BEDD #3: Confessions of a Soon-To-Be-Theatre-Major

I'm extremely tired and on edge today, so a quick and terrifying anecdote from my school day will hopefully suffice.

During my study halls, as I've mentioned on this blog before, I often surf the internet when I have nothing better to do. My school hasn't blocked tumblr or blogger yet, and while I can see the motivation to blocking tumblr, I think blogging is a much more academic exploit than most of the internet. I mean, I'm writing. That's a schooly thing, right?
Anyway, it's never crossed my mind that I could get in trouble for posting or editing this blog during my free time. In fact, I've thought about telling a few of my teachers about my blogging escapades because I'm rather proud of the results thus far (and I already know some of them watch my videos occasionally... haha). So imagine my shock when my school's server decided to reject my username/password combo completely out of the blue. After a study hall packed with actual academic work for once, my computer locked me out just in time to print the assignment I desperately needed for a class later in the day.
My heart may have actually stopped. I had committed one tiny student sin during my 45 minutes of honest work... I visited Sparknotes.com.
I KNOW! To my defense: Sparknotes actually has some pretty neat blogging content for nerds (although that's totally not what I was looking for), it's usually blocked on my school's internet (my visit was to test the boundaries, that's all!), and... and... well, my real confession: I HATE READING SCRIPTS.
A few days ago, I mentioned the school assignment looming over me was reading the first act of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House. It's a Norwegian play from the late 1800s(?) that's actually pretty fantastic. But I'd forgotten that I was supposed to read act two over the weekend, and while I could have tried to quickly read it, I just... I hate. reading. scripts.
I don't know where this fervent dislike for script-reading came from, but I blame ol' Will Shakespeare. Back in the day, I didn't really get what the big deal about him was. Like most middle schoolers, I didn't understand why we were forced to read the strange "old english" plays about lovers and fairies. Unlike most middle schoolers, I understood that people I looked up to and longed to emulate were totally crazy about the balding old guy with a funny collar, so I desperately wanted to like everything Bard-related. But sitting down with a copy of Taming of the Shrew or As You Like It left twelve-year-old me frustrated and confused. If they're comedies, why aren't they funny?! Everything changed when my eighth grade teacher taught us Midsummer Night's Dream. Each student was assigned a part, and we read the whole play like a table read. My theatre kid heart rejoiced. Even the untrained voices of my peers breathed bits of life into the script. Things became clear. I read Helena and everything seemed right.
AND THEN we got to take a school bus downtown to watch the Chicago Shakespeare Company perform. Within moments, I got my "Shakespeare ears" and all the jokes made sense. The language was no longer elevated and esoteric, it was plain, rhythmic, and so so so beautiful.
Everything clicked.
Shakespeare was hard to understand BECAUSE IT WAS WRITTEN TO BE PERFORMED, NOT READ.
Thus began my fervent dislike of reading scripts on my own. (And began my love affair with Midsummer's Night Dream. Still my all-time favorite play.)
BUT how am I ever going to be an actress, much less a theatre major?!?! I don't really know. I wonder about this quite a bit. I'm hoping that my brain will get smarterer and slowly become more adept at visualizing performances and blocking from the bare bones of a script. If push comes to shove, I'll make friends sit and table-read any script I have to get my way through.
Unfortunately, as a high school procrastinator, today I needed a quick fix. So Sparknotes it had to be. (I've convinced myself if I read the summary only, and not the analysis ((freeing up my mind to draw conclusions independently)) I'm not a terrible person.)
It was the last website I visited before logging off and attempting to log on to a different computer to print an assignment for a different class. It was a difference of perhaps five minutes, the time it takes me to walk from one classroom to another, and it might as well have been a new layer of hell. I was panicky. I'd been found out. I'd tripped an invisible alarm system that would block me from internet usage for the rest of my high school career. I was going to have to answer for my Sparknote-ing, or worse blogger-ing, ways. Creative lies sprung to my head immediately: It was research for my next editorial in the school newspaper. I work for Sparknotes.com as a guest blogger. I fell asleep on the keyboard and the url typed itself in.
I nearly ran to the Technical Coordinator's office. Breathlessly, I explained my dire situation with as little detail as possible. The computer says my account is locked out WHY WHY WHY ;alskdfja;sdlkfa
As you might guess, the Technical Coordinator at my school is generally a man of very few words. But he can be rather strict.
He didn't question me for a minute. He said my blockage was most likey due to a password issue. He changed it for me then and there. No more panic. Problem solved.
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I am too tired to even begin to tell you how stupid I felt.

Days Left of BEDD: 28
People Who Want to be in BED: Me.
Good night, sweethearts.