This is the letter I sent to such notables as former favorite teachers and abuelos and padres and such...

Hello all! I'm between classes at the end of my second full week at University of Maryland College Park, bringing you the news, the updates, the everything. For those of you who knew the extent of my waffling before I ultimately decided to come here... I'm here. For those of you that didn't.... now you know.

I can safely say I've pulled a definite Molly: reluctantly trundling off to a second-choice school (more than a little terrified I might add) and within the first few days becoming deleriously happy with the fates and the choices she has made.

I'm in College Park Scholars (Arts), which is basically the same SAT scores as Honors but with more extracurrics.. we do all sorts of public works projects and take field trips such as the one this Saturday to Baltimore to see The Phantom of the Opera. Unfortunately, that was full before I got the chance to sign up (sophomores get first pick) but I'm going to see Anne Frank in a few weeks.

I'm doubling in English and Theatre and I love my majors more than healthy people should. I'm taking two theatre classes (one performance and one tech), American Literature 1865-present, American Government, and Intro to Drawing. I love them all (except drawing but we'll see how that plays out) but my very favorites are American Lit and Intro to Performance. I know, I know, the obvious choice given my majors. But I'm so enthralled by the lectures and what I'm learning it's almost ridiculous.

I spent my very first Am. Lit. class literally agape, as it seemed too good to be true. The professor is very into individualized thinking, and he'll make a point and contradict it, and then contradict both of them just to prove that one can't simply look at one thing one way. And the historical context! It's American History seen through a literature lens, which seems to have my name all over it. We're actually starting the readings a little before 1865, with Frederick Douglass's _Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass_ because the professor thinks it's ridiculous to begin such a course as this right when the country is stabilizing, as opposed to giving it the completely different context of beginning when the country was not entirely sure it would continue to exist. We're doing Romanticism and Transcendentalism now and I'm enthralled... the bitter rivalry between Poe and Emerson makes me laugh and I'm still deciding what I think of the entire movement... we'll see I suppose...

In my first Performance class the professor came in about four minutes late and didn't say a word, only wrote on the board "GRAB YOUR STUFF/ FOLLOW ME" and skipped out of the room. He then took us to the Kay theater and had one of my classmates read a line from I think Oedipus from the front of the stage. Then he had us spread all over the theater and had the student read from the back wall of the stage. Then we went to the Lab theater and he read in the small space this same line, and again in the lobby from atop the balcony and then down the stairs to where we were. Then we took a trip outside and he read from random Greek-style outdoor theater by the Student Union, and again in the middle of a major crossing point in the middle of a crop of buildings. There was construction and traffic and students were everywhere and he had to yell the line from the center of all the chaos. All this in lieu of a lecture on how space changes the way actors perform, whether it be Greek or Roman or Medieval theatre or in the more modern theaters we're used to today. It's so interesting to see how theatre and space changes as the years go by in human history, and the historical and political events driving many of them. It makes me want to shove my thick glasses up the bridge of my nose and snort with glee. We're reading now (among others) _The Empty Space_ by Peter Brook, and his theories on theater space make me laugh and think, my two favorite activities, especially done simultaneously.

I'm working hard on a story I started this summer, trying to finish it before (hopefully) next semester so I can include it in my portfolio to present to the English Department in order to obtain a Fiction concentration within my English major. Hopefully the Creative Writing workshop in my Scholars Colloquium will help out with that... I also want to try out for Erasable Inc, the Improv Troupe, in October, and we'll see about shows as they come around... the first show we're doing is actually "Our Town" and I'm so excited to see Patuxent's rendition as well! I don't know what Huntingtown is doing, but I wish everyone multiple broken appendages and everyone else as grand a semester as I'm having.

This has been The Kollidge Report, and this is Brittany, signing off.. I'll see you when I see you, and until then, have a great day(s)!

ink :: graphite