Embracing Intellectual Growth, the Academic and Creative Life of the University

I attended the CMU Theater’s production of Cabaret, which is a musical from 1972. I went to the November 11th showing from 7:30 to 10 pm in Bush theater with my sibling who really likes theater.

I chose this event because I don’t know anyone who’s in CMU’s theater program, so I thought it would be a good chance to get involved in a part of campus life that I’m unaware of. Also, I’ve heard some people talk about going to the play, so clearly this is something that’s important to other CMU students. Additionally, I have not been to many plays before, and the ones I did go to I thought were long and boring. So, it’s a challenge to myself to actually give this a chance.

At the beginning I was concerned that I wouldn’t be able to sit through the whole thing, which ended up being somewhat true. I did get up in the middle and walk around outside for a few minutes because I was tired of sitting. However, I only missed one song, so I was still able to follow the story when I returned. I still think that plays are much too long even with the intermission, but I can see why people like them.

I didn’t know what the play was about before I watched it, so most of the content was a surprise. I was unaware that it was a musical, so the singing caught me off guard. However, I did really like the music, and the performance as well. The singing, dancing, and acting were pretty impressive; it was cool to see how talented some of the theater students are.

The play is set in Germany around the time Nazis were coming to power, and it takes a dark turn towards the middle. I was surprised by how serious it gets considering the beginning is mostly just dancing and being silly. It was also interesting to see how well the actors handled the tone shift, it didn’t feel out of place. After seeing the play I was able to discuss it with my sibling a lot. I really like talking about the meaning behind stories with other people, so that was nice.

Overall, I enjoyed this experience even if the play was hard to sit through. It was really cool to see how good the production was creatively, so I may end up attending another CMU theater play in the future even if I get antsy in the middle. It also was special because I was able to see how talented some of my fellow CMU students are. Altogether I really enjoyed this PDP, which was a surprise because I thought I’d hate it.

Life on Campus: Navigating your Resources was a presentation by Lyvia Halfman and Emily Maskill about various helpful resources on campus. This event was November 15th from 4pm to 5:30pm. Lyvia is my TA and most of the people who attended were also from my Honors 300 TA group.

I chose this event because it’s a good way to learn about what’s available on campus. It’s my first year at CMU, so there’s probably a lot of resources that I’m not aware of. This is a chance to learn about these resources and potentially get involved in using them. Additionally, this will be useful personally as I may want to use some of these throughout my time at CMU.

Lyvia started out by talking about various library resources, like the writing center, study rooms, tutoring, etc. I was already aware of some of these, like the study rooms and writing center, but I was also able to learn about some new resources. I wasn’t aware that students could apply to tutor other students, so that might be something that I’m interested in. I’m doing pretty well in some of my harder classes so I think I would be able to help students who are struggling in them. That’s not something that I’ve ever been involved in, so it could be a good opportunity. Lyvia also talked a bit about mental health resources and groups on campus, which I was already pretty aware of.

After that, Emily talked about Adobe and about the library databases. I wasn’t aware that CMU students have access to Adobe for free, so I might be able to use that in the future, even if I don’t have any need for it now. Also, she mentioned that there are databases and resources specifically for departments and majors, which could be useful for finding more specific sources. She also demonstrated how to request articles that the library doesn’t have access to. I wasn’t aware that this was something we could do. Earlier this semester when I was researching for a speech a lot of the sources were unavailable, so I definitely could have used this. This will certainly be useful to me in the future as well.

Through this event, I was able to learn about a lot of helpful resources I was unaware of before. I probably won’t use all of these resources, but it’s still good to know they exist in case I ever want to. I ended up being informed of ways to solve some of the problems I was already struggling with as well. In the future, I’ll be sure to remember what I’ve learned here and use it to help me in the rest of my time at CMU.