But what I really want to talk about is tonight. And then I want to go to sleep, because I'm a complete grandma.
But tonight was the weirdest experience. I really feel like I've come full circle. . .
Tonight I went to the Perspectives showcase. It's a HUGE production on campus geared towards showing the different "perspectives" of students on campus. There are clubs that dance, act, sing, do spoken word, show videos, etc. Most the pieces are collaborative, so at least two clubs work together.
The weird part, though, was that the last time I went to that annual show, I was a senior. In high school. I remember sitting there with a friend's girlfriend who agreed to let me visit so I could check out the school. I remember watching, thinking of all the cool things I could get involved in here. I remember being impressed by the students, and overwhelmed by the HUGE auditorium that was part of campus.
This time, though, it was so different.
(crap, I'm more of a grandma then I thought. I'm going to go to sleep and finish this in the morning. Before 11 on a Friday night! . . . I'm a horrid college student).
(wow, here I am a couple days later, finishing up only because I want to be able to close this open window. . .and because it's still important to me.)
Like I said, this time, it was different. This time, instead of watching the type of people I could potentially meet, I was watching people I knew. Instead of sitting next to the one person I kind of knew out of 25,000 on the campus, I was sitting next to friends and bumping into lots of other people I knew. It was different.
But the coolest part is that there was a new addition to the line up this year. It had many of the same great performances that I remember from my high school experience - Bollywood, jerico!, Dil Se, Cal Slam - but this year there was a new one: Human Journal.
Human Journal is something I started in hopes of giving students a venue to share their stories. I wanted a place where we could put aside the debates that academics cling to so strongly. Holding up won arguments like a trophy kind of made me want to throw up. People can be so obsessed with their own opinion they forget to learn about the other side.
So I started the journal. And it grew. And people submitted stories about their experiences and why they thought they way they did. They wrote stories about what it was like to be fat, or a virgin by choice, or come out to an un-accepting family, or an illegal immigrant, or an exchange student. People wrote.
And at Perspectives, people performed. Human Journal partnered with Bear Stage (a theater group). Bear Stage chose 5 pieces and performed them as monologues.
Oh. my. gosh.
They did such a great job. I could NOT have been more proud. The audience laughed at the funny parts, snapped at the parts they agreed with, and cheered at the spots where the authors/actores found their strength.
2,000 people heard the true stories of individuals who had the courage to write them down on paper.
We were able to pass out our remaining journals from years past. Everyone was excited to grab one. Or two.
Walking home, I passed hoards of people with their noses between the pages that I began the creation of.
The night really was like coming full circle. Not about coming back to where I had been for years ago, but more about closure.
The Perspectives show 4 short/long years ago was one of the major reasons I chose Cal. Four years ago, it represented what Cal meant to me. Today it does the same thing.
And I changed the Perspectives show. I added something valuable and important to it. Obviously not by myself, but I was part of it.
I can leave Cal knowing that it's different, better even, because I was here.
And that's a good feeling.
