Hail! (And other things)

In case you needed more proof that I am in fact an expert at procrastination, I offer this: Tonight in Dramaturgy I got my education outreach packet back, and I got a 98 on it along with the comments "Well-written!" and "Strong work." This is completely baffling to me, because I did the majority of the assignment the night before it was due. I was actually working on it and printing stuff out right up until ten minutes before class started.
I just don't get how this keeps happening. I keep waiting for my luck to run out and my professors to realize that I consistently throw things together at the very last minute, but so far I guess I'm still coming across as the poster child for organization and, um, togetherness.

I also got a big compliment today. I'm in a Directing Styles class this semester. The scene I'm directing is from Measure for Measure, and I've been relatively happy with it, especially considering that I have absolutely no level of Shakespeare expertise (I've studied Shakespeare in terms of a couple of English classes and I enjoy reading it and I get it, but I have no practical experience with it-my knowledge of scansion is really sketchy, for example. Luckily that should change after the intensive Shakespeare class I'm doing this summer!) Anyway, I've been satisfied with how my scene is progressing all along, but suddenly today I feel pretty good about it because my friend Paul, who TAs the class, mentioned that the professor told him, "It's too bad Ashley's emphasis isn't directing." Which means he thinks I'm a decent director! That makes me happy, because even though directing is just my cognate and not my actual emphasis, I like to know that people respect what I do as a director. I would like to get more heavily into directing again one of these days. It's just too bad I had to make a choice between history/criticism and directing, because I honestly like both equally.

Alright, enough bragging about myself. Time to brag about someone else for a second. Speaking of Paul, he defended his thesis and did his comprehensive exam today and he passed! YAY! That makes me really happy for him, and subsequently happy for me, too, because if Paul can successfully get through his defense that gives me hope that I'll get through mine next year when it's my turn. Of course, I can't imagine the faculty letting someone defend their thesis and take their comprehensive exam if they didn't feel that the person was ready. It seems to me that passing is kind of a given once you get that far along, but what do I know? It just seems that it would be way too cruel to let someone get as far along as the thesis defense and then not clear them for graduation (unless the person just totally fucked up and clearly hadn't studied at all, I guess). It must feel so good to be in Paul's position. I can't wait until I'm two weeks away from my graduation! One more year...

Other good things to talk about today:
1) I was supposed to have a big dramaturgy paper due a week from today, but Dr. C pushed it back and now it's not due until the day of our final exam on May 4th. That makes me so incredibly happy.
2) Speaking of papers, I've decided to use an episode of The Sopranos as the basis for my final paper for Dramatic Theory class. Since I've been watching The Sopranos more or less non-stop in my free time for the past two weeks (I'm now midway through season two!) I figured I might as well find a way to actually make my obsession productive!
3) I found out today that I'm gonna get to room with Amanda and Liz in Stratford this summer! See, we're staying at a bed-and-breakfast for the three weeks we're in England, and I was just going to have to room with a girl I don't know. There are 10 of us going to Stratford, and the only person I know well is Amanda. Amanda and Liz are good friends (they work together) but I don't know Liz very well. So Amanda had asked me very early on if I'd mind if she roomed with Liz and I said nah, I don't care. I can pretty much coexist with anyone, especially since I doubt we'll be spending much time in our rooms anyway. So I was going to be randomly assigned to room with one of the other girls, all of whom are strangers to me at this point. But! Today Dr. C. mentioned to me that she found out there are going to be three double rooms at the B&B, a triple room, and one single room. She wanted to know if I wanted to be put into the drawing for the people that are fighting it out for the single room. But I was like, "Wait, there's a triple room? 'Cause if there's a triple room I'd actually like to room with Amanda and Liz." Dr. C. said that would actually make things a lot easier if we'd just agree to take the triple, so yay! Amanda is thrilled, and I'm looking forward to actually getting to know Liz since we're just acquaintances right now. So all in all that worked out perfectly.
4) In other Stratford-related news, we got assigned our scenes that we'll be working on all session for the showcase we're going to perform in Stratford. I'll be playing Rosalind in a scene from As You Like It, which should be fun. I'm so nervous, though! It has literally been years since I took an acting class. I hope I don't totally suck.

Well, this has gotten lengthy again, but I just want to add that we had a CRAZY storm here today. It was pouring rain when I got to class tonight, and as we were sitting in class we could hear rain and hail pounding on the roof. We couldn't see what was actually going on since there are no windows in any of the classrooms in the theatre building (which is a huge pet peeve of mine, but whatever) but when I got out of class later I found out that the hail had been HUGE. Up at campus it wasn't too bad, thankfully. My car seems just fine...although I haven't seen it in daylight yet. But the outlet mall got hit badly. Apparently the hail there was baseball sized and bigger! Matthew works down there and he said there was literally a couple million of dollars of damage done to the mall, and thousands of cars were badly damaged by hail, Matthew's among them. Man, I've never seen anything like it. His car is totaled by hail. The back windshield is completely shattered and gone, the front one is cracked in a bunch of different places, and the entire car is dented. Something tells me Matthew will probably be getting a new car out of the deal. Crazy...I'm just glad no one I know was hurt today. Damn weather.