To Be Healthy and to Do Grad School

At least once a week an article will come across my desktop with a title along the lines of "7 Ways to Live a Healthier Lifestyle" or "Enhance Your Wellbeing". They all are very well intentioned and are all vaguely similar. However I have discovered that being a grad student (or actually being in theatre in general) tends to counteract every one of the core ideas these articles boast. For example:

1. Stop eating late at night
Sure. We could do that. But that also sometimes means that your next meal won't be until 14 hours after your last one and you have been working hard as opposed to enjoying a relaxing evening at home.

2. Get at least 7 or 8 hours of sleep a night.
When your rehearsal ends at 11, you have post-rehearsal work until midnight, and you still have to do homework because you've been in class since 9:00 and you have class at 9:00 the next day, the math just doesn't add up to sleeping the number of hours you should.

3. Exercise frequently.
I love this. I know we would all love to do this all the time. But the answer for the previous question is also relevant to this one. Sometimes there literally aren't hours in the day.

4. Eat organic food.
Also one that we would all love to do all the time but sometimes our budgets just really don't allow for it. Sometimes it's not even a matter of priority; it's a matter of "how much can I spend this week and still pay rent".

5. Get plenty of fresh air
Sorry, that wasn't on my class or rehearsal schedule. Maybe next semester.

6. Let go of stress
I'm sure this is possible for some people but when you're put in a highly stressful environment like graduate school (or theatre in general which many people forget is just playing, not life and death), the pressure follows you around. You are often responsible for the success of many rather than just yourself.

7. Wake up early every day to get a jump start on the day and go to sleep early to be well rested
We wake up early because we have to and when we have the chance to sleep later than 7:00 am, believe me we're going to do it. It's a little bit like finals week in college where you don't sleep much for a week and spend the next two weeks sleeping in to recover. That's called Monday mornings in the theatre world (or Sundays, for those of us at YSD).

8. Read the news to keep yourself informed and educated
I have to have the news sent me to via email to force myself to know what's going on and even then I can only skim the headlines.

9. Never eat processed foods or eat out
That might mean we never eat

10. Take time to yourself
Do you mean the 10 minutes in bed before you conk out?

These are all ideas I have struggled with for years. Recently I have integrated most if not all of these habits into my schedule, though I may never consistently sleep more than 6 hours a night or have a stress free life. Given that I have had enough free time in the past month to fully establish their existence in my daily routine, I wonder how long I can keep them up since I will soon be giving my life back to rehearsal and performance life. And it seriously makes me wonder how we can expect ourselves or ask ourselves to be healthier, happier, more well rounded human beings when grad school/theatre so clearly contradict it.

The argument can always be made that life is about priorities and if one makes this a priority, it can happen. I am living proof that one can slowly integrate these elements into her life but the thought that lingers concerns my ability to commit to it once my life returns to my baseline normal. Will I still be willing to rise a full hour and a half before my first morning commitment to have a rejuvenating start to the day? Can I still commit the extra money each week to buying only organic foods when I won't have workstudy again until November? Will I still have the energy and/or time to dance for an hour every night? I can only hope. But my bigger hope is that my peers and colleagues find ways to integrate these into their lives as well. What good will it be if I'm feeling great but the people around me are feeling awful?

I don't have the answers to these questions. I wish I did but grad school and theatre are specific beasts that take a special kind of commitment and perseverance and a strong sense of self to get through. If you think that theatre practitioners are soft or weak in any way, that would be a mistake. They have to be strong enough to find that balance in their lives without compromising too much on either side.

Hopefully this year we can all find a way to strike a better balance in our lives. Because at the end of the three years here and at the end of our careers many years down the line, we all would like to say that we not only survived but that we thrived as well.

Cause this fine old world, it keeps spinnin' around

This blog title is taken from a line of the Frank Sinatra standard "That's Life", a rather fitting song for what most people experience in graduate school. Listening to this song tonight made me think harder about what the lyrics are saying and the message it conveys.

"I've been up and down and over and out and I know one thing
Each time I find myself flat on my face
I pick myself up and get back in the race"

Now if that isn't fitting for graduate school, I don't know what is.


Year 2 has officially begun with merriment, meetings, and melee. Although for me it technically began about 2 weeks ago with the beginning of budgeting meets for my first show of the year, ASM for Rep 2: Owners, the school year kicked off this week with 2nd/3rd year orientation, class photos, and of course the Bundy speech.

James Bundy is truly a remarkable dean for the School of Drama. Not only does he know the name and backstory of every student in the school before they show up for the first day of orientation, he is intensely committed to making this place artistically and academically challenging, bright with life, and a safe space for students to learn and practice their craft. There are 9 departments in our school each with its own unique artistic qualities and challenges. We range from acting and design all the way to stage management and theatre management. And we are all artists and needing this home to take risks and challenge ourselves, our peers, and our faculty.

Dean Bundy is an excellent orator. His speeches, whatever their nature, are consistently engaging and the most prominent speech is the one he makes at the beginning of the year to the entire school. First I must mention that it is quite a sight to see the entire School of Drama--students, faculty, and staff--in one room together. It makes you realize how lucky you are to be there. And, once you've been there for awhile, it reminds you how much you love and respect every person in that room. Every person holds true meaning to the school and Dean Bundy is quick to acknowledge this. Prior to his speech, he names every single staff and faculty member and asks them to stand so that we are acquainted with them as well. They become our support team when things go awry and I appreciate that he takes the time to acknowledge everyone from the custodial staff all the way up to Maria in the Registrar who I personally appreciate beyond words. This introductory session takes quite awhile but it's worth it.

Following the introduction, he speaks about the upcoming year. First giving some anecdotes or metaphors (this year he kicked off his speech by referencing a recent Buzzfeed article about everyday items you are using incorrectly) and then the speech morphed into something slightly more profound and I swear you could have heard a pin drop in that theatre. He spoke of the gift of working in an environment such as ours where you are free to dream and explore and expose yourself without intense ramifications. He talked about how we all should allow ourselves to take risks because that furthers our art form. And he told us that we should allow ourselves to be vulnerable. To let ourselves be seen. We work and live in a world full of judgement and fear and the desire for stability but for a moment, for a day, for the rest of our graduate school experience, for as long as we can we should allow ourselves to be vulnerable and respect others for doing it as well. Asking ourselves to be who we truly are or to take an unexplored risk is frightening but it's character building and it will help us become who we are meant to be.

His speech particularly resonated with me as I concluded last year with the goal that I would allow myself to be seen rather than fading into the background as is my tendency. You're never going to be noticed if you don't give yourself permission to expose your feelings, ideas, and personality to the world. And we all deserved to be noticed.

So here's to a new year of risks, vulnerability, love, camaraderie, late nights, and letting ourselves be seen. You only have 3 years here--make it count.