SO not tired

So, a bit more about me. I grew up mostly in Mississauga, Ontario. Went to Appleby College, which is a private school in Oakville, Ontario. When I was younger, I was skipped ahead a grade. For those of you wondering which, as near as I can figure it was first grade. See, I was in Kindergarden, and doing the whole half-day thing, when one day they had me take an IQ test (which are, I believe, considered pretty unreliable for kids, a fact which is exacerbated by to cultural bias. There are ones which are supposed to be less biased now, but I'm pretty sure back in 1980-whatever they weren't really thinking about that. That also didn't seem to affect me, being brought up in North American society, since I did well enough that they then...um, I'm getting ahead of the story outside the brackets). Soon after, I was told that I would continue going to Kindergarden in the mornings, and then in the afternoon I would walk my happy self down the hall to the grade one classroom, where I would stay for the rest of the day. I assume they talked it over with my parents, who were more than happy to have me skipped ahead - I was, after all, following in my older brother's footsteps, who had also skipped a grade.

Appleby also did high school in 4 years at a time when the rest of the province did it in 5, meaning I finished high school at 16 and went to college at 17, having had a birthday in the summer. Queen's University it was, Commerce - sort of a pre-MBA program. Macro- and microeconomics, accounting, that sort of thing.

And then I failed out.

It was never a question of difficulty, I just didn't go to class. I'm not particularly (a word I used to pronounce particular-I-ly as recently as 3 years ago for some odd reason I've never been able to figure out) proud of that, nor am I of what happened next, but it happened and I suppose it's one of the things that's made me what and who I am today, so I'm not too upset about it. I did manage to pass one class - macroeconomics - based on the the midterm and final, but that was it.

So, I was done at Queen's. My dad pulled some strings and managed to get me into York University (back in Toronto) for the next year. Unfortunately (fortunately?), the same thing happened. Didn't go to class, passed one - Social Philosophy, with an actual good grade - failed everything else.

It is not, as I said, something I look back on with pride. But it led me to the conclusion that if I was failing out of college because I couldn't motivate myself to go to class, perhaps I should be doing something I actually wanted to go do. Like every kid, I grew up with the aspirations of my parents yoked on my shoulders. And like every kid, I had come to a point where I had to honestly evaluate whether or not those expectations were for me.

While I was at Queen's, I auditioned for and was cast in their production of Guys and Dolls (Harry the Horse). If you watch the movie he's played as a straight man, pretty boring. I remember in the audition, the director (after I'd read the first time) asked for an angrier reading. I ended up doing an odd Gilbert Gottfried-esque reading, which they loved. ANYways, I was cast in that, and I ended up playing computer games until 3-4 am, sleeping through my morning classes, plain old not going to my afternoon classes and then going to rehearsals later in the evenings, which I never missed.

That's sort of where I stopped. Classes didn't interest me. At York I would wake up, drive all the way to the university (about 30-45 minutes) and then sleep in my car because I didn't feel like going to class. But I could always get myself to rehearsals. So why not give that a shot? I found out about Sheridan and Ryerson, both in the Toronto area, and also had a friend from Queen's who'd had a friend who'd gone to this school in New York, AMDA. So those were the three options I settled on.

Again, laziness. I completely screwed myself out of Sheridan and Ryerson, messing up those auditions. With a lot of help from my girl at the time I managed to put it together for the AMDA audition and got in, bringing me here. 2 years later I finished up at AMDA (Feb, 2003) and started auditioning. Did that for a year, then found out my visa was going to expire and there was nothing I could do, short of getting married, because I hadn't gotten a Bachelor's in the States. Luckily, AMDA had an arrangement with The New School University (here in NY) where your time at AMDA was fully credited to you, towards a BFA. So now I'm going there, with a chance to finish up what I started way back in 1998.

I don't know if I believe that you can learn from your mistakes. The way I see it, when you make a big mistake - well, first of all you don't usually recognize it as a mistake until some time has passed. But when you realize, in hindsight, that you've made a mistake, that mistake is typically because of a personal failing. To a large degree, the person that you are going to be is fully formed by the time you finish high school. That's why all the future social interactions you have are just like high school - because few, if any people, ever get away from that mentality. Once you get into college and beyond, you can try your best to avoid it and succeed to a certain extent, but if you work in an office; if you go to a church; if you have almost any interaction with groups of people the same relationships will emerge.

What I do believe about mistakes, though, is that they and the situtations they place you in help to define you as a person. Everyone has their own personal issues to deal with, and it is these issues and how we respond to them that create our personalities. Would I be here in New York if I hadn't failed out of Queen's? No. Would I be here in New York if I hadn't failed out of York after failing out of Queen's? No. I suppose you could argue that being in New York is more of a situation, and has little to do with my personality and its change. But I would respond that you've never lived in New York.

This is really long, but I'm still not tired. Going to wrap this up and start another.