AP Exam and RIT film production lecture

6th of May, Wednesday

And thee long fear'd day hath comed! My AP English exam. We have been preparing for this the whole year, but now that it's here, I feel totally clueless. My dad says this happens to every student before an exam.

  Around a 100 kids sat in the APAC lobby at 8 am, with black pens in hand, and an unshakeable feeling of self-doubt. My table was on the balcony, overlooking most people in the lobby below (that's the privilage you get if your last name starts with A to F). And though the table squeeked, I really had the best seat in the house.

  I'm not allowed to tell anybody about the questions, but I will tell you this much: they were hard. The first section was a shortshort 1 hour for 55 multiple choice questions about 5 selected poems, rangeing from the 16th century to 2009. I didn't understand 75% of the words in the poems, or in the questions, but I guess being an American didn't give anybody any advantages, because I heard the same complaint from everybody. Old English is hard English. Sadly I couldn't finish all the questions, in the final minutes, I guessed a lot, based on which letter, A, B, C, D, or E I haven't used for a while. Oh well!

  The second part I found much easier. It was 3 essays in 2 hours. The first one was about a book of our choice (I chose Hosseini's The Kite Runner, because it fit the best for the question, and I read it fairly recently). The second one was an analysis of an excerpt from a novel, which I thought went well, and the last one was about a poem, which was pretty difficult due to the lack of poetic devices they asked for us to find. But there weren't any!

  Nevermind. I think I did as best as I could. I'm proud of myself if I get out of bed, I felt extra accomplished today. If I get a 3, I'm OK with that, if by some miracle, I'd get a 4 ... but it's just useless hopefulness until July, when the results are in.

  After 3,5 wicked ours of painful brainworking, Kim picked me up to take me to Rotary. Hallelujah, we had tacos for lunch for the first time! That made me happy. The meeting was cut short today, because we had to leave at 1 for my lecture!

  Kim put me in touch with a professor at RIT, who teaches film production, and he invited me to sit in on one of his lectures. This was my first college class ever, even though I'm not a student (yet).

  Larry took me to the campus, and dropped me off at 2. Mark Foggetti, the professor, met me at the loading dock of building 7B, where the School of Film and Animation is. He showed me the major places in the building, the editing room, greenroom, equipment cage, then we went to the classroom. It wasn't a big lecture hall, it looked more like a cozy little movie theatre. 

  The film production class of 14 students slowly came in, and took their place. For the whole semester, they were shooting their short films (taking turns in practicing different roles in film production), and in the last few weeks everyone was individually editing one of the short films they shot, completing the first rough cuts for the clip. These are what we looked at, and reviewed. We carefully analysed each cut in an artistic way. We critiqued the individual work, and creativity. I didn't actually say anything, only when my opinion was asked, but I always took mental notes of everything. 

  I think I could do this. I've always been fascinated by film, and though for most of my life, I wanted to work as an actress,  I now realize that I can boss people around better, than being bossed around. I want to tell people what to do, how to do it, and I want to create something great. I basicly just described moms, but in a way, films are the children of directors.

  I really want to study film. I know it's a lot of work, but for me, it would be just fascinating and playful. I want to live by the saying: "do what you love, and you never have to work a day in your life". 

  The student works that I saw today were great! They had to cut their raw footage into a 3 minute long short. Most of them did very well on this project I think, I hope the professors agree with me too. I wonder who I'll stumble upon later in life, or work with, or read about. It would be interesting, because I met some really funny, goofy, nice people today. Being at RIT, on my first but unofficial lecture really lifted my spirits. For a short time today, I felt like I belonged in a world meant for me. Thank you, Prof Foggetti for this experience!

  Kim picked me up at 5:30 today, and took me home. She was an angel today, like always, and dropped my package at FedEx off, my laptop that I had to send back for the 3rd time! I wish Lenovo could fix it permanently for once. *Sigh* Today was a long day. It wasn't physically tiresome, but mentally, I was pudding.