Whenever I talk to my older brother (who's a sophomore in college) about going to a football game or going to a school event, he often criticizes me. He says that high school is a joke. Now I wouldn't go that far because it's not a joke, it's real life and many people care about it. However, I have began to understand where he's coming from. Really, everything that goes on in high school is just a perception. Everything that happens isn't really as important as we take it to be. In five years we won't still be thinking about that really awesome basketball game or that huge test we had on Friday. It's the same with us thinking about middle school. Middle school wasn't that important in our minds, and when we were middle schoolers we didn't think that elementary school was all that it was hyped up to be when we were there. It's really all a big preparation because later in our lives, there will be a test that will change our lives. Passing the MCATs is a big deal or the LSATs. Both of those tests would change our lives, but a D on a chemistry test in high school wouldn't impact us at all as long as we got an A on the next test.

Everything is important to everyone now. Everything that is happening NOW is often the most important thing to us, and I think that most of us will realize in later years that what's happening NOW is not always the most important thing for us to think about.

What My Future Holds

I am now starting to understand that one of the biggest decisions in my life is ahead of me. It is the question of where I should go to college. Since I am a good student I could go nearly anywhere I want (except for the major Ivy League schools). Also, since my mother works at the Coe copy center, her benefits include her children going tuition free to any school in Coe's system (I think it's called the ACM). So there are lots of opportunities for me to go to school for free. However, I want to go to a school that will give me the most opportunities and prepare me for life. I have to know what I want to do when I grow up so that I can find the school that will give me the greatest opportunities and preparation. Right now, I am quite unsure of what I want to do. Here are a few ideas.

I'm thinking that I could go to Med School. I would like to become a doctor and help people that way. I really enjoy biology (I took AP Bio last year). I would really like those skills to be used directly instead of indirectly like molecular biology does. Another way I could do that is by becoming a marine biologist. I really love animals, and when I was in Alaska I visited the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward. It was a great experience, and although I didn't have much time to spend there, I felt like I could've had the whole day there. There was so much information and exciting things to look at and learn about. It inspired me to think about becoming a marine biologist.

I also really love languages. I love speaking to foreigners, and I love being able to communicate in a different tongue. Russian and Chinese are my best ones right now, and it wouldn't be very difficult for me to catch on to Hebrew since I can already read the script. I would love to integrate these skills into my occupation.

My favorite subject in school right now is Calculus. I just think it is amazing how everything falls into place. However, the only practical way I could use this information is if I become an engineer or become a teacher or professor. I can't really see myself becoming an engineer (I just don't have a passion for that), but I could see myself becoming a teacher.

The thing is, I have my whole life ahead of me. I could do all these things if I really wanted to. My only hope is that I have the most knowledge that I can possibly obtain, and I hope to be doing something that I love.

The Attire of Cold

To the students of Kennedy High School:

When students park at Kennedy High School, they have to walk about a quarter of a mile until they are inside. This is a long walk, and in the cold it feels like even a longer walk. Sometimes I even find myself running on the last stretch to get into the south doors. The parking lot is tundra-like, with nothing blocking the wind from our faces.

However, lately, I've been trying something new. I've been wearing hats, gloves, and a winter coat! I know it's very innovative and paramount, but I'm too modest to admit it. But truly, it really does work. I just put on some gloves, a headband, and a blue Columbia winter coat. Sometimes I wear mittens instead of gloves and instead of the headband one of those woolen hats with the flaps covering your ears. I got that in Alaska. Both work because both cover my ears, which some to have said are the most important spots on your body to keep warm. When the terrain is chillingly cold out, I just put on some long johns under my jeans. I got a pair for Hanukkah and they really keep in the heat.

We like to look like we aren't wimps, and sometimes this means that we like to look like we can handle the cold. Although we understand that there's a risk of getting sick, our minds seem to be on something else. I really don't understand why more people don't wear hats, gloves, and a warmer jacket (I understand if people don't wear long johns though). There are some who put on warm clothing during the winter, but I think that this number has decreased recently. There are a few schools of thought that I could see for the decline in this clothing.

First, some people don't have winter clothes that they think are stylish and trendy. I think the phrase The North Face speaks for itself. If this is your reason, I think a few dollars would be worth being considerably warmer. But in my opinion you shouldn't be worried about looking fashionable at this time of the morning. In the cold everyone's just worried about their own warmth. They aren't going to go through a huge analysis about what your warmth and what you're wearing.

I've also heard that girls (or guys) don't want to mess up their hair. This is understandable if it's a dress up day for you or if you have a presentation, e.g. But I would rather have a bad hair day than catch a cold and sit in my room for two days. Trust me, if you ever have a bad hair day because of a hat, you can just think of me because I know I've had worse.

So there you have it. Wear warmer clothes because there's no reason not to, and that's a great reason, indeed.

showchoir.com...

...is perhaps one of the oddest websites in the world. How can people care so much about show choir so that they are constantly yearning to see what happens and where? It would seem like they could wait for the results of a competition, for example. For Happiness members, such as I, show choir is about putting on a great show and having fun. For these people on showchoir.com it seems to have become only a competition.

A Family

This week I met some of my cousins that I've never met before. They were two children, Cleo and Benji. The thing is, right when I met them I began to care about them. I instantly wanted to know more about them and who they were. I knew I would like them no matter what they did, simply because they were family. Instead of defining family as a group of related people, I now define it as a people who care about each other know matter what another thinks or does. I think I've felt that before, but I have never acknowledged it.

The Week: New York

This week has been perhaps the most filled weeks I've ever had. So many things happened and so many situations occurred that I wouldn't even dream of. It was an odd week, but a great week. To start the week off, our school had an early out, but since we had a show choir competition Saturday we still had to practice from one o'clock to three. After two run throughs of our show I went home and slept till the next morning. It turned out our school had a two hour delay, but I wasn't planning on going to school anyways because my father and I were planning to go to New York City (for an audition for Brighton Beach Memoirs on Broadway).

So we began driving to the Moline airport in Illinois, which is about an hour and a half away from Cedar Rapids. We then flew to Atlanta where we dined at the Atlanta Bread Company (it's a cafe in the airport). All the while, my dad and I were bickering with each other about my life mainly, and how I need to communicate with him better. It soon ended once we came into trouble ourselves. As you know, a common enemy creates friendship. Our flight was delayed. We just wanted to get to Newark and see our cousins, Adam and Alicia. As we got on our plane, I immediately started listening to the XM radio they had, but about half way through the trip my system began failing and it was really frustrating.

We arrived at Newark at about 9:45. Our cousin Adam picked us up, along with his son, Benji who is two years old. I slept on the couch in their house, and I was so nervous about the audition the next day that all I did was toss and turn. Cleo and Nadia, their other two children who are four and six, respectively. They were darling children, and I wish I could always be with them because they are so beautiful, funny, and full of life. I hope that I will always remember their little voices that called out my name.

We got on the bus heading to the city at 7:25, so that we would be at the audition building at 8:30. The bus took us through the tunnel, and at one point there was a great landscape view of the city. We got off at Port Authority on 42nd. The audition was on 47th and 4th, I think. We got to walk through Times Square on our way to the building! The building ended up being the Equity Headquarters. When we first walked in there was a security man at the front desk and he had to take our picture while we said our name (all of this because we were non-union people). The audition was to be held on the second floor.

We first walked through a corridor that had one turn in it. It then led to a huge room. There were benches throughout the corridor with people sitting on them, waiting for the audition to start. These people were not equity members, for if you were, you'd probably be in the big room with all of the comfortable sofas and space. Since we were non-equity members, to audition we had to sign up on a sheet. The process was that when there was a time slot with not enough equity members, the monitor would come over and read off the non-equity name list. My dad and I thought that since we were early that we'd be in the top ten of the list. Boy were we wrong. I was number 32! I was greatly worried that I had flown all the way to New York for nearly nothing.

The audition started at 9:30, and it was then that they told the non-equity members that the producer would be accepting non-equity people to audition for Brighton Beach (for the auditioners could decide if they would accept non-equity members or not for the auditions at all). Around ten, the monitor told us that there wre few equity members planned to auditon for Brighton Beach Memoirs that day, so my day began to look much brighter. At 11:20 they called my name and I followed the monitor to the big room to sit down and wait for a few more minutes. While doing so, I recognized someone from my National Tour of The Music Man. It was Meghan Midkiff! She played Ethel Toffelmier, and she's a doll. She is so nice and we got to catch up a bit.

The audition itself went fairly well. I went into a small room, about the size of a smaller classroom. I had a single auditioner, and she didn't say much. I began by shaking her hand. Then I did my monologue and after it, all she said was, "Good. Good. Thank you." I could've been more satisfied with her response, but I guess that's what she said to everyone.

After the audition my dad had to meet with some guy about jewelry. During his meeting, I met up with Abby Rose and had lunch. She was also on The Music Man tour, and she is only a few years older than I. It was great to see her, but I wish we could've seen each other for a longer time. At 2:00 we caught the matinee of Mary Poppins, and it was actually a pretty good show. The set was wonderful, and there was lots of "magic" that occurred and spiced up the show.

We ate dinner back in the suburb with our cousins at a a Vietnamese restaurant called "Little Saigon." It was there that I had the best soup I've ever tasted. The children that night were a blast. I played cards with Nadia at the restaurant, and I also taught her some Chinese characters. I love Adam and Alicia and their children, and I'm glad I can be part of their family.

It snowed on Wednesday night, and my dad and I suspected some cancellations on Thursday for our plane ride home. We were right, and we ended up having to switch airports twice. First we switched from Newark to LaGuardia so we could get to Cedar Rapids earlier (I needed to get to Cedar Rapids ASAP because there was a show choir concert that night, and our choir needed a perfect attendance in order to participate in the competition. If I weren't there we wouldn't be able to go the competition). Then we switched back to Newark because LaGuardia's flights were nearly all cancelled because of the snow.

So we finally got in the air and flew to Atlanta. Before flying off to Atlanta, our XM radio notified us of a plane accident in the Hudson River, just beyond we were standing earlier that day. It was kind of freaky. In the end, we got to Moline (which was -22 degrees at the time) and drove to Cedar Rapids in time for the concert.

Why is show choir so great?

All we do is dance and sing and act at the same time. How does that prepare us for the real world, because the real world has hardly to do with show choir (unless you perform in a circus or in Las Vegas)? I cannot answer the question, and that is why I am writing about it. I cannot say why I love show choir so much, or why I find it so interesting to compete in. I have been in show choir for six years, but yet there is something that I still don't understand about it. Why do we do it? How do I feel so great while performing a show? Why is it so connected to me and why do so many kids participate? It's fun, yes, but the reason is much deeper than that. Someday, I hope to find the answer.

After all of the difficult and often frustrating rehearsals, there is something that makes you feel accomplished. Walking off the stage in a wide smile with sweat dropping down your costume is the concrete part that makes you feel accomplished, but there is an abstract part that is deep in the soul of the performer that cannot be explained.

"Common Sense, Not by Thomas Paine"

My brother, who is twenty years old is starting to write a book. It's called Commen Sense, Not by Thomas Paine. It is a book of theorems. It's about nearly everyone, but it is about things that happen in this world that everyone is aware of, but they don't acknowledge it. Here's some examples.

One theory is that you can base the elegance and wealth of a restaurant by how high the stalls are in the bathroom. Think about it, when you walk into a cruddy restaurant bathroom, the stalls aren't very nice, and they're certainly not high. But when you walk into a nice restaurant's bathroom, the stalls are very, spacious, and extremely tall. However, the theory does become false when there are no stalls (it's just a room) or when restaurants have been open for a long time (say, since the eighties or early nineties). These older restaurants would probably not change the height of the stalls in the bathrooms if they don't really need to. Thus, the theorem should be modified to this: "One can base newer restaurants by the height of their stalls in their restaurants."

Another theory is that when you hug someone, the pat on the back marks the end of the hug. I believe this one to be all true. Just think about. You are hugging someone for two seconds, and then the person you hug starts patting you on the back. You instantly disembrace.

Since my brother is a Jewish white kid, he is not too cultured with other kinds of people. He's definitely not racist, but he sometimes makes false conjectures, such as this one: Asian people either look really young or really old for the age. This is true, only if he bases his facts on what he sees in the movies or on television because often, these Asian people do look very young or very old. But I happen to know various people that would make this theorem untrue.

I hope that my brother has a success with his book, and I think that it's a very intriguing subject. However, he needs to make sure that all of theories are completely true, and that there isn't one example that could make it not true.

And Off to New York...

Perhaps one of the greatest thrills for me is auditioning in New York. Although I have lived in Cedar Rapids my whole life, I have been to New York City several times and have auditioned for numerous shows, including The North American Tour of The Music Man, The National Tour of The Sound of Music, Oliver! on Broadway, and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on Broadway (and perhaps another that I can't really remember). The latter two did not affect me after the audition, for I did not get a role in those shows. However, when I was at those auditions I gained a sort of confidence that lacks when I audition in Cedar Rapids. I can be whoever I want to be in New York, and I can be as outgoing as I want to. Outgoing is something they like to see, and I can be very outgoing when I don't have to worry about being modest (around friends, e.g.). So many opportunities may come out of a single audition in New York, and that's the truly exciting part.

And now, I'm off to New York on Tuesday. I will be auditioning for the role of Eugene in Brighton Beach Memoirs. I would be simply ecstatic if I were to be able to participate in this show. First of all, I played Eugene in my school's production of Brighton Beach Memoirs, and I simply fell in love with the show. The humor, the characters, the drama: they're so real, and the show connect to every soul in the audience. It is truly my favorite play ever written (excluding musicals; adding in those would make the contest way more competitive). If I could, I would play Eugene every single day of my life. I made people laugh, and I wish I could always do that.

My dad was the first to hear about this audition. He heard from Amy Blades, whose daughter, Catherine Blades, performed with me in The Music Man (and many other shows), and although Catherine lives in Cedar Rapids as well, she is still very connected to the theatre world. She was planning on auditioning, but decided not to (or couldn't) for some reason. Anyways, once we heard about it we instantly got around my resume and the video of Brighton Beach Memoirs and sent it to the casting director. Two weeks later, we called them to see if they received it or not, and they told us that I could audition for them.

However, the day that the auditions were to be taking place for non-Union actors, such as me, was on January 17, the day of our first show choir competition, and perhaps the most difficult competition we will be going to all year. Thus, I could not go to this audition, but thankfully, they told me that I could press my luck at the Union auditions which are Wednesday and Thursday. They told me that I am not guaranteed an audition. But as Kollasch told me, "It's Broadway." So I decided to go, and as time went on the cards began to favor us. We found out that once we get to the audition, I put my name on a list (because I am not in the Union). When there is a moment when there is not a Union member waiting to audition, I am called. We plan to get to the audition around 8:00, until the auditions are done. Hopefully, during these nine hours or so there won't be someone waiting and I can have the opportunity to audition.

Overall, I think it's definitely worth it. How many times do I actually get to audition for Broadway? It'll be a good experience no matter what, as I will get to see some family and old friends as well. It may be a one in a million shot, but hey, that's one. I've just got to nail it.