F1lm Sch00l

For those of you that read my blog that don’t go to NYU, this week was crazy. Members of the radical student group Take Back NYU barricaded themselves in the Kimmel student center over three days, while hundreds rallied outside. There were multiple injuries, and 18 students are now facing suspension or expulsion. (shameless plug: see the Washington Square News for more)

Now, I’m not going to rant off any of my opinions about the protesters or their demands. What I will do is say something strange I noticed about NYU as a whole over the past few days:

Given, NYU doesn’t have a strong community - that’s just a result of us being a large school in a large city. In some ways, the large student body separates us more by allowing us to form large rival factions of differing opinions. The Kimmel Occupation has done just that - those that support the protesters and those that think they are whining idiots have been at each others’ throats like never before.

And yet the past few days was the only time all year that I’ve felt a part of a larger NYU community. It’s interesting how something that has divided the student body so much has in turn created this sense of comradery as a result of that very division. True, it’s comradery in one group’s hatred of another, and the resulting community is not one that encompasses the entirety of NYU -  but that’s pretty representative of any community that forms. You can’t have a community of thousands and thousands of people without being shallow on some level.

And this is why I’ve always thought that huge colleges with huge communities that are meant to revolve around the University itself are insincere and utterly repulsive. Don’t get me wrong - I’d love for it to be possible to have thousands of people that put others before them, even when those others are virtually polor opposites in terms of beliefs and personalities. But for the moment, that’s not the world we live in. And any attempt to convince us of the contrary is a load of crap.

NYU may not have a University-wide community - but at least it’s honest.

I have a strong feeling the title of this blog will soon become slightly ironic.

I’m transferring out of Tisch.

Despite the excitement and anticipation I felt all through 11th grade, and a fairly strong first semester here at Tisch, I’ve come to a very clear realization that I do not want to be a filmmaker. It’s not that I haven’t enjoyed my classes here, or that I’ve failed out of all of my classes - I could do very well here, and enjoy most of the next three years.

But I don’t want to be a filmmaker.

To be honest, I think the Washington Square News has corrupted me away from my initial dreams a little bit. Since I first stepped foot in the WSN offices last August, I’ve slowly been enticed towards a career in technology for journalism (a terrible idea, given the current state of the newspaper industry and all). But it’s turning into what I love. And let’s be honest here, I have a greater chance of landing a job in journalism than becoming a sucessful filmmaker.

So I’m applying for transfer to Gallatin at NYU - a program where you design your own concentration, and have an outrageous amount of flexibility in the courses you take. Fingers crossed for acceptance.

Now I just have to make it through a semester of classes that are not only totally irrelevant to my career goals, but that I hate. Yay.

Have you ever seen those “cyberbullying” commercials on TV? They’re quite well-done, actually. Mostly talking about the typical online problems middle schoolers get into: gossip about who’s fat, who’s ugly… And they seem effective, given that the target age they’re aiming for is around 10-14.

And yet what surprises me, is that people here at NYU are even more vicious in their online communication than the people I went to middle school with. Now, I’ve often made comparison between college life and middle school life - pettyness, pointless competitiveness… And yet I’ve always held some sort of belief that we’re still fundamentally more mature than 12-year-olds. But I’m coming to realize that a lot of people here are just mindless assholes, making fun of everything and everyone they come in contact with, because they apparently think it’s “cool.”

I have no regrets about the user-generated communities that have begun to dominate the internet over the past four years or so. But an unfortunate byproduct of that shift - which is sadly rooted in blogs - is the creation of a “snarky, sassy and in-your-face” personality that people seem to idolize and conform to when developing their online presence. They will write extensive blog posts about people that annoyed them that day, or twitter about the same.

…I can’t tell if they actually think that what they write is private, or if they just don’t care if the people they write about see it.

Low-key example: I declined an offer last month to write for a collaborative blog. I was quite civil in my response, used a friendly dose of smilies, and thanked him for the offer. He then posts a tweet about how “some frosh” declined his offer, and made fun of my excuse that I was “already knee-deep in web projects.”  A tweet has become the digital equivalent of the quaterback quipping some diminutive joke in the high school court yard. Honestly don’t give a shit about that tweet - but he knows that a link to his twitter page is in the signature of all his emails, including the one he sent me… right?

That was literally nothing. But every day, I see people who are the subjects of more direct and vicious outbursts from people my own age. We’re adults now, guys - do we really have to be told the same tag line fed to middle schoolers in after-school commercials: “If you wouldn’t say it in person, don’t say it online”?

For me, Winter Break constituted something like an early-life crisis. Sure, parts were relaxing (a I spent a good deal of time building sets at Charlottesville community theatre), and I got to see many of my high school friends… But it seemed like I was caught in this continous 12-hour manic-depressive cycle, spending half my time keeled over in front of my TV watching Sci-Fi Channel reruns, and the other half incomprehensibly depressed about going back to school. Which is ironic, since I’ve been looking forward the Audio Semester all year.

So, to channel all of that hopelessly unnecessary and angsty thoughts out of my brain, I instead focused all of energy into The Daily Gorilla - an online magazine some friends of mine wanted to start. Well, we launched a week ago, and I think we’ve had a pretty good start. Our philosophy is “One story a day.” We don’t obsess over making sure we have 20 semi-interesting topics that we lightly touch on each day; instead, we pick one topic, one story, and write a damn-good article about it.

Anyway, shameless self-promotion as it is, here are our stories from this past week:

• “Trading Faces: Swapping smiles with a corpse,” by Megan Stride
• “Bye Bye Bush: And now the fight over his legacy begins,” by Adam Playford
• “Being mean to waiters,” by Adrianna Borgia
• “Basketball’s most influential man?” by Alvin Chang
• “Demise of the Critic,” by Thomas Garry

Christmas break for a freshman is an interesting time.

It’s your first extended period back home after leaving. The first time most of your friends are back at the same time as you. The first time you’ll realize whether you prefer home to school or not. And invariably, you’ll find yourself more bored than you’ve been all semester.

I’ve been lucky these past few weeks to have a pet project I’m working on (we’re launching in two weeks!), or I would be completely out-of-my-mind, raving mad, bonkers-like going crazy. This is the longest period of time I’ve had since middle school where I’ve had no homework. I’m left to sitting alone in my room, contemplating the oncoming terror of my audio semester at Tisch (which, in a strange reversal of opinion, I’m now dreading more than any of you could believe). HOW DOES ONE COPE WITH THIS TERRIFYING BOREDOM??

I’m also trying to deal with the fact that many of my friends will be graduating this semester. I’ve always had this problem - my snobbery leads me to pick friends much older than myself, which just further alienates me from my own kind.

College is really no different than high school…

Last month I was walking along Broadway, and came across a section of the sidewalk filled with bootleg DVDs for sale, all spread out on rugs. What striked me as slightly odd was the selection: there were about 20 or so DVDs on one particular rug, all of them pornographic. Oh, and one copy of The Women.

I found it strictly funny at first, but it got me thinking: maybe romantic comedies and pornography really aren’t that different after all.

Let’s reduce the genres to their basics. Although they take very different routs to accomplish their goals, both essentially attempt to synthesize “romantic” situations of a caliber which none of us will ever experience. Think about it - we make fun of the idea of a ripped pizza delivery man stopping by your apartment with no pizza and a somewhat unusual idea of what his tip should be. But you probably have a greater chance of that happening than small-bookshop-owner Meg Ryan has of meeting big-bookshop-owner Tom Hanks, both online and in person at the same time, as the latter simultaneously plans on driving the former out of business.

Why is bad to watch pornography? Because it gives you an unrealistic impression of sex. And yet I propose that most, shall we say “ordinary” films, slant our perceptions of what a “normal relationship” is like more than porn slants anyone’s view of sex. Seriously - my dating history has been driven and overshadowed by my naive and overly romantic/idealistic view of being in a relationship.

Given, I’m speaking mainly for my straight friends here, considering the only remotely accurate attempt I’ve seen at representing a gay relationship in the media has been on ER, and they were both dead by the end of the episode.

I’m now officially done with my first semester of college. I also technically now have a minor under my belt. Yes - thanks to the wonders of my unfortunate number of AP exams taken in high school, in addition to the Assembly class I took this year, I’ve finished the 20 credits required for a minor in Computer Science at NYU.

Well, that was easy.

Eh, I’m going for a double major anyway, so I’ve still got about seven classes to go. Ah well.

Anyway, exams are over now. To be honest, I’ve never really ever been too stressed about exams. I go off the theory that if the class has been worthwhile (which most of the classes I’ve taken over the past few years have been), then you should theoretically know most of the material by the end of the class. If you have to spend a week cramming for your final, the class wasn’t amazing in the first place for not teaching you, and there’s very little you’ll be able to do to learn a semester’s worth of material before the test.

Solution? I don’t really study for my exams…

Seriously - I had four AP tests last May, four days in a row. Never opened a book for any of them (I can’t wait to visit my teachers next month and watch their faces when I tell them that).

Because if you think about it, most of us don’t really study for exams in the purest sense anyway. Just from the conversations I overheard waiting to get into my Comp Sci exam, the majority of people seem to glance at their notes on and off over the few days leading up to their exam, stressing out and obsessing, while not actually getting anything done.

I just cut out the stressing part.

And I thought people were going crazy during midterms…

Seriously - people are freaking out. I spent 45 minutes on Sunday trying to find a coffee shot that wasn’t packed full of students cramming with their Biology textbooks. And I’m too scared to even enter the library this week. Whenever I see someone get into an elevator, they let out a long sigh, echoed by everyone else there. No one speaks - they all suffer silently.

Thankfully, I belong to that group of select individuals who mostly have final projects instead of final exams (a.k.a. Tisch). So while everyone in CAS has just started their week of hell, I’m mostly done with it all, with just one exam tomorrow morning.

Unfortunately, since most of my friends are in film as well (and most people in film don’t have any exams this week), they’ve all left for home and I’ve been left mostly alone here at NYU. With. Nothing. To. Do. To illustrate my sheer boredom, here’s a map of the walk I took yesterday:

That’s 225 blocks. Half a marathon. People aren’t supposed to have this much free time (in fact, I’m prone to panic attacks when I’m left without any objectives for this long).

Someone save me, please…

My classes are finally all over. I’ve still got one lone exam on Tuesday morning (and, unfortunately, nothing to do in New York until then), but I just got out of my last production class, where we screened our final films. So, my end of the semester gift to you all: A pretentious, self-reflective experimental film that makes no sense. Enjoy! (I might post the explanation later…)

On Friday, I was thrown out of a club for drinking alcohol. And yet, I don’t drink. Hmm… Conundrum. Story time? Oh yes.

To my (very real) dismay, the Washington Square News published its last issue of the semester last Friday, and the staff all went out to a holiday party to celebrate and say goodbye to our senior staff members. A bit after 9 o’clock, I wonder over to Avenue B to the club we’d arranged to have the party at. That’s where I met my first bouncer (Virginia doesn’t have 21+ bars, since they always have to be serving food); he didn’t realize at first that they were allowing people under 21 in. That’s when I should have started to realize that this club wouldn’t be handling the night very well.

After I get in sans red-wristband (so I couldn’t purchase alcohol), I do the mingling thing for a good 90 minutes. By this point, I’m extremely thirsty from the copious amount of talking I’ve been doing (I’m so popular after all…..). Well I’ll just go get a drink! The bar must have pop or something, I think. In what was an only slightly awkward moment, I push my way through to the front of the bar and ask for a coke. Five dollars and a six ounce drink later (pop apparently costs the same as pure alcohol - who knew?), I’m happily sipping away at my non-alcoholic beverage through those mini-straws they have so you don’t get drunk too quickly.

We’re all having a good time - reminiscing about the semester, waiting for our Editor in Chief and Managing Editor to give speeches. When suddenly… Staff starts coming around, trying to throw underaged people out who might be drinking. After a while, they come up to me, and ask me condescendingly, “What’s that?” pointing at my now-empty drink. “Coke,” I reply, knowing they won’t believe me, but wondering how the hell they expect to prove it was alcohol.

They take my drink, and try to take a sip - but there’s nothing left, so that’s inconclusive. I wonder what they would have done if the drink had been full, they’d taken a sip, and it wasn’t alcohol? Anyway, they proceed to spend 30 seconds trying to sniff my drink, which was also apparently inconclusive. So now they take an ice cube out of my drink and start sucking on it - keep in mind, this drink’s been empty for a good 15 minutes and I’ve been drinking the melted ice. There’s nothing left there.

Apparently this was the conclusive test, as the guy starts shaking his head and saying (voice a bit muffled - he was speaking with my ice cube in his mouth, after all), “No, you’re out. You gotta go.”

Would this be a good time to remind you all that it was, in fact, Coca-Cola (and only Coca-Cola) that I was drinking?

I leave with the simple question - why sell an 18-year-old soda if he can’t prove it isn’t alcohol?