Q: What’s your major?
A: I am currently declared as a drama major, although I fully intend to double major in drama and computer science. I understand that they don’t really seem to go together in any way, shape, or form. But from an academic standpoint, it works for me. Acting is just so much fun — just that slightly nervous, heart-pounding feeling that you live for. I love that. And I even like the weird dialogues about the metatheatricality of this play or that. But at some point, I need to go sit down and….write computer code, do something very mechanical that just logically makes sense. I really need that rigorous logic, which is why I love computer science. It’s just logic puzzle after logic puzzle. And I love that.
Q: How did you hear of Vassar?
A: I have twin older brothers who both went to huge universities — Boston University and the University of Southern California — monstrously huge places. So when I was applying to colleges, I just sort of followed in their footsteps. I applied to BU and USC and some others. And what happened is that I was out in California, visiting my brother, and I visited Pomona, and I loved it. Pomona is, like, 1,500 students. It’s tiny. And I found myself saying, this is tiny, and I like this much better. I suddenly realized I had just applied to a bunch of big schools, and I didn’t really want to end up there. So I went back to my guidance counselor, and I said, quick, I need some more small schools to apply to. And she said, you like Pomona? Check out Vassar.
I didn’t check out Vassar. I just applied. It was that late in the process. So then, during the waiting period, I came here to look. Up until that point, I hadn’t even really seen pictures of Vassar. I just knew it was a small, high-end liberal arts school. You come to visit, you drive through Main Gate, and you don’t ever want to leave. I was so thrilled with Vassar — it was just gorgeous, and the curriculum is fantastic. I was looking for a school where I could major in a hard science but also be very active in some sort of theater program. At a lot of schools, you have to be a drama major if you want to do a lot of acting. But at Vassar, there’s Philaletheis and Unbound [two student-run theater companies], five comedy troupes, etcetera etcetera. There’s so much acting you can do without ever taking a class in the department. And then, within the department, all you have to do is take one class, the introductory class, and you can be in their shows, too. So that’s why I came here.
Q: But you did end up majoring in drama.
A: I was sort of lying to myself. I came here, took that one class, and immediately signed the major forms. Who was I kidding?
Q: Did you do a lot of drama in high school?
A: Yes. My brother was a senior the year I was a freshman, and he was friends with all the theater kids, and he was in all the shows. He encouraged me, and I got to know a lot of his friends. So I joined the theater company right away my freshman year. And then throughout high school, it was both my extracurricular activity and my social group. Those were the people I hung out with, that was what I did, that was the most fun to be had. But it’s funny, I never actually took a single class, and they offered several in acting and drama. I was very into the science APs — AP physics, AP chemistry, AP calculus.
Q: So how did you end up as a computer science major?
A: Freshman year, I took one semester of a lot of different sciences, plus philosophy. I really liked physics in high school, and I was strongly considering physics. I was sort of hesitant about taking computer science because one of my older brothers is a computer science whiz. He got his BA and his MA in four years and is now making more money than my parents. So there was this fear of following in his footsteps. But I took a class, and I loved it.
Q: What’s the most interesting course you’ve taken?
A: Right now I’m in Networks, which is by far the most practical computer science class I’ve taken. Our homework assignments are to literally reinvent the Internet, which is so cool. Our first homework assignment was to write AOL Instant Messenger. And our second homework assignment was to reinvent email. So granted, we’re doing stuff that’s been done, but you have a little room to add your ideas to it, which is a lot of fun — like, how would I do email differently? And the more we learn, the more I understand how it all works. The Internet is here to stay, it’s what’s happening right now, and it’s so much fun understanding it on a deeper level. Last week we figured out how they wrote all the programs that stream movies. It all works off of this really simple PCPIP protocol, which is just a system that computers have built in for sending and receiving messages through their port system. In this class, we’re learning how simple the Internet actually is, and how to use it, and the brilliant things that people have done with these relatively simple systems.
Q: What are you hoping to do after Vassar?
A: Well, I had an amazingly successful summer last summer. I worked as an intern in an IT department at an insurance agency in Boston. It wasn’t a lot of fun per se, but I came away with a lot of money and a lot of experience. I now would consider myself knowledgeable in database management and database web applications, which are huge fields. And they’re not glamorous, but anywhere there are corporations of any kind, you can go in and make a bunch of money. I’ve got several friends who also want to move to LA, so I’m going to move to LA, and I’m going to support myself with any sort of IT job I can get, and do acting. Why not? I’m thrilled about this plan. So computer science and drama don’t go together, but in this case it’s the perfect combination.
Q: How did you get involved with Barefoot Monkeys?
A: Barefoot Monkeys did a fire show in Providence the summer before I came to Vassar. I went downtown to Waterfire, which is an event they hold almost every weekend of the summer — they have bonfires lined up along the river; it’s really cool. Everyone comes down and wanders around and bumps into each other. And there are performance artists all over the place and vendors. And so we go down, and we see some people spinning fire…and well, that’s just really cool. So we’re over there watching them spin fire, and I'm standing next to a friend of mine who also got accepted to Vassar, and she’s wearing a big Vassar College sweatshirt that she bought when she found out she got accepted. So after they finished the set, these really cool fire spinners walk right up to her and say, hey, you go to Vassar? And we’re like, no but we’re going in the fall. And they’re like, well, cool, we’re the Barefoot Monkeys, come hang out with us, we go there.
So I kept in email contact with one of them for the rest of the summer. A lot of them were there during freshman week, and they were all out on the quad. The second day I was here, I just went out to the quad, and I didn’t see any of the people I’d met over the summer, but they were like, hey you want to learn to juggle? To every single freshman who walked past. So I had already decided, yeah, I want to learn to juggle and spin fire and all that cool stuff. October break my freshman year, a group of nine of us went back to Providence and did the last Waterfire show of the season. And it was just amazing — this was October, I’d known these people for a month and a half, and they were amazingly good friends.
Q: And diving? Were you on the diving team in high school?
A: Not at all. I wasn’t an athlete at all in high school. I was a complete science nerd who acted, that’s all I did. One of the Barefoot Monkeys, Andrew Wood, who ended up being my best friend, was teaching me acrobatics — here’s how you do a front handspring, a back handspring — and I was really enjoying it. And he said, well, if you enjoy this, you should try the dive team, and I was like, yeah, sure, I guess. The season didn’t actually start for two more weeks, so he walks up to me one day and says, you ready for the first day of practice? And I was like, um — okay! I guess? Need to bring anything? And that was it. This is my third year of diving, and I feel good about it. I can do amazing stuff off the board that I would never have thought possible.
Q: So Vassar has really opened some doors for you.
A: Definitely! It almost feels like a complete about-face, because I feel like a very different person from high school, but when I think about it, in high school I was a big science nerd who did a lot of acting, and now I’m a double major in computer science and drama, so clearly I haven’t lost that part of me, but there’s just so much more. I’m in a comedy troupe [the Limit], the Barefoot Monkeys, diving….
Q: What’s the most important thing you’ve learned?
A: My, that’s a daunting question. Coming in, I had never taken an acting class. I got on stage and did what I thought actors did. After the intro class in the Drama Department, I took Actor’s Craft. And I remember that was mind-boggling. I knew there were different theories about acting, but I didn’t realize how much there is to it, that acting isn’t just something you do, it’s a field of study. Theory after theory about how to act…and nobody does all of them because they conflict horribly, and almost nobody does only one of them. You pick and choose and build yourself a repertoire of skills as an actor. It was just fascinating.
