Can't Give Up Now
My personality changes due to my mood I may be in. I can be a nice, sweet, and caring person, but when you make me mad keep your distance. My strength is technology. My weakness is math. What makes me unique is that I don’t try to be like everybody else I try to be my own person the way God wants me to be. I believe I am a leader. My hairstyle is usually braids. I hate to leave my hair undone. My friends admire that I am very helpful and keep it real, I never hold anything in. My family finds it annoying when I always have a bad attitude.
My journey started here at Orr Campus, but it was called Orr Community Academy at the time of the program in the auditorium. It was in the evening during the fall around late “04” or early “05”. I decided to try out for Performance Arts with After School Maters Program. The title seemed interesting and I really wanted to see what it was all about. During our interview we had to recite a very short skit. The next day when they announced that the After School Matters list was up, I went to check and “Andrea Ward” was on the list. That same day I went and got down to work.
For our first assignment we were given a poem to recite and mine was titled “We Are More Than Soul Mates.” It was real long and my instructor said it was because he believed I had the potential. He gave us a half hour to go over it and then get on stage and see how much we know. Within the small amount of time I knew just about the whole thing, but a few words I stumble over. It was ok, I did better then the others for our first day.
By the third week Mr. Toomer pulled me to the side and said that he wanted me to be over the program, like an assistant. I wasn’t surprise because he had been on me like a hawk and giving me more work then he gave everybody else. One consequence that I remember is that when we did a practice performance and I got mad because I was over the other students that were in the program who were not doing it right. So once I got up there I started to mess up because an attitude affects you performance.
After a while we took a break from skits and poems to work on some type of formal ballet which look really confusing. Some of the different steps that my instructor was doing was moves that I had never seen and was difficult to do.
Funny things that I remember is when my instructor Mr. Toomer was trying to do hip hop moves he looked so funny because he did not know what he was doing. Another moment was when we did this skit about a lady wigs talking to each other about which one she like best. Then she got tired of us arguing and threw us off this mannequin head.
The reward I receive from this experience is that my instructor Mr. Toomer took us Downtown to see a performance. After the performance was done, we went downstairs to this room where they serve us a nice little dinner. The food was strange, but good at the same time because I had never tasted it before. We also got to talk to the actors and dancers who told us if we like what we’re doing then we should just believe in ourselves because we can do anything we put our mind to.
The personality my instructor had was kind of nice and caring when he wanted to be, but if you mess up during practice or make him mad make sure you do better next time. Practice makes perfect. During my heroic journey I figured out that even though you are the leader of a group it doesn’t give you the advantage to boss others around actually the only thing you are doing is being there to help them out when they make a mistake and correct them if they’re wrong.
