Pieces of BGSU

This is my first year at BGSU, and I chose to live in Harshman Dunbar. I come from a family of six, so my parents wanted me to live in a residence hall that wasn’t too expensive.

I was a little bummed that I wasn’t going to be living in the new Centennial Hall, but within my first week of school, I was certainly glad that I chose Harshman!

When people would ask me which res hall I was staying in, I would tell them. Almost immediately they would say things like “it doesn’t have air-conditioning.” But to be perfectly honest, Harshman is not a bad place to live at all! Yes, it may be older and the rooms are small, but I love it all the same. I am used to the living space and as for air-conditioning, having a fan and keeping the window open was perfect. It was never too hot in my room during August and September.

I am very happy living in Harshman because I have made so many great friends there. I am on a floor with members of the Honors Program and the Honors Learning Community, and they are some of the nicest friends I have ever had. I never have to worry about people blasting their music or just being loud during the early hours of the morning. You don’t have to be in the Honors Program to live here either. I am not in the Honors Program.

I am close to most of my floor mates and have had some amazing times with them. We even made a trip to Cedar Point back in September, and that is something that I will never forget.

Part 1 of 2

Read Part 1 here, http://blogs.bgsu.edu/pieces/2011/11/16/my-interview-with-a-bgsu-football-player/

On the night of the interview, I got a text from Stephen (my interviewee), saying he was downstairs in the lobby. I brought him up to my room and began to get everything ready. Since I did not own a video camera, I used the camera on my Mac. Once everything was ready and in place, I asked him the first question on my list. He let the question sink in for a moment and opened his mouth to speak.

That’s when his phone went off.

It was his mother, so he took the call, and I stopped the recording. In my head I was thinking that there was no better way to start an interview. Once he hung up, the interview officially began.

He answered all 10 of my questions in great detail, filling me in on his story of going from playing soccer for 13 years to starting football his junior year of high school. What amazed me was the fact that he only played football for two years in high school, and he was now the starting kicker for BGSU. He talked to me for a good 30 minutes about his transition from soccer to football and told me about some of his greatest moments playing for BGSU.

After the interview was done, I went back and watched it. I knew that this would make for an interesting performance.

My next step was to pick a five-minute part of the interview – a part that I believed was the most informative and important. Once I found that segment, I had to transcribe it. From my past experiences, transcribing was some hard work and could take a good hour. This was true, but it was not as frustrating as I thought it would be. The worst was yet to come.

Not only did we have to transcribe five minutes, but also in that five minutes we had to mark down when the speaker would speed up, slow down, rise or drop his or her pitch, emphasize words, pause and move. You would be surprised as how much someone can actually move during an interview.

At first glance, Stephen seemed to be pretty still when he talked. But replaying the video again and again, he moved quite a bit – just the smallest little movements had to be written down. It was tedious work, but I pulled through with the help of my class (at the start of the semester I created a Facebook group for my class so we could keep in touch, ask questions and organize practice sessions).

As I said before, for this assignment we had to portray our interviewee in class. We initially had to become him or her. We also had two performance days; our first being the workshop performance (where we would get feedback from our peers on how we did), and the second being the final performance. My workshop performance was scheduled to be right after Thanksgiving break, so there would be no relaxing for me at home.

I began memorizing my transcript during break and it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I had to make sure that I got it down word for word, including all of the “ums” and the strangely placed pauses. Perhaps my biggest challenge was trying to sound like Stephen, which required a lot of work. I had to lower my voice for one, but I also had to know when to alter the pitch and speed. I sat and listened to the interview many times to try and figure out when I had to make a voice change. Finally I got to work, and little by little, as I read the interview line by line, I had the transcript memorized.

Before I knew it, it was my first performance day.

It is hard to believe that it is already mid-November. People had told me that senior year of high school flies by, but it is crazy how fast my first year of college is flying by. I have already scheduled my classes for the spring semester, and I am just about to get started on my final assignments.

For these past few weeks, I have been focusing on my final project for my performance class. We have to interview someone about something that has happened in his or her life, and then portray that person in front of the class.

I had conducted an interview before. My sophomore year of high school we were given a project called “The Grandparents Project,” where we had to interview someone older than us about something that changed his or her life.

The majority of my classmates decided to just interview a grandparent, but I wanted to go bigger. I got in contact with my local news stations weatherman, and he agreed to the interview. I went down to the news station where he gave me a tour of the building before we sat down to the interview. It was an experience I would never forget.

When we were given this final project in performance class, it was the least of my worries. I had interviewed someone before, so I figured it would all come easy since I had previous experience. But I would come to realize just how different this interview was going to be.

Back in my sophomore year, the interview had to be audio recorded and I had to transcribe all of it. It took me forever. I constantly had to rewind and write down every little detail. It was tedious work, something that I did not want to have to do again. However, for this interview, instead of audio recording, we had to film it. And not only film it, we had to film our person’s entire body. To top that all off, it had to be between 30 to 40 minutes in length.

How could I possibly get someone to talk that long? Who did I know here to interview anyways? It did not seem possible for me to travel three hours back home just to film someone for this interview; my possibilities were limited. I had no choice but to find someone to interview on campus, someone who was interesting to me, someone who I could portray in front of the class.

I wanted a challenge. I wanted to interview someone who I found difficult to perform to my class. I began going through my Facebook friends, made a list of possible choices, and then began to narrow it down. Finally, I made my decision.

I decided to interview one of BGSU’s football players that I had known since September, and I figured he could talk to me about his experience playing football for BGSU. So I asked him, and he accepted my offer. I came up with questions to ask him and got them approved.

So the only thing left to do was the interview itself.

Stay tuned.

I was never one for sports. I came from a family that was involved in music and theater. When I went to school sporting events, I was only there because I was in the band. I never really paid attention to the games; I just talked to my friends. Sports just did not interest me.

And when I came to BGSU, my view on sports completely changed.

Some of my floor-mates had decided to go to the first home football game, and I was invited to join them. I was hesitant at first. I didn’t like football games, and I certainly did not like sitting in the student section. I just found it all to be too loud and just too crowded.

I thought about it some more and then finally decided to go. And I’m sure glad that I went. We ended up having so much fun, and sitting in the student section made it an even better experience. After that game, I couldn’t wait to go to all the other home games.

More recently, my floor-mates wanted to go to the first hockey game. I had only been to one hockey game in my life, and I did not find it to be fun at all. I vowed that day that I would never go to another hockey game. But once again, I decided to give it a go, and after that day, I found a new love for hockey.

I don’t know what it is about college sports, but they seem to be so much better than high school sports and professional sports. But hey, that’s just my opinion.

During Fall Break, I told my parents about how great hockey is, and they seemed so shocked at my sudden love for the sport. Their initial reaction was, “Who are you and what have you done with my child?”

What can I say? College can change you, and I never thought that I would actually be excited to go and watch college sports. But now, I look forward to it!

One of the big differences about starting college is the class size. It is strange walking into a class where there are already 100 other people waiting for the lecture to begin.

I knew to expect this when I came here, but I really had to see it to believe it. And I sure did believe it! I have five classes – three of them being on the bigger side. Out of all five of these classes, I look forward to going to my two smaller ones.

 My Performance Studies class and my General Studies Writing class have approximately 20 people in them. It made me feel like I was in high school again. At first, I wasn’t really sure what to think about it, but as the weeks went by, I began to realize how much I loved these classes. Since they were smaller, I became closer with everyone and actually knew everyone’s names. I feel like I can talk to people easier in those classes, since it is a smaller group. However, there was a difference between my Performance class and my GSW class.

My Performance class consisted of people of all grades. This intimidated me, because I knew that I was only one of the few freshmen in that class. Everyone looked so much older and wiser than me. I felt that it was my place to keep quiet and to think before I spoke. I don’t know what I was thinking! I enjoy this class so much because everyone is friendly toward me and one another. I was not used to people really talking to me.

Back in high school, I felt as if I were almost invisible to my classmates. It seemed as if I was just there, and you had to be in that “social elite group” to actually be recognized by everyone. But not here. I consider everyone in my Performance class to be my friends, and I absolutely love them.

 My GSW class seemed to be easier for me, since it was made up of mostly freshman. It’s always fun to just sit and to listen to everything going on around me in that class and I especially love those I sit near! I have made some good friends in there as well, and like my Performance class, I always look forward to GSW.

It just really amazes me how much different college is than high school.

So here I am. My first year at Bowling Green State University.

I can honestly say that I was so excited to finally become a part of something so grand, but at the same time, I was scared out of my mind. I wasn’t ready for such a drastic change.

Leaving everything behind at home made me sad. My family, my adorable schnauzer, my friends, my parish, everything everyone knew me for.

Gone.

Left behind.

I was going somewhere where no one would know my name. But, as far as freshmen go, we were all in the same boat.

I left home with the thought that I was off to a greater experience, and that was something worth looking forward to.

Within my first few days here, I already felt at home. I had made some great friends, and had already embarked on some amazing adventures. And as big and confusing as the campus seemed at the time, I learned where everything was in less than a week.

Out of all the days I have been here, I have only been homesick once, which took me completely by surprise. I thought I would be miserable my first week of college, but it proved to be just the opposite.

I keep in touch with everyone back home. And the first thing they always ask me is, “So how is college?” And I always answer with great enthusiasm, “It’s amazing! I love it here! I never want to come back home!”

I don’t plan on going home until fall break. I have heard many people say that when they come home from college, that it is very strange, and I know that will be the same for me. I think about it often, and I brace myself for the strange feeling that it is not my home anymore.

Bowling Green is my home, and I love it. I feel like I have been here for years.