Angry College Student Vents About First World Problems

It's certainly been a while since my last true update on my life. It's Christmas Eve, I'm back home in Redwood City after finishing my first semester in college, and frankly, I'm quite bored.

Finals week was probably the most fun I've had all semester. No real classes to worry about, long breaks in between exams, only one actual exam aside from a few papers and performances. I got to do whatever I wanted, really, there was significantly less stress than I experienced in high school (three exams in one day? Who thought that was a good idea?)

Writing this article is a bit aggravating because I have one of the 2017 MacBook Pros, and since Apple is dead set on making everything as slim as possible, it features one of those newfangled butterfly switch keyboards. For those of you who don't know, a butterfly switch is a new device underneath each key on a keyboard designed to significantly reduce the amount of space in between the key and its corresponding sensor (a millimeter, about). This design allows for the keyboard to be even slimmer than before, and I suppose was meant to reduce the chance of dust getting under the keys. What Apple failed to consider is that if dust DID manage to get under the keys, it would be impossible to get out, and they would be rendered practically useless. Every time I used the letter h in this paragraph? A minimum of 3 tries to type it, each. There is no practical solution for this except blasting your laptop with compressed air (which failed). Another fun fact about these fun new keyboards: you can't remove the keys easily without breaking the switch. I'm getting it checked out later this week, but I'm expecting they'll have to replace the entire lower half of the laptop. $700 minimum if I'm out of warranty.

Tourette's and My Life Without Regrets

Here's a little fun fact about me:

When I was just a newborn baby, my dad would swaddle me in a blanket so tightly that the only thing I could move was my head. We thought this was what led to the head shaking that would persist in my life until the fifth grade. Looking back on it now, we believe that this may have been my first tic. 

A tic, for those of you who don’t know, is a sudden movement or habit exhibited when under stress. Most people are familiar with nervous tics, which many people demonstrate on occasion (clicking a pen back and forth, tapping your foot, etc.) For those of us with Tourette Syndrome, that occasion can last years.

The Brotherhood of the 4° Lunch Club

This is a little story I like to tell people about one of my fondest high school memories...

The Brotherhood of the 4° Lunch Club began October 7th, 2015, by a handful of sophomores and juniors who shared a free fourth period, who were really tired of spending it in the library under the strict rules in place. Rules such as: no phones, no loud talking, no eating, no headphones, no large groups at one table, etc.

The Brotherhood was formed when those of us sitting at the same table kept getting caught breaking these rules—and we were getting caught a lot—and decided to turn it into a game. How many of these rules could we break without getting caught? And how much could we bend and push them before getting in trouble?

Thanksgiving Break

It's been a few days since my last post, it's about time I wrote something new. Today I go back home to Redwood City for Thanksgiving break. I intentionally left all my fun stuff (videogames, etc) back at USC so I spend my time here truly relaxing or working without distraction. Maybe I'll get a few more posts out before I go back.

Today in Voice class we began our final project of the year: an exploration of our past and influential memories through sound and movement. (To those of you unfamiliar with theatre Voice classes, they are not quite singing lessons, but rather training on emotional and vocal control onstage. Some weird shit tends to happen.)

As part of the exercise to prep us for the project, we all laid down on our backs, closed our eyes, and pictured our lives as rivers, with each memory a stepping stone above the water.

A Little Memory

I've been using an app called thelittlememory as a way of keeping track of the little things I experience in life. It's like a digital journal, but meant more for small memories that give you joy or sadness or anger that you would otherwise forget.

"what do you want to remember about today?"

Eventually you start getting anniversaries (one week, one month, three months, six months, one year, etc.) and I'm rounding on my two year anniversary of my first memory.

You can also make your memories public, on a sort of worldwide bulletin board. It never shows you names or any identifying marks, so it can be truly anonymous. But sometimes people who post public memories tend to do so a lot, and from the way they talk, the names they mention, you can start piecing together stories. I've watched a lot of people I've never met grow through their little memories. I've seen friendships evolve and devolve, relationships live and die, obstacles overcome. I've even seen a people's lives being saved.

The Ride

Today I took the bus down to Palos Verdes to shoot for one of the School of Cinematic Arts films. I was supposed to be done by 15:00 but a sudden realization that the sun was setting at 16:57 delayed my departure to 16:00. I had a rehearsal for Acting class at 17:00 and I was two hours away from home by bus.

The school we filmed at was in a community kind of cut off from the rest of the town in that it was 1.4 miles up a hill. I had a bus transfer on the way there but it was taking too long so I took a Lyft from the transit center all the way to the school. I had no cell service to order another Lyft, let alone was I willing to spend money to be driven a mile, so I took off running down the hill.

Something New

I started reading Austin Kleon's Steal Like an Artist yesterday, a book a friend described to me as "so inspiring that I had to stop reading after 30 pages and go do something." It was required reading for my Movement class. I've created this blog because Kleon recommended that I do it. I'm hoping to use this as a creative outlet to write about ideas that I've probably stolen. To come up with any ounce of originality one has to swipe and steal ideas from wherever one can.

My name is Bryce. I'm a student at the University of Southern California, currently pursuing a BFA in Acting. I play the Chapman Stick and I write music. I take polaroid photos everywhere I go. I like to read plays. I once wrote and directed one of my own.