Spring Fever

Today I went to USITT... it was a trip. It's a lot more low-key than SETC, which probably has something to do with the lack of high schoolers and high-strung actors. But, what USITT lacks in stress, it makes up with over-stimulation. The Expo Floor is full of all the possible theatre companies and theatre schools... it's amazing. And if you're lucky enough, you get to pick up some fun swag from some of these companies. This year I scored an awesome tote bag from Syracuse Scenery made out of stage drapery. I also managed to get a USITT coffee cup.

But the thing that I really want to talk about is the fact that all of these conferences (SETC & USITT this year, KCACTF in past years) do one really unfortunate thing for me: make me feel incredibly inadequate. I look at work done by professionals and my peers and all I think is that I can't draw that well. While I figure I've got just as good design ideas as the next person, my inability to convey them through my sketches, well, that is a problem.

It makes me think about the holes in my education. I've gone through 7 years of schooling to be stamped with the coveted MFA diploma in just 6 weeks (yikes) and what do I have to show for it? The same level of sketching capabilities and, in some ways, less finesse in my model-making, the one place I feel like I had real talent leaving Grinnell. It also doesn't help when I get to catch up with my Grinnellian peers, one of which is finishing her first year of graduate school and one who is in his first year of freelancing (and headed to Prague in May). All I could think was that I haven't made any strides this way. I also don't know that I'm cut out for freelancing... I wonder what it is that I'm doing all of this for. What have I been striving for? What is this all worth? Am I going to try to make it by freelancing, hoping to be a resident designer, or becoming a teacher? What is it worth? Is this just a quarter-life crisis?

Or just the ramblings of a tired, overworked graduate student?