A Dumb Essay

I should have done better for Freshman College English, but I believe this was for English 60 Pre College English, and I’m ashamed of this document. I’ve written worse mind, oh have I written worse, and some testament to my mental durability can be found in the fact that my mind could function at all with the disease I had.   

I have no recollection of the grade I earned for this assignment. I can tell you I should have failed. I counted no less than four spelling errors in the first paragraph. I wish I found it hard to believe that my teachers ignored my problems without insisting that I take steps to correct the defects in my mind.

I will grant that celebrates and celebrities or celebrate and celebrity have a very similar spelling, but a High School graduates and freshman in college have no business getting it wrong.

A few other spelling errors

categories categorize, role vs. roll, excepts accepts, stores stories.

Now let me grant that this is no great piece of literature. Then if you want to get a close look into my life reading my old school papers is one way of doing that, and if you don’t like this I should have something you will like tomorrow.  

7^th April 1999

And We Look To

We as a people categorize the individuals we look up to in three ways heroes, celebrities, and role models. One can perhaps be all of these at once or any combination of the three. However, often the criteria for celebrity and hero are too different to merge for any amount of time.

         

First, we have the hero, one who puts themselves at risk for the safety of others. Some very good examples of heroes are the persons of law enforcement. Take for example my friend Joe, Joe works for the LAPD and from what I understand he is one of them more at risk officers. He leaves his home knowing that he may never return. He leaves his home every morning knowing that he may die in the line of duty and never see his wife again. Every day he risks his life for the good of the people he serves and accepts only his unsubstantial paycheck for it, and so Joe is the true definition of a hero.

Then we have celebrities, people who are celebrated for whatever reason. Patrick Stewart the man who played Captain Picard is a celebrity because of his appearance on stage. They have conventions in honor of this man and his role in Star Trek. He could probably retire by selling his signature to many of his adoring fans. He is celebrated not for any valor or personal worth but for his acting ability. He is celebrated and loved for appearances. He stands in the public eye.

One good example of a role model (from what I hear) is Stephen King. He is a good family man, provider, and father. He is a disciplined writer that states “most of what I do is crap, but it’s all worth it because every once in a while I get to do something really worth righting.” Many of us never appreciate the real amount of work that goes in to putting stories together, and the amount of research he does allows the reader to really get a good look at the characters and their lives. The man does his homework so to speak. He is a shining example of talent and discipline.

I would like to note that I didn’t do my homework on Stephen King and so did not know that he had problems with drug addiction when I wrote this essay.

So the three forms of our admiration stand, we will love or hate the individuals that fill these names, but still they are what they are. My friend Joe could be a role model or Stephen King a celebrity. Like it or not, they all inspire, guide, and inform us with shining examples of right and wrong.

Experience in a Play

This file is dated 23^rd October 2004 and is an essay I wrote in college regarding my experience as an actor in the play ‘Dracula’. To be honest I have almost no memory of writing this, but the events I speak of are clear in my mind. I should have been complaining about the director not doing enough to address actors lighting things on fire and threatening other cast members, but that’s another story.

Experience Paper

I must say that this production was no different than most productions that I have been in. I was well loved by most of the cast, well hated by some, and left a definite mark on the production. However, there are some things that did strike me as needing improvement.

         

The first of which is props. They were not provided in a timely fashion which is what prompted me to provide some of them. The package and the knife were the most significant as they were functional props that required handling that affected character development. I felt that the scene with the package was slightly awkward and this may have been ironed out if we had longer to work with it. This is also true for the flask. I had some difficulties with it in the first act and needed more working time to get used to it. I feel I had trouble with the examination as well but that is my fault. I was under the impression that I was to have more tools during that part of the play.

Another of my concerns was the deadline for ticket sales. I would have liked an explanation for that. I put out twenty five hundred coupons for this play and personally escorted people to the ticket window knowing that I could not get credit for them. Is there no way to encourage people to by tickets sooner? Will the department okay coupons that will expire on the deadline and be useless before the play opens?

It took more than a week to get the fliers I had okayed and I had to be very lean with them. In the future, I will have to use the back if I am to place this information on them and that will double the printing time. It will however give me room for parking directions.

Another difficulty I had with this play was navigating between the dialect coach and the director. At times they did not agree, and it was hard to keep it all straight. I have no suggestion on how to remedy this, it seems to be a fact of theatre but that is the difficulty that I had.

One of the other aspects that seem to be unfixable is volume. I had to try and speak at the level of my fellow actors to avoid feedback from sound adjustments and the American College Theater Festival representative noticed this to be a problem of the show. My only advice on this subject would be to perform more effective warm-ups. I used Sphinx and knee-bend monologues for this and I found that it forces the body to project as well as exercising concentration skills. It works well for me but I have always been louder then the average actor.

That is what I have to say about my experience with ‘Dracula’. I regret that I could not be more helpful but I was given no criteria for this assignment and can’t really say that I know how to go about explaining my experiences. 

On Resolutions

This isn’t a letter but it fit the right category in terms of what it is so think of it as a letter to myself. I don’t think I met any of my resolutions, but maybe whoever reads this might be bettered by it.

4^th December 2006

On resolutions

So I have to ask a question: Why resolutions at the start of a new year? As today I complete my twenty-seventh year of life it occurred to me that I should set goals for the upcoming year. I could hold over another twenty-seven days until the New Year, but why would I make such a distinction?

When my old car finally died I made a resolution not to go through fast food places with the next car. No ordering from the driver’s seat. No more leaving piles of trash in my car. It’s working out vary well. I’ve lost ten pounds.

So, as I set my car resolutions for when I got another car, I set my Richard resolutions for the start of another year of my life.

Okay so hear goes:

Resolution 1: No paper money at the snack machines. I know, I know, I shouldn’t be using them at all, but let’s be reasonable here. I’m at work, I can’t leave, so that’s one way of reducing the amount I spend. Given that the main source of my coin money came from fast food purchases, and I now eat less fast food this should work marvelously. Not to forget that the second major source of coinage comes from using paper money at the snack machines.

Resolution 2: By my next birthday all equipment must be ready to use or cataloged and stored. Right now I have at least five printers and four computers that I either need to do something with or trash. I have piles of tools that I can’t get to when I need them and any number of other devices that just haven’t been hooked up.   

Resolution 3: No more loose paper work. File it or toss it. This is not to say that I will get rid of the piles and piles of bill stubs and other records, but the point is that I should generate no more piles of them.

Okay, so that’s it I have one year to accomplish these three things. I’m making the generality that resolutions should come when appropriate. When you set goals for school then set them at the start of a new semester. Set goals for a car when you buy it or smog it or what ever. Don’t wait for the New Year unless that has some reason to it.