Seussical the Musical

Every year, the Robinson Players, the student-run theater group on campus, puts on a musical during short term in a program called Stages for All Ages. For three weeks, we frantically learn an entire musical, then perform it for over a thousand school children from the community, who come on school trips to see it. 

 

This year, the show is Seussical, which follows Horton the Elephant and Jojo the Who through a Seussy adventure with lots of singing and dancing. There are about twenty of us in the cast.

Milling around backstage before a show

 

 

Practice, practice, practice

Ronjfest Featuring You Won’t

Last weekend was a flurry of music: it was the Bates Folk Festival, in which for three days everywhere you go is chock full of folk musicians–both Bates students and professionals. In addition to that, there was  Blocparty, where WRBC, Bates’s radio channel, hosts a variety of amazing and up-and-coming bands for an all day and all night explosion of music with something for fans of pretty much every genre.  And the day after that was Ronjfest, an all-day outdoor concert and barbecue featuring student bands  and finishing out with the band You Won’t. 

They started out on stage like any ol’ band: jamming and singing (the drummer simultaneously played drums, baritone ukulele, harmonica, and cowbell–I have no idea how he managed it). It was fun and the music was great, but then they stepped it up from cool to amazing.

They came down from the stage and formed the crowd into a circle. They then played music in the middle of the circle, standing on a chair, or carrying a windchime around for people to play. Notice that in this picture, the guy on the left is playing the saw. It was such a cool and ethereal sound.

After the show, they demonstrated that in addition to being awesome musicians and performers, they were pretty chill people. They hung out, chatted with students, and gave a few of us lessons with the musical saw. It’s surprisingly hard to play–but it’s fun!

Bates is Blooming!

Up until this Short Term, I was completely, totally convinced that the autumn is my favorite time at Bates. If you check out my posts about the quad in the fall, you’ll see why: the leaves are so vibrant, the air is so crisp, and there’s something in the air at the beginning of the academic year, a sort of freshly sharpened pencil smell with undercurrents of academic anticipation.

 

However, the beauty of this Short Term is causing me to seriously reconsider this. Maybe spring is the prettiest time at Bates? The flowers are blooming, the quad is so lush and verdant and green that it looks like it’s been drawn with watercolors, and every day feels like the first day of summer. Maybe it’ll be a tie between autumn and spring. What do you think?

 

 

Sangai Asia Fireworks

Every year, the student group Sangai Asia, which seeks to promote Asian and Asian-American identity and awareness, holds a firework extravaganza. Hundreds of students curl up in the outdoor amphitheater, and watch an amazing fireworks display. This year, they really outdid themselves. It was one of the fastest 30 minutes of my life–absolutely breathtaking. They brought in professionals to do it, and launched them over Lake Andrews (aka “the Puddle”). I tried to snap a few pictures, though it’s pretty hard to take photos of fireworks:

E

New England Political Science Association (NEPSA) Conference

One of the best parts of Bates is the quality of the faculty. They are engaged, engaging, and truly and honestly interested in their students. Most students develop lasting and valuable connections with faculty, often through senior theses. Because you work one-on-one with a professor for either a semester or a year, it’s really easy to develop really great relationships with faculty. 

 

Another good way to develop working relationships with faculty is to serve as research assistants or student assistants to faculty. That’s what I did this weekend. My thesis adviser in the politics department was running the New England Political Science (or NEPSA) annual conference in Portland. I and one other student went down to help with the event. We manned the registration table, set up and took down book displays from publishers, gave directions and facilitated the conference.

 

 

Name tags at the Registration Table

It was really awesome to meet so many amazing political scientists. I got the chance to chat with a few of them about their work. There were some things that I knew something about, so I was really able to engage with them. There were others whose interests are very different from mine and I really learned a lot by talking with them. Both were great. It was an awesome opportunity, and an awesome experience.

Amazing Latin Food in Portland

Coming back from being abroad in Bolivia, Latin food has been (mostly) disappointing. There’s only so many times I can eat “nachos with cheeseo.” 

This weekend, I found some amazing, really authentic Salvadorean food in Portland–only about 35 minutes from Bates. I ordered fried plantains, pupusas (which are sort of like quesadillas served with a cabbage salad), and a guanabana smoothie–a delicious tropical fruit I’ve never seen in the US before! It was was delicious and incredibly cheap.

 

What’s more, when I started to order in English, the waiter switched into Spanish, so I got to practice my Spanish a bit. It was awesome–I can’t wait to go back!

The Most Relaxing Break

Now that TakeNote’s tour is done (sadly), I’ve switched gears from singing and exploring to relaxing, drinking tea, and sleeping. I’ve joined my friends from Bates at a cabin in upstate New York to relax, cook delicious food (last night we made s’mores!) and watch classic cartoons (last night we watched Wallace and Gromit). After the fun, hectic excitement of tour, following up the heels of finals week, a few days or R&R is just what the doctor ordered. Aaaah.

Getting Stoked for Short Term

Short Term is almost upon us. If you haven’t heard of Short Term, it’s the best invention since toast with warm butter. It’s a five-week long term in May at Bates wherein students take only one course, which meets several times a week and explores fun and funky edges of academic disciplines. It’s a chance for both faculty and students to pursue something that they’re really interested in, but that normally they don’t have time to do. Here’s a sample of the classes being offered this year

• Decoding Disney: Race, Gender, and Sexuality
• Soda Firing
• North Korea
• Experimental, Developmental, and Molecular Biology
• Biotechnology: Life Science for Citizens
• Medieval Reenactment
• History and Food in Latin America
• Exploring Jazz Guitar
• Methodology of Coaching
• Puppet Construction and Design

I am taking a course called Asian and Islamic Medical Systems, which “provides a comparative study of Asian conceptions of ethics, including Confucian, Buddhist, and Islamic belief systems. Students carry out their own research, focusing on the beliefs, practices, and social structure of a tradition or community of their choice. The course ends with seminars in which students share the results of their research.”  I can’t think of a more zen and tranquil way to spend my senior short term than learning about how billions of people think about what’s right, what’s wrong, and how we know, can you?

 

In addition to academics, Short Term is great for other reasons. Some schools have a J-Term, or a Jan Plan, which I gather is sort of like Short Term but in January. That’s always seemed silly to me. People always have a lot of free time over Short Term, and the weather is much nicer in May than it is in January. People go camping, or go lie on the beach, or go explore Freeport and Portland. On campus, there’s always a ton of concerts, plays, musicals, dances, and a host of activities all the time. There’s a ton going on, and it’s so much fun. I can’t wait!

TakeNote Hits the Road

Bonjour from Montreal! Finals are over, term papers are turned in, and April break is upon us. Rather than find a nice beach somewhere, TakeNote, my a cappella group, is on tour in Montreal! For the last few days, we’ve been singing in the subways, on the boardwalk, and in front of the Cathedral– and anywhere else we want! And we made about $500 in just th=ree days of singing! Plus, we got to explore Montreal (which is an awesome city). Bates is only about a five hour drive from Montreal, and with all the French and the distinctly European flair to the city, it’s a little like taking a quick jaunt to Paris for the weekend. 

 

It’s really fun to sing for people, since a lot of people here aren’t familiar at all with a cappella, so their jaws just drop when we get going. It’s really fun to brighten peoples’ days. One little kid   got so excited to hear us sing that he fell over! 

Here’s a picture of the beginning of a crowd forming while we performed outside Notre Dam Cathedral on Sunday: 

The Final Finals

Well, this is it. My final finals week at Bates. I’m approaching it with a strange calm. It’s all very ‘eh, I’ve been here before’. Of course I’ll study. do my best, and not get as much sleep as I’d like, but I’m not worried. It’s really kind, in a weird kind of way, because I can compare this year’s finals weeks with my first finals week waaay back when in 2009 when I was first year and see in a really tangible way how far I’ve come. Bates has done a really great job of helping me learn not just facts, not just stuff, but how to learn; how to think through a problem, approach it from lots of different perspectives and argue for one side or another. How to approach studying, and know what to focus on. It’s really cool– nice work, Bates!