First day of school

This morning was the earliest I've woken up since the road trip. I won't say the time because it's a bit embarrassing but it was still tough. The reason I had to wake up early was to go to my first class at the Groundlings, which I was incredibly excited about. I decided to take classes twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 to 1:30. Unfortunately I auditioned a little late and would have preferred to take classes at the night sessions offered. Those being full I decided to go twice weekly to get finished sooner and the morning classes would still let me work at nights and weekends, assuming of course that I could find a job.

So I loaded up my Ghostbusters lunch box and left very early, just in case I couldn't find a parking spot or something. It was a good thing I did too because today was also the first day I got to experience true traffic on a LA freeway. Honestly it wasn't too bad, it was at least moving fairly regularly, but this was 9 in the morning. I shudder to think what traffic would be like at 7. One more reason why working nights and evenings would be terrific.

The class itself was very interesting. It's definitely a new way to do improv then what I'm used to, more character driven and much more emphasis placed on working with the person you're performing with. The people taking the class was also a little surprising. Most were probably around my age, but there were 3 people there who actually had kids. Almost everyone in the class is not originally from California, though I am the furthest from home, no other New Hampshireites, but there was one guy from Massachusetts. A lot of the other students are by craft actors/directors and seemed much more in tune with acting philosophy and that kind of thing. I take it as a matter of pride that I have no formal training but probably more on stage experience than anyone else. Most of all I had fun and I'm looking forward to the next class on Thursday.

A special word on job searching. I could not have picked a worse time to graduate college. Job searching is absolutely soul crushing. I'm even finding jobs that my two degrees qualify me for and I'm hearing nothing back. I realize that it's tough because this whole region is transplants looking for work and it's also tougher because there's a glut of college graduates looking for work as well. Today I've probably sent out 12 or so applications and resumes, I expect to hear back from zero of them. Even Starbucks isn't hiring! And anytime a company says, "We're not hiring but just drop off your resume and we'll keep it on file." they're lying. They take a 5 second look at your resume to make sure you're not related to a Senator and then they dump that resume in the trash. I don't know what I'm gonna do. I think it's a good sign that I'm constantly stressed out about looking for a job but improv is such a relaxant.

On that note, last night I met Eric of theimprovstudent at a show at the iOwest theater which was excellent. Eric is a nice guy and has been very supportive of my insane decision to move out here. He's already invited me to his birthday this Saturday which is great because it means I'll get to meet some new people as well, which is always good at this point.

Happy Trails!