Cindy Adams Must Die

Hey all! I'm well into the second week of classes, and I can't even begin to describe what this experience has been like for me. But I'm a writer, so I suppose I'll try. This program does not allow room for self-consciousness or stage fright. Allow me to walk you through one of today's excercieses.

Today, I had my first, "I suck," moment. Up until now, I'm not saying I've been the strongest in the class, but I've felt like I've been keeping up just fine. Today, I felt like mey work fell short. Don't take that short joke. Too easy. So today, we get to Gellman's class and he gruffly tells us to get out a piece of paper. We all thought it was gonna be a quiz on the book that he wrote, which made everyone panic, since only one person in the group had read past the forward. This may shock you, but I was not that one person. Instead, he said, "Think of a character. Not you or anyone you know. What's his/her name?" We were to fill in the answers to his questions in a column about this character. He spouted out questions such as "What religion do they follow? What car do they drive? Who do they hate?..." He left about two seconds in between each question, so we all wrote furiously, just trying to keep up. After he was done asking 25 or so questions, he told us to flip our papers over and write stream of consciousness style until he told us to stop. We were to write as that character for several minutes, but we were not allowed to let the pencil leave the page. Once we were done, he put a chair up on stage and said, "Now you're each going to perform the monologue you just wrote." He may as well have told me to bob for live electric eels. You don't want to, but you do what Gellman says. You don't question it. My character was Cindy Adams, an overachieving college cheerleader. She drove a brown mini cooper and her favorite food was strawberry ice cream. I hate her. She didn't stretch me. I could have done better.

I'm still adjusting to the fact that I'm not the best at anything here. I want to be, and I'm going to try to be, but I can see I have a long way to go. I've already grown in so many ways since being in Chicago and starting classes. I'm still loving this experience, but I think I'm going to have to kick it up a notch. I've never had to work so hard to succeed. I'm sorry this is not as funny as usual. I guess this entry is coming from a place of being both frustrated and motivated.

Tonight, I get to go to a special preview show opening at Second City. It's calld Rod Blagojevich Superstar, a rock opera parody satire. I'm pretty excited. I'll have to blog tonight or tomorrow to tell y'all about it. I've gotta run to make dinner for myself before the show, but please do me favor if you would. If you run into a college cheerleader named Cindy Adams, punch her in the face. She's boring and pedestrian. Have a lovely day!