getting up

On Friday in Physics we had a quiz on the chapter that we have barely started (in other words, we were being tested on stuff we hadn't even covered yet). Then, in Acting I, we did an exercise called "Getting Up" in which we lay down on the floor and were supposed to take five minutes to get up (in slow mo basically). We weren't supposed to have any movement that wasn't related to getting up and we weren't supposed to stop moving.

Upon beginning i tried to sit up as slowly as possible (my first step): it took me sixty seconds. My teacher (Cowden) says: "Too fast, Kristine, start over." I lay back down and thought for a little while, my mind racing: "How am i supposed to sit up any slower? My abs can't take it. We're supposed to get up the same way we always get up, only slower, there's no way to do this. It's ludicrous." I sat up again. No one else had moved it seemed. I lay back down.

In preface to this activity Cowden emphatically stated: "If you don't want to fully participate then there's the door." I don't want the door. But this activity is impossible. There is no way for me to sit up so slowly that it takes three minutes. At the three minute mark i'm back sitting up and people are finally starting to move a little. I slowly move my hands to the floor beside me, palms down, and start to push myself (from my side now) up onto my knees. Things are finally going a bit better, but here it becomes obvious that this cannot be like the way i really get up because normally i just give a push and am up. But here, i'm going to have to walk my hands towards my knees so i can hold myself upright as i stand from a kneeling position. Four minutes.

I start to slowly lengthen my legs, getting a nice stretch (i can easily place my hands flat on the floor with my feet together and knees straight, so this is nice, but it's not an activity that's sole purpose is to get up). I slowly roll my shoulders up, am done about fifteen seconds short. We get back in a circle and talk about what happened. People say a lot of nonsense about having to concentrate a lot, etc., blah blah blah. Cowden mentions me being in fast forward or something. I say something about my abs not being strong enough to sit up that slowly and he just glares at me. I've seen this look before; it means, "I do not want to hear your excuses." I am this >< close to being thrown out.

We proceed to games where we make a machine out of ourselves, next time an instrument, then we do an exercise where we're split into groups and are given a bit to sing over and over and he changes little bits and we're all different "instruments". This was fun but he kept wanting us to get louder so i got rather hoarse.

Now. I do not want to complain needlessly. I'm not trying to have a bad attitude. I know i need to come out my shell and act crazy in public more often, particularly because i enjoy doing so and it's good development for my chosen profession. But being singled out as being too fast when i actually attempted the exercise as instructed while everyone else just lay there for three minutes is ludicrous.

I then feel like a fool because a friend shows me the call board which i couldn't find because Ivanov gave everyone bad directions. He said "Go down the hall past Cowden's office. It will probably be posted near his office, but it might be farther down towards the Dracula call board. So i go up and down that hall looking for the cast lists for three days and finally on the third day i find out that they were posted on Tuesday as promised and it's not past Cowden's office, it's beside his office in a little hall that only has an emergency exit, and every time i have gone down the main hall the light in this small hall off the main hall has been off and i couldn't even see said call board, let alone read it.

As you can imagine, i had a really lousy Friday.

I'm considering dropping Playwriting now because i don't know that i want to take another semester of Cowden. He's really funny, and inspirational, and then he can be a total jerk. He doesn't care to get to know me, or explain why i irritate him, or what i'm doing wrong, he just wants me to shut up and do something more, something that i have no idea how to discern what it is.

Why do i have to be so literal? Why can no one take ten minutes to explain what i'm doing wrong? Why is it like there was some big meeting that i missed where everything was spelled out for everyone to see but me? I hate it!

I didn't get cast in any of the ten one acts. What am i even doing in this department if i'm not going to get to act? To learn? To work? I am so upset and down about it all. It's the same every day. I hate it.