Needless to say, it has been an awesome experience, and I’m so glad I got to do it again. If it works out I’d love to make my directorial debut, hopefully with a friend as co-pilot, and direct it next year, but we shall see.

 

After the show we had a huge party at the sound designer’s house. While some of his personal friends came, a great deal of the guests were members of our theater community. I personally didn’t have many close friends from my high school. My social interactions were conducted mainly within the theater, and even now whenever I go home I almost exclusively see people from that community. One cool thing about it is that we range in age from working adults of 27 to recent high school graduates of 18. In fact, after this year I probably won’t know anyone still in the program, but that means I’ve made friends who are four years younger than me, which is super awesome. Even though I’ve never worked with many of these people, we are connected simply because we all love our theater.

 

I think it’s really important to have a community that supports you outside of class. My friends at Oxy are great, but the people I’ve gotten closest to are friends from karate and Karate Club. Because of my experience with theater in high school my definition of friend is far and away more intense than most peoples’, which means that without an intense experience to bind us I have a hard time considering people my friends. Karate, though, managed to create that community for me.

With nothing but an interest in karate to bring us together we’ve formed some of the strongest friendships I’ve had at Oxy. The feeling of community I’d been missing coalesced out of nowhere as soon as I joined karate, and we’ve been best buddies ever since. If that feeling is important to you, I couldn’t think of a better way to get that sense of community than by joining a club, especially one that does a lot of stuff together, even if it’s just going out to eat. Club involvement has been a huge part of my life at Oxy. Don’t miss out!