Hi everyone! It is with great joy that I tell you that the letter to Hartwick asking them to allow me to return for the Fall 2013 semester has been sent! I also faxed a copy, so there's no way things could get messed up or arrive late.
They only asked for a letter from my doctor, but I gave them one thing more. I also sent a personal appeal to them, and I thought I might share it with you all.
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"One of the most vivid memories of January 25th 2013, the day I was told that I could not return to Hartwick until the fall semester is Gary Robinson explaining that to return I must do as my therapist at home suggested. 'If they say to get a job, you get a job,' he said. I remember thinking that there was no way I'd ever be on the campus I love again if that was the case."In Westchester County, one of the most affluent counties in the nation, there are three types of people in my age bracket. Category I is the people who have finished college with a four-year degree meaningful to the career they wish to pursue. Category II is the people who, at best, finished high school, but most of these people are drop-outs. Category III is the most unemployable, and also the category I belong to. It is people who finished high school and have some college experience. This group is not qualified to do meaningful jobs like Category I is, and are over-qualified to do the menial minimum-wage work that Category II does.
"This categorization is not something I made up to validate not having a job. I applied. If I had gotten any interviews, here's how I think the conversation would have ended: 'you got in to college, why aren't you taking classes?' It's a question that I do not want to give the answer to. I'd have two options that involved honesty: a) I am on a medical leave-which would be followed by the questioning what I have because I don't look sick, or, b) I am on a mental health leave-and that answer wouldn't do because people don't trust the mentally I'll to do anything, even though my mental illness would not really impair my job performance.
"Allow me to dispel something that may have caused some confusion-my therapist did not ask me to get a job, he asked me to find something to occupy my time, be it classes at the local community college, volunteering, etc. Naturally, my first avenue to explore was getting a job because life is a lot easier with an income. I searched until the middle of February-when I found something a whole lot better than a job.
"On the last day of classes for the Ardsley High School class of 2012, we were told that one of the most beloved teachers in the whole district had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I had had the miraculous luck to have this teacher, Rod Baird, that year until he left just after February break. My relationship with him changed my life and I can easily say that the news that he would in all likelihood be dead within a year and there was nothing to be done about it troubled me more than any other student I knew. Eleven days after returning home from Hartwick I received the news that Rod had passed away. Many of his past students came from all across the country to attend his memorial service. And it was on my way there that I thought up what I'd do for the next six months.
"Mr. Baird, like all the other twelfth grade English teachers taught Shakespeare’s 'Hamlet', but no one taught the play like he did. With him, even the most delinquent student (I use that term loosely) not only was interested in the lesson plan, but understood the complex existential points it made.
"The day of his memorial I was texting my friend, Nico, who had also hand Mr. Baird and was going to give me a ride home after the service. I punched the two characters that would dictate my life for half a year: '2b'—short hand for 'to be'—and, like any good Theatre Arts major, thought of Hamlet's most famous soliloquy: "to be or not to be, that is the question, weather 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take up arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing; end them"- when he stops the play midway through to ask "what's the point?"
"I can't say exactly in what pattern the synapses fired to give me the idea, but I would spend the next six months preparing a production of Hamlet: the most revered play in the English-speaking world as a fundraiser for pancreatic cancers one of the most under-researched cancers.
"If you have never produced a play, you may think “how could doing a play take six months?”, but if you have produced a play you aren’t asking any questions, you’re just in awe that a student barely in to her BA Theatre Degree could pull this feat off. My answer? Carefully, and with the support of the community.
With a work like “Hamlet” which is in the public domain, it’s easy to get a hold of a script. What’s not easy is that the script, uncut, amounts to about four hours, and not only does no one want to sit through a four-hour play, but no actors want to perform a four-hour play. Shakespeare even admitted that Hamlet is long-in Act III, Polonius says “this is too long!”, and right he is. I cut the script from about 150 pages to roughly 110, which is no easy task as most of the play is about Hamlet’s lack of action in avenging his father’s death and that must be preserved.
"Secondly, I had to find actors. I had decided that I would play Hamlet because I was directing and I could to that, and I didn’t trust anyone else with the role. So that left me with more than twenty other roles to cast. I with some sleight-of-hand, I was able to have a cast of just 11 people. I can’t tell you how, because I don’t really know—that, and magicians never reveal their secrets. Although the cast was a bit more like a splint as it slowly shifted from what I had established in March to what we will perform with next week, it was hardly the most difficult part of making this happen.
"The most difficult part was finding a space to perform in. I searched the area, and two weeks before rehearsals started at the end of June I decided on the Ardsley Community Center. The ACC decided on me, too. As the production was being done by students (and mostly Ardsley students at that) and because it was a benefit production, the Town voted to waive the rental fee-which would have been close to $1,000.
After that, I needed to find a place to have the rehearsals. With the support of the Village of Ardsley and the community center, I approached the town library. They too waived the cost of the rental of their community room.
"This brings me to yesterday, when I picked up the props that the after-school private theatre group I attended are lending to me, also free of charge. And later today I will go to the Independent Grocers to measure the pallets they are donating to us that we will make the stage with. This coming Friday, the local newspaper, The Rivertowns Enterprise, is doing a full length article about the production. Tomorrow they will be at the rehearsal to take photos.
"Doing all of this won’t earn me a cent. But it has, and will continue to give me something much more valuable than any amount of money. It has given me, and countless others, closure for Rod’s death. Even though there was nothing we could do to save him, doing this is our way of showing that this shouldn’t have happened; that it’s not okay; that no community should have this type of loss. I could have sat by and done nothing to improve the lives of those living with this cancer, which has less than a 20 % one-year survival rate and a five-year survival rate under 5%. I am using theatre as it is meant to be used: as a device to bring together peoples of all different backgrounds to see what we all have in common.
"The production is not the only thing that I have spent my time with, though it is what has taken the vast majority of my time. Aside from therapy, I started a blog about my favorite television show, Doctor Who, and the site has become a rather big fish in a small pond. It has had over 14,000 views since I started it in mid-March. My material on that also caught the right person’s eye landed me a freelance journalism gig as a Doctor Who correspondent for the international entertainment site WhatCulture.com. WhatCulture! is comparable to a magazine, but it is completely online. It is based in England, where I hope to move after I graduate from Hartwick. I have yet to publish anything there, mostly because Hamlet is taking up so much of my time. The site is visited by over one million people around the globe every month.
"I sincerely hope that this has given you a perspective of who I am and how I am more than Mood Disorder (NOS) and Personality Disorder (NOS). I hope it shows you my potential as a student now that I have received treatment for the illnesses that hinder me. I hope it shows you how much of an asset I could be to the college. But overall, I hope it shows you what I know now more than ever to be true: I am so incredibly ready to return."
