Revisions

New play going up this week. I find myself exhausted after rehearsals. They're only three hours long, but I am dead and spent. I'm also sick, so that's not helping. Waking up with a neck ache and face full of mucus. Avoiding coffee. But it's amazing how I sit in a chair listening and jotting notes for truly minimal time and feel maximum drainage. Then I wake up and have to submit all the new pages by 3:30. It's like how when I started working at the Writing Center I'd get ungodly hungry after my shifts. I mean, wow, I'd meet with three students and then call in an emergency pad see ewe order, wolf it on break. Urgently text Puhg when I was getting on the train, "Start dinner now!" He'd reply, "It's four pm!" Staying at Kale's house while I'm here. I had all these fantasies of enjoying my days, bustling about the places I used to go, but instead I'm hunched over this laptop frantically chopping lines and rewriting scenes to make more metaphorical sense. The stakes are low, but I've never been good at not trying my best.

Crying in the Writing Center

Welp, I'm crying in the corner of the Writing Center. There are no walk-in appointments, so I am at the reports computer grading extra credit that I marshmallowed into giving some theatre history students. I'm weak.

My Thursday commute has been overlapping with a young, foreign father. He gets in the train car, passes out Kleenex packets with a photo of him and his baby on it, and a note that asks for a donation in return for the tissue. I think this is a good business plan because no one is bothered, there is a service given, and he's respectful. Today I decided to give him money, but when I reached in my purse, with him waiting expectantly, no dollar. I felt v bad. He was getting off the train at my stop, so I offered to buy him something at 7/11. He mentioned needing diapers. We walked over together. There were no diapers. I suggested formula. Nope. No formula. I asked if he wanted something else. Now I'd really strung this guy along, and I had to punch in in seven minutes or less. My building, just across the street. He asked for a hot dog.

My whole body got itchy. I looked around, eager to offer a substitution. But it was just candy bars and chips. I didn't think I was gonna sell him on a bag of nuts. It was our turn in line. The cashier asked what we wanted. I told her a hot dog. Guy interrupted, "a cheese hot dog," I put my card in while the attendant prepared the meat. My fingers tingled. I clenched my jaw. I pulled my card when the machine told me to and I said "Have a nice day," to the guy. I ran outside into the cold, just making it to work in time. And now I've helped a dad and killed a pig.

The Past Three Weeks of Art

Sunday: Wrote at a coffee shop all morning & afternoon.
Monday: Taught Medieval Theatre all day, ran home to take a meeting with a television producer. Prepped a piece for a callback in the morning.
Tuesday: Early SC callback (three hours), immediately hit the train to tutor writing for two hours. Had my first "Business of Playwriting" class.
Wednesday: Taught Intro to Devising class, Harold rehearsal, Harold show.
Thursday: Writing Center shift. Vigorously doing playwriting homework. Playwriting class.
Friday: Taught English 101 all day, pass out in the afternoon, see a new play at The Goodman.
Saturday: Step class, pump-up coffee date, see Puhg's movie premiere, family dinner, three hours of improv shows.
Sunday: Took my mom to brunch. Spent the entire day preparing a comedy writer's workshop packet. Finished at 7 PM, just in time to scarf dinner and run to the theatre to host and perform in a Harold show.
Monday: Got to school early to check-in guest speakers for my Theatre History class--a local improv team. Researching local theatres. Eating junk and froyo with old castmate all night.
Tuesday: Spent morning applying for theatre production, Writing Center shift, 3 hour BWC rehearsal.
Wednesday: Beginning of Directing unit in Theatre History, dinner with teammate, Harold rehearsal.
Thursday: Shift tutoring at The Writing Center, Indian with my sister, playwriting class, grading until midnight.
Friday: Taught English 101 all day, met up with old SC cast member for cake, dinner with Puhg, a live Bat at i_, new play at The Goodman.
Saturday: Audition at CSz. Fight with a Trump supporter in a bagel shop. Writing Center shift. Work on my pilot. BWC & WNT shows (three hours). Hang with the bros and go to bed at 2.
Sunday: All day trip to Fright Fest at Six Flags! But you KNOW I woke up ay 6 AM to write first.
Monday: Theatre History. Writing madly in my office. Chili with writing parter of yore. Harold show.
Tuesday: Writing Center shift. Surprise visit from Syd. Callback for CSz. Dash to playwriting class. Get convinced to stay out late eating cake with Syd discussing out past and present.
Wednesday: Theatre History special guest = my old director. She teaches and I treat her to salads and coffees downtown. Last minute invite for a film audition. Run across time learning the sides as I travel. Ingest a caramel apple much too fast. Harold rehearsal. I stay at the theatre to run warm-ups and coach an improv show.
Thursday: Up at 5 to work on a new play, outline calendar to see if I can do a run I am offered, Writing Center shift, cry in my boss's office, Puhg makes me dinner, off to playwriting class.
Friday: 5 AM up to grade, teach 101 all day, write in the afternoon, pass out, wake up in time to see improv show I will audition for in two weeks. Grade papers until slumber.
Saturday: Ran two miles and then train to The Goodman for a reading of Jose Rivera's newest play. Lunch date with Puhg followed by afternoon of writing at the library. Zip to BWC show at SC. Eat a funfetti ice cream sandwich with the cast.
Sunday: I woke up and immediately started working on my pilot. I took a break for HIIT class at the gym, a bowl of cookie dough dip, and a Rick & Morty. I just finished my pilot. I reflected on how much dang art I do. I wrote this.

First Year Out of College

I've decided I'm going to be one of those people who has an empty inbox. You know. Delete stuff I no longer need. File things I want to save. Be reminded easy what I need to respond to.

I decided this somewhat randomly about two weeks ago. I was at The Writing Center and no students had come in for walk-in tutoring. I had around 17K emails in the the gmail I started in college. This isn't that much maybe. I also have a junk account, two school accounts, and a professional artist account. Maybe I'll deal with those sometime too.

So, first, I used the search bar to weed out advertising junk. I deleted all the "Groupon," "Twitter," "Jamba Juice" hits etc. After destroying as many spams as possible I started working through my cache starting with the oldest messages to the newest.

Right now I have 7,881 emails in my inbox. I have lurched from my freshman year to my first year out of college. It's been weird to my life snippets in a vertical list. That year seems so foreign to my life now, but it was actually incredibly foundational. A flurry of student notes from the Writing Center, navigating a weird boss for an after school program, running my first marathon, all my grad school statements of purpose, a community theatre musical rehearsal emails, indie improv team volleys. Some of it is embarrassing--advice I gave in a very knowing way, hatching my sense of humor, I had no fear, and I substitute taught an English 100 lab for free on Valentine's night.

But, oh, there are precious moments. Long chains with friends who were still friends, pictures from Dusty, and the most charming: a lesson plan for the first improv class I ever taught. The usual teacher for the Level One class at the comedy theatre I performed at couldn't make one week. He asked this other girl and I to cover. We were PUMPED. We went out for pizza beforehand and freaked out about everything we wanted to teach the class. The place was called Suds or something and we sat at a countertop and just gushed about all we loved and hated about improvising. We practically ran to the theatre screeching in excitement. We had both just broken up with our boyfriends.

When we arrived we found only ONE PERSON there for the class--a middle age woman who was pretty nervous. No idea why she took the class, but it was only her second attempt at improv ever. The other girl and I were not deterred. We went full-ham on our plan and took turns being in the scene with the woman. Toward the end of the three hours, I think we were both so eager to act, we just did a ton of three person scenes. We laughed and laughed in that shady, bunk basement room for rent.

I Love Study Hall

The athletes of T College are required three hours of study hall a week. This means as a Writing Center employee I have to be vigilant about clocking basketball & volleyball players in and out. This is the busy season. Maybe there aren't spring sports. I'm actually not sure what all the activities are at this school. I am a typical adjunct; I show up to my class, grade in my office, delete emails not of immediate relevance to me, go home. I don't know what the dean's name is.

Anyway, I love study hall. I'm sure if I was forced to do it I would be annoyed. These students are adults and should be allowed to do homework wherever and whenever they want. But here's whats up:

Many times I have seen four teammates come in and waste time quietly. They need to be shushed once or twice and then they get bored. One of them opens the assignment. They look at it. They raise their hand. "Hey, I actually don't get this. Can you help me?" And I do. I've also observed the one teammate who knows from the jump he needs a ton of help. It makes me happy that his friends are at the same table even if they're goofing off so the situation isn't reversed (they're all out goofing off and the lil nerd ditches his tutoring appointment). Also, they get used to see the other players all the time. I see guys congratulating girls on their games. They say things like "I see you strivin'." I am currently sitting across from a dude who just waved across the center at another guy. He said, "Yo, bro. You doin' study hall? Very cool." Very cool!? Very cool.

Some Writing Center Fun

I love when students come in with papers about legalizing medical marijuana and try to avoid telling me (but like, I'm gonna read the paper?). I'm like "what's your topic?" "we could choose one" "okay so what did you choose?" "oh, something political" "okay what" "um, about medicine" "uh huh" "..." "..." "..." "...so some people with parkinson's use an herb I guess for their pain?" OHHHKAY I SEE. When I finally push it out of them they're like, "Yeah, I dunno, I read an article about this marijuana stuff and it seems interesting..." I'm like o rly? With your Jamaican flag patch backpack? And then once I'm like, "Yes, it's a very undervalued topic in our political system. Very interesting and important--especially when considering repercussions in our prison systems!" they relax and we can work.

Citation

"Is that true? You served in Kuwait and Iraq?"
"Unfortunately," he replied. I had spent the majority of the past hour looking at his army leather jacket while he toiled over scarps of notes. He gave his life to the country and now here he is in community college writing a paper on koi ponds. I was assigned to work with him because he uses disability software, but he had no trouble with the software. He mainly needed help double spacing and saving to his flash-drive. Finding the parentheses was difficult. I asked him why he indented every line. He did not know what a paragraph was. We had fifteen minutes left and he needed help citing his sources. He had a pile of articles carefully printed and underlined but forgot a lot of the titles he had used. We're supposed to encourage the student to take the lead in all their learning, but he was getting nervous. I had another appointment soon, and besides that, the library was about to close. I sat with the APA stylebook on my lap and told him what info belonged where. I did not make him look it up. Even with me guiding the ship, he would forget punctuation or leave things blank. He dropped a paper and told me he has mental trauma. And I swear the whole scene went black and white. It's no surprise that academia can seem ridiculous sometimes, but oh my god this human does not need to learn in-text citations. He taps a million spaces to correctly right-align the professor's name. I ask if he knows how to do that any other ways. He says, "Ma'am, I don't know nothin'."

Patience

This week's teaching word has been "patience." I subbed a rando English class on Tuesday. The lesson plan called for a symposium on singular vs. plural verbs joy of joys. Besides clicking the Powerpoint I asked the students to write example sentences. I asked everyone to write a singular sentence that started with "She (verb)" in present tense. I gave several examples. I asked a girl in the back row what she wrote. She didn't. I said I'd come back. I did a couple minutes later. She said "I just suck at this, so I don't know." I said, "No, you don't. Any sentence at all. Try it." It was uncomfortable. It was quiet for a full minute before she creaked "She...jumps." Hallelujah. In that quiet moment I'm always like "Oh no, why did I do this?" But the answer is because they can all do it, and if they can't, with twenty seconds of coaching they can.

Yesterday in the Writing Center I had a guy who had to write a summary of an article about liver transplants. I asked "Okay, so what do you need help with?" He said, "I can't write." So I asked what the first sentence should be, and he said he didn't know, and then I asked again and he said something that was a pretty good start, so I was like "Awesome. Write that down." He had slow motor skills, penmanship like a 4th grader, but his ideas were solid. We went on that way for the full hour. He would write a sentence for two minutes. He would look up. He would say the next sentence outloud and then I'd nod, he'd spend another two minutes writing. I mostly sat and looked at my hands. I itched to pull out my phone while I waited and could literally hear the clock ticking behind me, but all he needed was someone to sit there with their full attention on him. Fine.

Today a young woman wild catted in. What does the author mean by X, I asked, I DON'T KNOW she cried HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW. She read the paragraph again and I asked her to explain it to me. She did. She knew. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO HAVE EXAMPLES ABOUT AMERICA WHEN IM FROM CAMEROON she yowled. Oh, well talk about that experience vs. the American experience I said, as if I'd just thought of it, she beamed a million filaments I CAN TALK ABOUT CAMEROON? Yes, you definitely can and should.

Last night I was almost off the clock when I spotted a familiar face. A student who was in my very first class I taught in Chicago. She just graduated with her Associates. She's gonna be a nurse. We hugged. I felt so ancient. I wait on students all day. My life blood draining out my seat. Patience feels like doing nothing, but, you know, it moves in its invisible way.

Maybe Curing Cancer

Cancer research using mice. I checked the box for “Approve Funding,” and I greenlit funding for a bio PhD candidate’s dissertation project in which he intends to give mice tumors.

As part of my academic community service, I evaluate grants for the Graduate and Professional School Association once a semester. I find it interesting. Today I read a lot about topographical research in Tanzania, for example.

How could I refuse this student who has such good intentions? That’s not my place. There is no segment on the rubric for “Ethically Ambiguous for the Reviewer.” It was an excellent application. My hamster Jefferson died of a brain tumor when I was 11. He jittered himself to death. He could not operate his jaw enough to eat. He curled into shavings and prayed for an end to the pain. Jefferson has white hair and a pointed nose.

My aunt died of cancer two years ago. And she too was white with sharp features when I last saw her. No one—no creature-- deserves these things.

I approved the funding.

Two years ago I also had dinner with my old buddy Jimbo. He’s a smarty and always has been. We chomped on mushroom pizza and he explained how his office analyzes code to find patterns that will break cancer, but what he really does all day is stare at screens and numbers. Meanwhile, I made like ten cents an hour helping college kids write thesis statements. Jimbo said, “At least I can say what I do for a living is cure cancer.” But that’s actually not true. It’s not true because what if they never find the pattern? It’s actually pretty likely they don’t. I passed those kids on their sophomore writing portfolios. They learned how to use commas. This I know.

Underground improv stage. Chicago 2012.

I talked to Jimbo this morning on GChat while I was in Office Hours. It’s an even shoddier desk in the basement of a crummy building. And the boiler blasts every ten minutes. And he’s been maybe curing cancer for four years.