't always pick up the needed sound effects. Foley becomes especially necessary in epic motion pictures with explosions or arrows whizzing by or sword fights. Pictures like "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers," a scene from which we watched in class and for which we proceeded to make sound effects using whatever was lying around. You want the sound of castle walls exploding and chunks of stone falling to the ground? Try large plastic bowls falling accompanied by blocks of wood. The sound of armor-clad orcs marching? Try two people marching on hollow steps while jangling chains. It went better than I make it out to have.
Bonus list: the five measurable qualities of sound: Duration, Pitch, Location, Volume, and Timbre.
---
Make sure to get thyself to CMT's Cabaret this evening in the Grind to hear some great show tunes sung by your colleagues.
Friday, October 12, 2012
Statistics for Zombies
I have a confession to make. Lately I’ve been avoiding
writing about Statistics (PSYCH 105), though it is one of the courses in which
I’m enrolled. It seemed a difficult subject about which to write in any sort of,
shall we say, non-boring fashion. The thing is, though, statistics is a
massively important part of psychology. Without proper,
standardized, evaluative measures any sort of
“experiment” could only be written up in the form of anecdote, and any shocking
advances in the subject would needlessly be relegated to the realm of urban
legend, because how would we know if the experimenter weren’t engaging in some
serious confirmation bias? For the following example, I will attempt to veer
from the beaten path for the sake of education.
Consider a sample of n = 36 zombie hunters who’ve taken
a zombie survival class for one year prior to the zombocalypse. They average a kill-count of M = 5 zombies a
day, with the added benefit of not getting eaten. The entire rest of the
population from which this sample is taken may or may not have taken such a
class and has a mean kill-count of μ = 3 per day, and probably get eaten. Assume
a standard deviation of σ = 1 and standard level of significance of α = 0.05
with a two-tailed test. Finding the z-score (or, here, zombie score) is now a
simple matter of formula.
z = (M - μ) / (σ / √
n)
(5 - 3) / √36 =
0.333 = z
Such a low z-score cannot possibly recommend the course
as being statistically more significant. The null hypothesis cannot be rejected,
so one must assume that those who took the course are equally as likely to be
eaten as those who didn’t take the course.
Thank goodness I took statistics before the world blew
up.
Friday, October 5, 2012
Space Rocks (pun intended):
Why It’s Not the End of the World
Dr. Tim Spahr is the Director of the Minor Planets Center, funded by the Smithsonian, funded by NASA. He’s in charge of recording
all the near Earth objects (NEOs) floating around in space, and the guy to whom
the government turns when there’s question of one of these space rocks colliding
with our little planet. Last Thursday he gave a lecture to my Astronomy 001
class insisting that, though 1 in 2000 asteroids come close enough to the Earth
to pose threat of collision (and there are hundreds of asteroids regularly posed
to do so), 96% of all the large near-Earth objects have
been discovered (that is, those objects which would actually pose a threat if
they crashed into the Earth -- not small rocks which routinely fall to Earth and
which people don’t always notice). Ergo the Minor Planets Center would be in the
know if there were a major threat on the scale of, say, mass-extinction
event-causing space rock.
The point he was trying to make was that there’s little
conceivable threat of any sort of asteroid extinguishing life on Earth. Whew.
Now I can use my energy to worry about real problems like what kind of cereal to
have. And then, suppose there’s no milk of the 1 or 2% varieties? Do I go with
whole or fat-free? I can only imagine what sort of chaos
would break loose should such an event transpire. All I can say is that I’m not
going to be caught unawares when the rabble pours into
the streets for a nice night of dinner and looting. As I learned from the
classic treatise on the subject of post-apocalyptic life, Max Brooks’s “The
Zombie Survival Guide,” should access to a crossbow be unreasonable, a hot air
balloon will do nicely.
Which acts as a good segue to this next paragraph.
Recently Clark has been host to a sort of symposium on “The End of Things,” a film and lecture series about… the
end of things. Last night I caught a lecture by K. David Harrison of Swarthmore
College on the extinction (and preservation) of language in an increasingly
globalized world. Which is interesting, but so are zombies. I heard on the
grapevine (which, admittedly, is a bit wilted now considering how October it is)
that associate dean Jason Zelesky“The Walking Dead” on the
15th. Perhaps it’s time to consider what all
this end of the world hullabaloo (pardon my French) is actually doing for
society. For those of us almost old enough to properly remember Y2K there’s a
sort of apathy for any theory that the world’s about to end. It’s just run of
the mill disappointment. It’s like, hey, media, you said that the world was
going to end in 2000, but it didn’t, so I’m just going to stand here with my
arms crossed and head tilted slightly to one side and say, “Really? Again with
this apocalypse business?” But most people don’t really believe the world’s
going to end in the near future. Or, if they do, they keep calm and carry on
because what if the world’s not over tomorrow? It’s going
to awfully inconvenient, and probably awkward to come into work on Monday and
pretend like you weren’t recently chanting on a mountain to get beamed up before
the Judgment. “Hey, Steve, how was your weekend?”
“Uneventful.”
Luckily, says Dr. Spahr, the military has various plans
for what to do should impending doom by space rock be
staring humanity in the face. One such is a gravity tractor, which isn’t as
complicated as you’d think. It’s like a big object launched to hang out next to
the asteroid and convince it to pull to one side of the Earth instead of
crashing into it.
“Hey, asteroid, what’s up?”
“Oh, you, know, just goin’ to fall into that planet over
there.”
“Yeah, that’s cool, but I hear there’s this great party
off in deep space just to the side of that planet.”
“Oh, man, I’m in!”
And that’s how science works.
Another option is the nuclear strategy. Apparently,
every time there’s word of an asteroid near Earth the military’s just like,
let’s nuke it! Even if there isn’t a threat, people sometimes want to do it just
to see what happens. (As far as I’m aware, as of this writing, there haven’t
been any nuclear devices launched outside of our atmosphere.) Scientists are
usually the voices of reason to say, no, no; that’s a bad idea. Let’s
not.
The concept of the end of the world is an interesting
and pervasive thing in our culture, and even I’m not immune to its influence,
having just read the first of six parts of Douglas Adams’s “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” on ROCU, in which the
World gets destroyed by aliens to make room for a hyperspace expressway. Listen
in next Wednesday at 9:00 p.m. Eastern to find out what
happens and to, maybe, pick up some tips for your own survival. Do you know
where your towel is?
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Lights, Camera, Teddy Bear
“So, what did you do
in college today?”
“Played with teddy
bears.”
This… is… Technical
Theatre.
Q: Have you ever
noticed how, when you’re in a theatre, you can usually see the actors’ faces?
A: Lights. If your answer to the previous question was, “No, actually, that’s never been my experience,” then I could understand if you probably didn’t care much for theatre.
A: Lights. If your answer to the previous question was, “No, actually, that’s never been my experience,” then I could understand if you probably didn’t care much for theatre.
Have you ever learned
more about a specific subject than you ever thought you would? Have you ever
opened a high-powered light fixture, closed it, and hung it thirty feet above
the floor? (Have you ever read so many sentences in the second person that you
thought you were reading a self-help manual?) Well, this is what’s happenin’ in
TA 120: Technical Theatre. Let me get back to what I was saying earlier about
the teddy bear, because I feel that’s slightly more interesting to slightly
more people than light fixtures. (I could always be wrong, and I can appreciate
those more technically-minded).
Here’s the situation:
four groups each get a bunch (that’s a technical term) of lights and a teddy
bear. Take these items and light the bear as if it were an actor in a scene
using a line from a script. Use at least two lighting cues. My group got a line
similar to “There is another side to me. I see myself… making pancakes.” Here’s
the creative process: First, place the bear on a stool facing a mirror so that
he can see himself and what he is becoming. We imagined the first line as
something rather sinister, with mood of a darker nature. The message we wanted
to get across was that the bear was contemplating another dimension, in a
sense, where he saw himself as something better than the present. A “greener on
the other side” moment, if you will. To effect this feeling, we lit the bear
from behind, so that his face would appear, in the mirror, in shadow. We also
draped white Christmas lights over the top of the mirror. They hung down in
such a way as to give the sense of a portal to the other bear’s world. The next
cue was for the line, “I see myself…” so
we added two lights to illuminate the bear’s face, one on either side to
provide some depth. For the final cue, the terribly upbeat “Making pancakes!”
we added two more lights, from above, to more totally illuminate the scene,
drawing out the bear’s happiness into the scene. Still, though happy at the
moment, the portal remained open throughout, leaving the possibility for
reversion. So, one could never be certain as to the bear’s happiness. Was he
actually happy to be making pancakes? Or was he only enacting the apparently
happy role that he saw in the mirror? Deep stuff, through and through.
Just this morning we
got the low-down on two kinds of lighting fixtures one might typically find in
a school theatre or auditorium (or cafegymatorium). The first we call a Fresnel
light, after Anton Fresnel (eponymous inventor of a lens, cut in a certain way,
which allows the amplification of light with a small piece of glass). It’s
essentially a light bulb (or, in a technical theatre term, a lamp), a reflector
behind it, and the Fresnel lens in the front, through which the light streams
on its merry way. It’s also got shutters, which can be important features if
you want any variation in your lighting at all. The second type of light we
looked at is what’s called an ellipsoidal reflector spotlight. With this style
of light, one can move the lens toward or away from the lamp inside, allowing
the scene a sharper or softer look.
All in all, a
fascinating subject. Up to this point in my technical theatrical career, I’ve
concerned myself mostly with sound, having set up and run mics and soundboard
for various productions in high school and college, so it’s interesting to
learn how the other stuff works.
For other news, I’ll
lay out some bullet points:
- Midterm in Astronomy
(ASTR 001) and
- Exam in Statistics
(PSYCH 105) both happened earlier today, and about both of which I felt overly
confident. Time will tell…
- Radio show next
Wednesday at 9pm on ROCU, in which I and the company of the Theatre Hyperion
read the first two chapters of the radio adaptation of Douglas Adams’s “The Hitchhiker’s
Guide to the Galaxy.”
- Filmed the first
episode of CCNews with the Clark Cable Network, our school’s fabulous
television station, today. Found out that liquid water may once have flown on Mars. #science (CCN production meetings every Tuesday at 9:00pm in
the basement of Sanford Hall -- all Clark students welcome.)
- Next Saturday, at
8pm in Atwood Hall, I can be found performing an illusion in Clark’s Got
Talent, where I’m going to attempt to saw someone in half.
Now, if you’ll excuse
me, I’m off to build a box.
Friday, September 14, 2012
So It Begins...
Introductions are traditionally a good way "to identify and present, esp. to make (strangers) acquainted." (There was never a time in my life when I felt like beginning a sentence with the phrase "the dictionary defines x as..." (and I still haven't), because said phrase is one of the most over-used and underwhelming in all of public speaking. I, of course, apologize to the large percentage of the readership who have used the phrase "the dictionary defines x as...")
My name is Curran, I am majoring in Psychology and Theatre (or, if I'm feeling whimsical, Theatre and Psychology), and this is my blog. I am in my second year at Clark University -- yay Cougars. (Now's probably not the time to go into how, in North America, the animals we refer to as cougars, mountain lions, panthers and pumas are actually all the same animal, puma concolor, but, then again, I just did.)
I have taken it upon myself to attempt to double major in Psychology and Theatre, and find these to be perfectly appropriate subjects upon which to write. Essentially what I'm doing with this blog is giving the reader a view through my eyes into the goings-on of classes pursuant to these areas of study (and others).
Before I get into what the individual courses are like, I'd like to give a brief overview of what the majors for Psychology and Theatre entail. (You may find yourself wondering why I write the word Theatre in the chiefly Brit. spelling and not in the American English, and why I constantly spell out Psychology instead of substituting the more common Psych. It's because I'm being pretentious.)
Psychology at Clark is a popular major. The American Psychological Association was founded here, Freud visited about hundred years ago, we have a statue of him, all that good stuff. The major requires seven classes, as well as a separate minor in "a related field", but don't worry yet if you think minoring in Art History isn't something that can be done, because "The related field requirement reflects the conviction of the faculty that all academic areas are usefully related to psychology and that understanding the relation between psychology and another discipline requires knowing that other discipline in considerable depth." (At this point I will admit that there's a part of me still clinging to the hope that I'll be able to squeeze in a French minor alongside the aforementioned stuff, and nobody's told me it can't be done (yet).) The seven classes include the standard (PSYC 101, 105) and the specialized (PSYCH 295: Social Science Research to Influence Public Policy). Right now I find myself gently floating on the cloud of PSYC 105: Statistics. It's like a crash-course in mathematics from 3rd grade through 12th. It's... invigorating. If you took Calculus (and, you know, passed), this class should be rather straight-forward. If, however, you failed Pre-Calculus and took it again in summer school when you could've been sleeping or, indeed, doing anything else with your time, you should be prepared to actually pay attention and/or seek help from friends this time ("Study buddy" isn't just fun to say, it's something fun to have. And, as for pride: get over it.)
Theatre (or, as the English say, "Theatre") requires a whopping 13 classes, which makes it one of the more requirement-intense majors. It consists of 10 actual Theatre classes as well as three non-theatre classes of another art (such as Art History or Screen Studies (Screen Studies: also known as the Awesome Department (though slightly less awesome than Theatre or Psychology... represent)). The way I see it is, the reason it has so many required classes, is to separate the kids who were just thinking of taking "an easy major" from those who're actually into theatre. "Oh, what's that you say? Many of these classes don't require textbooks? Sign me up!" Four weeks later: "I... can't... bare my soul on stage anymore..." The classes run the gamut from TA 112: Creative Actor, an almost strictly improv class, to TA 215: Stage Combat, to TA 153: Modern Drama, a class requiring the reading of some 25 plays in their entirety. I've got two completely different (yet related) classes from this department on my schedule at the moment: TA 120: Technical Theatre, and TA 212: Actor as Thinker, a class which could support its own blog by merit of the material covered.
Why do I do this to myself? Why double-major and maybe minor? Am I an over-achiever? Am I self-loathing? Maybe I was just bored, or I lost a bet and now I have to. Who knows? But, honestly, what else am I doing with my time? Life of a college student: Eat, sleep, study. (Mostly sleep.) The caveat upon which this whole triple-area of study thing hinges is that I decided what I wanted to do my freshman year. At Clark one has to declare a major at the end of one's Sophomore year, which is part of the reason most people only do one major (leaving time at the beginning of The College Experience for experimentation of an educative nature). Wrenches which could inhibit my plan are many, and include the fact that certain classes are not taught every semester, and there are specific classes I need to have taken to get the majors. But we'llburn cross that bridge when we get to it.
So, let's have a quick run-down of the first three weeks of school.
This class is a struggle, pulling the strings of my heart between one of my greatest loves, psychology, and one of my most ancient nemeses, mathematics. It's not that I dislike higher mathematics, I just can't do them very well. I look at a lengthy math proof like I do a Picasso. I say, "Yup, got some meaningful stuff goin' on there..." and I back away slowly.
But we've started with averages (good ol' mean, median, and mode), which I remember from 3rd grade, and with which I'm pretty okay. I face the homework like Alexander faces a particularly tricky knot. By cutting it in half.
Memorable quote from this class: "You won't be tested on this; it's just sort of a thinking point." [Everyone tunes out.]
Instead, try: "The next thing I'm about to say will be the single most important piece of information you will learn from this class. It will be the difference between you getting an 'A' and living with your parents after college." [Everyone wakes up.]
First, the course number. It's like saying, "We could not possibly make this class any easier." This is a wily deception. It's more like, "We could not possibly make this class any more fundamental." I'll just get it out of the way by saying that I like this class, so you can know where lie my biases when I say things like, "I suddenly want to triple major with Astronomy." (If I ever say this, may I please be peaceably restrained.)
Fun Facts from Star Class:
-- (From the textbook, pg. 18) "On average, the moon rises and sets an hour later each night." Did not know that.
-- Hotly contested issue: "The Moon Illusion": It's the way the moon appears larger near the horizon than when high in the sky. (True story, it does.) How to prove it's an illusion: Hold a coin up so that it just covers the moon at moonrise; then again a few hours later, holding it at the same length from your eyes. Or, take photos with your phone and compare their sizes.
-- The ancient Greeks knew that the Earth was round because they observed ships sailing off over the horizon, disappearing over it, and then returning the same way (not, in fact, falling off the edge of the world and being thrown back by space monsters).
-- The word "planet," from the Greek planetes, meaning wanderer. (Because the five planets they could observe were like wandering stars.) Furthermore, when you take this class, you will get up at obscene hours of the night (3, 4, 5am) to observe the moon and other astronomical entities. Your roommate will love you for it.
If you ever wanted to build sets for plays, then have I got a class for you. The full scope of the class encompasses "a little of everything" involved in technical theatre, such as lights, sound, and, of course, set construction. The first quiz we took was on proper rigging knots. I got 100% and can now tie a square knot behind my back. This skill will prove useful someday, I just know it.
Also, I have a new-found appreciation for power tools. Pictures to follow.
It's difficult to put into words what this class is all about. Basically, it's that class you imagine really melodramatic actors took before they were kicked out and ended up where they are today. You know, the ones who insist they're artistes, instead of just the regular kind.
My professor, from part of a lecture on what I assume was finding a way to be so natural on stage that it grabs the audience's attention:
"I mean, imagine if I had a baby sitting on this table right now. You wouldn't be able to look away. It's not going to help you in this class. It's not going to get up and tap-dance. It's just being a baby. But you wouldn't be able to look away. I mean, what is that? ... If you can do what you're doing right now, on-stage, you'll be great actors."
He followed it up with this exercise: Half the class gets up to the front of the room. They're told to "act important." People raise their heads and stick out their chins, embodying stand-still swaggers. "Now act sexy," people put their hands on their hips and contort their faces into over-done winks. "Okay, now relax." People stand still, some in the pose actors refer to as neutral. "Now count the number of flat surfaces in the room." We do so, and, in the action, forget ourselves. Then the professor hits us with it: "You all looked ridiculous! That's not how important people act. Did you think you looked sexy? And you all looked really nervous when you were supposed to relax." The point was, if you can stop focusing on yourself, you can look and feel natural on-stage.
It might not be unfair to say that this class is the difference between having a career in a soap opera and a career on Broadway.
---
Well, I'd love to type forever, but I've got a script to edit. Be sure to catch my new radio show every week at 9pm (Eastern Time) on Clark's own ROCU, where my co-host and I will read old radio dramas. First up, Jules Verne's "Around the World in 80 Days." You've got to hear it to believe it.
~Curran O'Donoghue
My name is Curran, I am majoring in Psychology and Theatre (or, if I'm feeling whimsical, Theatre and Psychology), and this is my blog. I am in my second year at Clark University -- yay Cougars. (Now's probably not the time to go into how, in North America, the animals we refer to as cougars, mountain lions, panthers and pumas are actually all the same animal, puma concolor, but, then again, I just did.)
I have taken it upon myself to attempt to double major in Psychology and Theatre, and find these to be perfectly appropriate subjects upon which to write. Essentially what I'm doing with this blog is giving the reader a view through my eyes into the goings-on of classes pursuant to these areas of study (and others).
Before I get into what the individual courses are like, I'd like to give a brief overview of what the majors for Psychology and Theatre entail. (You may find yourself wondering why I write the word Theatre in the chiefly Brit. spelling and not in the American English, and why I constantly spell out Psychology instead of substituting the more common Psych. It's because I'm being pretentious.)
Psychology at Clark is a popular major. The American Psychological Association was founded here, Freud visited about hundred years ago, we have a statue of him, all that good stuff. The major requires seven classes, as well as a separate minor in "a related field", but don't worry yet if you think minoring in Art History isn't something that can be done, because "The related field requirement reflects the conviction of the faculty that all academic areas are usefully related to psychology and that understanding the relation between psychology and another discipline requires knowing that other discipline in considerable depth." (At this point I will admit that there's a part of me still clinging to the hope that I'll be able to squeeze in a French minor alongside the aforementioned stuff, and nobody's told me it can't be done (yet).) The seven classes include the standard (PSYC 101, 105) and the specialized (PSYCH 295: Social Science Research to Influence Public Policy). Right now I find myself gently floating on the cloud of PSYC 105: Statistics. It's like a crash-course in mathematics from 3rd grade through 12th. It's... invigorating. If you took Calculus (and, you know, passed), this class should be rather straight-forward. If, however, you failed Pre-Calculus and took it again in summer school when you could've been sleeping or, indeed, doing anything else with your time, you should be prepared to actually pay attention and/or seek help from friends this time ("Study buddy" isn't just fun to say, it's something fun to have. And, as for pride: get over it.)
Theatre (or, as the English say, "Theatre") requires a whopping 13 classes, which makes it one of the more requirement-intense majors. It consists of 10 actual Theatre classes as well as three non-theatre classes of another art (such as Art History or Screen Studies (Screen Studies: also known as the Awesome Department (though slightly less awesome than Theatre or Psychology... represent)). The way I see it is, the reason it has so many required classes, is to separate the kids who were just thinking of taking "an easy major" from those who're actually into theatre. "Oh, what's that you say? Many of these classes don't require textbooks? Sign me up!" Four weeks later: "I... can't... bare my soul on stage anymore..." The classes run the gamut from TA 112: Creative Actor, an almost strictly improv class, to TA 215: Stage Combat, to TA 153: Modern Drama, a class requiring the reading of some 25 plays in their entirety. I've got two completely different (yet related) classes from this department on my schedule at the moment: TA 120: Technical Theatre, and TA 212: Actor as Thinker, a class which could support its own blog by merit of the material covered.
Why do I do this to myself? Why double-major and maybe minor? Am I an over-achiever? Am I self-loathing? Maybe I was just bored, or I lost a bet and now I have to. Who knows? But, honestly, what else am I doing with my time? Life of a college student: Eat, sleep, study. (Mostly sleep.) The caveat upon which this whole triple-area of study thing hinges is that I decided what I wanted to do my freshman year. At Clark one has to declare a major at the end of one's Sophomore year, which is part of the reason most people only do one major (leaving time at the beginning of The College Experience for experimentation of an educative nature). Wrenches which could inhibit my plan are many, and include the fact that certain classes are not taught every semester, and there are specific classes I need to have taken to get the majors. But we'll
So, let's have a quick run-down of the first three weeks of school.
Psych 105: Statistics
This class is a struggle, pulling the strings of my heart between one of my greatest loves, psychology, and one of my most ancient nemeses, mathematics. It's not that I dislike higher mathematics, I just can't do them very well. I look at a lengthy math proof like I do a Picasso. I say, "Yup, got some meaningful stuff goin' on there..." and I back away slowly.
But we've started with averages (good ol' mean, median, and mode), which I remember from 3rd grade, and with which I'm pretty okay. I face the homework like Alexander faces a particularly tricky knot. By cutting it in half.
Memorable quote from this class: "You won't be tested on this; it's just sort of a thinking point." [Everyone tunes out.]
Instead, try: "The next thing I'm about to say will be the single most important piece of information you will learn from this class. It will be the difference between you getting an 'A' and living with your parents after college." [Everyone wakes up.]
Astronomy 001: Exploring the Universe
First, the course number. It's like saying, "We could not possibly make this class any easier." This is a wily deception. It's more like, "We could not possibly make this class any more fundamental." I'll just get it out of the way by saying that I like this class, so you can know where lie my biases when I say things like, "I suddenly want to triple major with Astronomy." (If I ever say this, may I please be peaceably restrained.)
Fun Facts from Star Class:
-- (From the textbook, pg. 18) "On average, the moon rises and sets an hour later each night." Did not know that.
-- Hotly contested issue: "The Moon Illusion": It's the way the moon appears larger near the horizon than when high in the sky. (True story, it does.) How to prove it's an illusion: Hold a coin up so that it just covers the moon at moonrise; then again a few hours later, holding it at the same length from your eyes. Or, take photos with your phone and compare their sizes.
-- The ancient Greeks knew that the Earth was round because they observed ships sailing off over the horizon, disappearing over it, and then returning the same way (not, in fact, falling off the edge of the world and being thrown back by space monsters).
-- The word "planet," from the Greek planetes, meaning wanderer. (Because the five planets they could observe were like wandering stars.) Furthermore, when you take this class, you will get up at obscene hours of the night (3, 4, 5am) to observe the moon and other astronomical entities. Your roommate will love you for it.
TA 120: Technical Theatre
If you ever wanted to build sets for plays, then have I got a class for you. The full scope of the class encompasses "a little of everything" involved in technical theatre, such as lights, sound, and, of course, set construction. The first quiz we took was on proper rigging knots. I got 100% and can now tie a square knot behind my back. This skill will prove useful someday, I just know it.
Also, I have a new-found appreciation for power tools. Pictures to follow.
TA 212: Actor as Thinker
It's difficult to put into words what this class is all about. Basically, it's that class you imagine really melodramatic actors took before they were kicked out and ended up where they are today. You know, the ones who insist they're artistes, instead of just the regular kind.
My professor, from part of a lecture on what I assume was finding a way to be so natural on stage that it grabs the audience's attention:
"I mean, imagine if I had a baby sitting on this table right now. You wouldn't be able to look away. It's not going to help you in this class. It's not going to get up and tap-dance. It's just being a baby. But you wouldn't be able to look away. I mean, what is that? ... If you can do what you're doing right now, on-stage, you'll be great actors."
He followed it up with this exercise: Half the class gets up to the front of the room. They're told to "act important." People raise their heads and stick out their chins, embodying stand-still swaggers. "Now act sexy," people put their hands on their hips and contort their faces into over-done winks. "Okay, now relax." People stand still, some in the pose actors refer to as neutral. "Now count the number of flat surfaces in the room." We do so, and, in the action, forget ourselves. Then the professor hits us with it: "You all looked ridiculous! That's not how important people act. Did you think you looked sexy? And you all looked really nervous when you were supposed to relax." The point was, if you can stop focusing on yourself, you can look and feel natural on-stage.
It might not be unfair to say that this class is the difference between having a career in a soap opera and a career on Broadway.
---
Well, I'd love to type forever, but I've got a script to edit. Be sure to catch my new radio show every week at 9pm (Eastern Time) on Clark's own ROCU, where my co-host and I will read old radio dramas. First up, Jules Verne's "Around the World in 80 Days." You've got to hear it to believe it.
~Curran O'Donoghue
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