Any Given Sunday

Good morning from the sunny...cold....warm...mild...I have no clue what to call this weather, Boston. Today is Sunday, March 13th and I currently sitting at my desk, having just returned from a lovely brunch with two of my friends Tia and Alexis. This past week has been quite eventful, I think.  For those of you who don't know I am a part of the student government here at the boco, and I recently found out that part of my job is to be sort of second in command for Prom. Yes, we have BoCo Prom every year, and this year our theme is "BoCo's Bourbon Street Ball" (it's like mardi gras). So, I am currently hard at work on posters and booking things for that whole magilla. On Tuesday, I had the chance to go over to the hotel to look at the space and begin discussing details. I am very excited to be a part of something like this, and follow in my mother's footsteps! I'll keep you updated on things with that as I find out more. Later in the week I had the chance to go see a production of Cabaret in our black box theatre, directed by one of the seniors here. The show was, to say the least, brilliant. I cried my eyes out, and it reminded how big of a privilege it is to be at this school with such talented people. Then came pretty much my favorite part of the week, Friday. Not only was I excited for the week to be over, but I had scheduled a meeting with a client for a poster she needed. This student is producing a musical version of the award winning novel, The Lovely Bones. This project should be really exciting and inspired me to start what I'm calling my design blog. You can check it out at: www.mattsbackupplan.blogspot.com. So, I titled it, Matt's Back-Up Plan because well, god forbid I'm not a broadway star, I have something to fall back on! So I've almost all of the work I've done, and I'll get to writing about all of them soon, but for now you can see some of the things I've been working on! This sort of leads in to what I will call me deeper portion this week.
Being at a conservatory, a lot of people think that you are really limited to what you can do, in terms of like personal preference or freedom or whatever. What's important to note is that, yes, we do have a very strict curriculum and our classes are sort of mapped out for us, which can either be seen as a positive or negative, but beyond that there's a lot of freedom in what you do with the rest of your time. Classes go from about 9 to 5 or 6 depending, and after that, unless you're in rehearsal, the time is yours. As soon as I arrived at school, I knew that I needed to get myself out there, if I wanted to have a "well-rounded" college experience where I was learning as much as I possibly could. So, I started by finding a job that I thought could teach me things I couldn't learn in a class at school. Now, I work about 5 hours a week as a techie for the mainstage theater, and as a result, by the end of this year, I'll be able to add two shows I programed lights for, and one I designed lights for to my resume. Beyond that, I became extremely interested in really putting my design skills to the test. I began designing things for the student government here, which led to getting a position on the executive board, and consequently, a student and faculty board. With that, I volunteered to start doing posters and advertisements for shows and clubs. Now, I am getting paid to design posters, which is something I love to do. The point of all this is, school and I guess life in general is what you make of it. You are the controller of your own destiny. Each and every person has something special about them, but if you just go about your daily life playing by the rules and going through the motions, you won't learn nearly as much as the people who are going above and beyond to make an impact. Life is too short to just take things as they come, if you want something, you have to go out and get it. Additionally, you have to work for it. There a catch though. You can't take all this and then step on everyone else to get what you want, and you can't make it obvious that you're working harder than everyone else. What's more admirable is to feed off the people around you. Live in the moment and take what you are getting from the things you see and hear and feel. This sort of ties in with going with the flow, something I work on every day. Naturally, I am control freak and a person who likes to know everything that's going on, I made it a goal for myself to just sit back and enjoy the ride, all the while working for the things that I want. I have goals and wants and needs like everybody else, but you have to be able to see the importance of each one and measure if it's worth going for or even fighting for. Sometimes it is, sometimes it's simply not. I realize, once again, I have ranted for a while, so I'm sorry for taking up your time, but thanks for reading nonetheless. 
7 days from now I'll be home with my family getting ready to start a week at home which will surely include Go Roma, sleepovers, Once Upon, the rink, TV, steak, McDonalds with Joey, and plenty of other things that I can't even begin to imagine. Which is sort of the beauty of it. Why worry about what's coming when today's not even over (I'll say it a million times if I have to.) For those of you who have been reading my blog since the beginning, I just want to say thank you for everything. It means more to mean than you could ever know. Stay cool peeps. Talk to you soon!


Much Love,
Matt


P.S. IT"S MY BIRTHDAY MONTH!