Crunch Time!

The weeks following Thanksgiving break are always packed with end-of-semester assignments and activities around Saint Mike's campus. Although every day is exhausting, it's rewarding to be productive, especially when I'm more aware than ever of the money going into my education and the benefits I'll gain when I'm done with school and job hunting.

This year I am noticing finals more than ever with a lot of my close friends finishing thesis papers and research projects: Becky and Heather, my friends who are senior English majors, are both part of the senior seminar about monsters in culture and society and have been doing a lot of work relating figures like Frankenstein, Hannibal, and Jekyll & Hyde to the real world. I love going to a liberal arts school because so many classes and themes are related and I'm able to draw concrete parallels between many theories.

My four classes for this semester are Spanish Literature, Shakespeare, Early Christianity, and Run Crew Lab. Since Crimes of the Heart is over, my time in the scene shop and backstage has diminished, though with various end-of-the-semester performances and theatre finals going on my friends and I have been putting in a few hours a week preparing for events. I have one exam for Christianity and one on Spanish theatre; an essay on Spanish theatre to do; and then a group presentation on Titus Andronicus in Shakespeare and also an advanced research paper on Hamlet to do. Although things are winding down for the most part, Shakespeare is still a very intense class!

Some of those end-of-semester events include the Saint Michael's Playhouse Holiday Benefit Concert, a sold-out show performing tonight only, featuring some of Playhouse's familiar faces, and the directing class scenes, which will be Monday of exam week.

Other than that, I'm also looking ahead to next weekend, when I'll be working as technical supervisor at the Barre Opera House loading in for their annual performance of The Green Mountain Nutcracker. I've also been doing some research for summer stock jobs, since the time to apply is drawing near. I'll keep you posted!!