The Metamorphoses

Introduction
I decided to come to NWU because I saw a show in NY, Metamorphoses, that one of the professors at NWU had directed. She actually won a Tony Award for it and I was so in love with the show that I found out that the entire thing had been created here and I had my parents get me on a plane and we flew out the next week and I decided this is where I wanted to go since I found out it was the best theatre school in the country that wasn’t a conservatory so that I could get my liberal arts education and I applied early and got in.

Campus Life and Social Life
I find the students kind of have a wide range there’s pretty much people from all different work ethics, the majority of which are overachievers. But I mean at the same time there are a lot of people who love to sit in their dorm room and study all the time, there’s a lot of people who love to experience life to the fullest.
I’m a theatre major, so my class schedule is definitely one that’s unique from the rest of the world. Like I take classes like acting where I go 4 days a week for an hour and I sit in a room with 20 some other theatre majors and we get up and we do scenes for each other. I do a lot of work outside of class that isn’t necessarily like studying or homework, but it’s memorizing lines creating performances and stuff. And then I will also take your occasional, as my parents call it, “the real class” and I’ll actually like read stuff. Advertisement
Academics
I also have voice lessons and things that I go to and I’m in a mime class, so I’m part of the Mime Company where I create mime pieces were I don’t get to talk for awhile. It’s cool and there’s like circus class that you can take and you pretty much, if you look hard enough, you can pretty much take anything that sparks your interest.

There are human sexuality courses there are religion courses, there’s gender studies courses. If you have to have a math or science class and you absolutely hate math and science, you can find ways of taking math and science without really taking them.

I’m in love with my professors. I think they’re absolutely fantastic. The majority of them, like for me specifically with theatre have come from theatrical backgrounds. So they all have major credit to their resume or have studied with some incredible people and are really intelligent and I learn a lot. Occasionally you get a bad seed, but more often than not if you go in with the right attitude you can something from somebody even if you hate their guts.

Student Body
Dillo Day is basically NWU’s version of your average state school weekend. We’re pretty much drinking and foreign substances as we possibly can into one weekend. I don’t really remember much of my first Dillo Day, but I’m really looking forward to this years.

Dance Marathon is one of the largest organizations for raising money for charities that I think we have in like the nation where people dance for 30 hours over the course of a weekend. It’s an insane concept and people really love it on this campus.

And then, there’s the WAMU Show, which next year will be at its 75th anniversary. Most of the music theatre department gets involved in creating this show. It’s the largest student-written musical in the nation.

It’s pretty much a big review show that every year has a different theme. Last year the theme was of all things “College,” this year of all things it’s “Theatre.” Next year because it’s the 75th it’s going to be a huge celebration theme and they’re hoping to bring back some of the famous alumni, which is another huge reason to be a part of this school.

People like Charlton Heston and a lot of famous Broadway people like Heather Hedley, Brian Darci James and they’re hoping to have a lot of people back and be part of the celebration.

In Closing...
I don’t know North Campus. South Campus is, for me, since I’ve only lived on South Campus, I pretty much survive down here. I consider it the more like thriving, artsy, downtown-esque version of college. It’s where the majority of the happenings are.
Pretty much up north you have your fraternities and the Tech Institute so I of course stereotype “up north” as the sort of more book wormy, jock-esque end of the world. But I occasionally go there when I need my frat party fix. And then South, we’re close to downtown Evanston so your restaurants and your movie theatre and everything cool is in the South end of the world.

I don’t think there’s a division between Greeks and non-Greeks. To me, it’s like another extra curricular activity thing. So you choose to be a part of it or not. More often than not I’m surprised when I find out people are in the Greek system.

It’s definitely something that during rush is like a really intense like 2 weeks here on campus but other than that people seem to be able to separate that lifestyle and it’s important when you get invited to a crush party and stuff and I like it because not being in the Greek System, but having lots of friends who are, you get to get all the perks of occasionally going over and getting some free food and going out to a lot of really good parties downtown.

I’m in Circus class. I had a bunch of other kids who were involved in the physical forms of theatre on campus. One of the guys is really passionate about Circus Arts and he organized what’s called a Student-Organized Seminar, which pretty much can happen in any field where he gets a faculty advisor to come and sponsor the group and one of the guys in the dance department thought it was a great idea.

They quote that we have the NWU mafia. Where pretty much if you go anywhere in LA or NY and you’re a graduate of NWU, they know and they take care of you. It’s like this special thing that I had no idea existed until I got here. They even made fun of it on a recent episode of JOEY, you know, the spin off of FRIENDS he like was pretending he was a graduate of NWU just so he could be successful in L.A. It’s like a guarantee that you will go places in your field once you graduate here because you’re taken care of.

The theatre department’s awesome. What I really like about it, it’s like a conservatory without being one. You still get your liberal arts education by taking classes out side of the theatre dept. and it’s not 24/7 live, breathe, eat and sleep it, but you take some amazing classes with the faculty, you work with the same acting teacher for 3 years, so you really get to cultivate like a relationship with that person and the people in your class you stay with for that time. So you sort of become an ensemble, which I really like.

You get to pretty much focus your energies in any direction. So I want to be a director so I’ve been taking directing courses. And design courses. You’re required to take certain design courses and build crews and run crews. So you work backstage for some of the main stage shows. You help build the sets. And it’s all required so you can learn so when you graduate you can go to any theatre and you can screw in the bolts in the set, you can hang the lights if you need to, you can help sew the costumes, direct the show be in the show or sit backstage and be a stage manager.

Pretty much any area of expertise, you’ve gotten some sort of education on so you can speak intelligently when you get our in the real world.