Category: Creativity

CAS as a Quaranteenager

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With the shutdown of schools due to COVID-19, things have certainly become interesting. Doing online school to finish another year, not being allowed out of my house, and limited grocery and item shopping has made life weird to say the least. Although, weird is not necessarily bad, and one thing I’ve been able to do with all my time stuck at home is CAS. While yeah, it’s obviously not the same as what I was doing while at school, I’ve found that there are plenty of ways to continue doing creativity, activity, and service. In this post, I’d like to show what I’ve been up to during quarantine.

In terms of creativity, I’ve had a ton of things to do. With all this time and not much to fill it with, I’ve been motivated to learn plenty of new creative skills and develop the ones I have further. Recently, I’ve been helping my mom when it comes to baking things like bread or cooking dinner every now and again. While I’ve always enjoyed certain cooking activities like grilling meats, it was a fun challenge to try and learn the many subtle nuances of making bread. I’ve also been getting a ton of practice in on my euphonium, although I miss concert band a lot. No matter how much I practice, it’s not like I can capture the sound of playing in a good sized band with other people. With any luck, we’ll get to play together one more time this year(for graduation if we’re lucky) and I’ll get to actually have a final concert of high school.

Activity is probably the hardest category to keep going when it comes to quarantine CAS. Luckily, embassy staff and family members have a recreation facility that they are allowed to visit, which has a tennis court and pool. I go to work out there every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning at 6:15. I usually run around the tennis court for about 40-45 minutes before doing a quick swim workout. In the grand scheme of things, it’s a pretty tame workout but it keeps me active which is what’s important. I also do push-ups, sit-ups, and pull-ups around my house intermittently, but I know I need to make better schedule and plan for doing those. I plan to continue this routine for physical exercise until the quarantine ends, though maybe I’ll switch it up if I get bored of it.

Finally, service. Doing service while under lockdown is a little tricky, since I’m obviously not meeting with my service group every Thursday afternoon. Instead, I focused on doing service for the people I’m living with. That means helping out around the house for cleaning, cooking, or generally whatever. I’ve been trying to look for ways to help my parents and do my part in making curfew less stressful for our family.

That does it in terms of what I’ve been doing recently. Curfew and quarantine is certainly a challenge to deal with, though it really isn’t that bad. Things like CAS have been helpful in preventing me from going crazy out of boredom, and all the activities here are things that are quite enjoyable to do(with the exception of early morning exercise). With the end of senior year drawing nearer, it sure is a weird way to end my final year of high school.

CAS Project Part 2

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In my last post, about my CAS/eagle project, I went over all of the planning phase for the project, with what my specific goal was and how I was going to get there. In this post, I’m going to show the physical work aspect of the project and the completion.

And so it began…

I didn’t actually start working on the bags immediately after the materials ordered for them had arrived. They had come on a Monday, and I wanted to get them all done in one massive batch, so I decided to wait until the weekend. On Friday, my mom helped me make a single bag of the pattern to see how it turned out, as well as how to most efficiently make them. I decided that the best course of action was to get through all the steps at a time, instead of making each one to completion and then starting the process again. This was because certain steps, like cutting the fabric into the correct shape and size, were done far more efficiently en masse. Doing each step all at once also increased the quality of the bags, as I would become very good at completing each step as it continued. Having decided on the order of events, we began at around 8 in the morning on Saturday. The goal was to produce about 35 bags by the end of the day, and fill them the next day. This was certainly going to be a challenge for me, as I didn’t really have much experience using a sewing machine or just making things out of fabric in general before this project, so I would have to learn a lot fast.

Speaking of steps, there were 6 distinct steps for making a bag

  1. Cutting the fabric pieces
  2. Making the initial stitches
  3. Making the secondary stitches
  4. Folding and ironing a part of the fabric(so it would be easier to sew)
  5. Sewing the “V” part of the fabric(for the drawstring to pass through)
  6. Cutting the ribbons for the drawstring and pulling them through

Let me just say, I’m very glad I set aside an entire day to make them because wow, it was time consuming. While I originally intended to go through each step on that list 35 times in a row before moving onto the next one, I ended up doing about 3 batches mainly because of how tired I was getting just doing the same thing over and over again. I’d say that each step was equally as time consuming, but I just kept going.

(measuring and cutting the fabric for the bags)

To my surprise however, there were relatively few issues along the way, and they all pertained to the sewing machine I was using. I didn’t think much of them, but it ended up as a major issue later in the day. Tragically, our family’s 50+ year old sewing machine properly broke down on us while I was using it at around bag 25. Luckily, I was able to borrow a sewing machine from some embassy friends but the process of finishing all the bags ended up getting delayed to the following weekend. I’m glad the only real problem I had was that easily solved.

(making the initial stitches)

(Now doing some of the more complex bits on the new machine)

In my last post, I had mentioned that I had placed a donation bin for travel sized toiletries at the embassy community liaison office(CLO). While I had expected that some people would probably donate items, I had no idea that I would get the huge response that I did. While I didn’t count the total amounts of everything people donated, we had more than 35 of every item to fill the bags with. It was really great to have the community support me like this, as without them a project like this wouldn’t have been possible.

With the items needed collected, the filling of the bags began.

(Sorting the items out before putting them into the bags)

(bags lined up and ready to fill)

Around this time, the blankets and pillows arrived from my Great Aunt, and so all the pieces of the project were together. The final step was simply putting them in the boxes and bringing it over to the embassy, which I did on February 5, 2020, marking the completion of my project.

(showing the individual bags to Mr.Groeneveld, the embassy representative who I corresponded and collaborated with throughout the project)

Conclusion

The entire process of this CAS project and Eagle Scout project has been a fantastic experience. I was able to learn so much as well as give back to a community that has always been supportive. Not only have I improved my hands on real world skills like sewing, I’ve mainly improved and learned how to collaborate in a professional manner and plan out a large project and execute said plan effectively. My actual product is quite interesting, in the sense that I hope that there is never a situation that requires it to be used, and I hope that all it has to do is sit on a shelf in the Embassy. I’m very grateful for an opportunity to apply ideas and things I’ve learned from boy scouts into this project, and I think it allowed me to make a lasting positive impact.

CAS/Boy Scout Eagle Project

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Introduction to the Eagle Scout Project

In the Boy Scouts, there are 7 ranks that can be attained by completing sets of various and differing requirements. The ranks, Scout, Tenderfoot, Second Class, First Class, Star, Life, and Eagle, and the requirements that one has to do to achieve them are intended to be a journey, where a scout learns valuable life skills about all sorts of topics. The most well known of these ranks is the Eagle Scout, which is the highest attainable rank in BSA, and it is recognized and respected by many places, including universities, due to the amount of effort it takes to get there. Like the rest of the rank badges, the Eagle Scout badge has its own fair share of lengthy requirements, but one stands out amongst the rest. The Eagle Scout Service Project is a requirement that many Boy Scouts dread, due to the large amount of work that one has to put in, for both figuring out what you want to do and for the actual completion of the project. Since first joined boy scouts 7 years ago, I was always looking at the Eagle Project requirement in the handbook and wondering if I would ever make it that far, as well as what I would do. The time to choose has finally come after quite a while, and I think that I’m ready for it.

Like many boy scouts, I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do for my project. I had a couple of ideas floating around in my head, but I wasn’t really sure how achievable or impactful they would be. I spent much time deliberating what to do, until one day where I had a spontaneous moment of figuring it out. My mom and I had been talking about the 2019 easter attacks and how difficult it had been for the US Embassy staff because as well as having to deal with the aftermath of the attacks, they also had to help deal with many American citizens seeking refuge in the US Embassy. In particular, there was a severe lack of items like toiletries. Embassy staff had a difficult time finding these items for the people seeking refuge, and it was a stress on both the people taking refuge and the people trying to help them. This difficulty in particular stood out to me the most, as it seemed like one that be solved. While thinking about this, I came upon the idea of making a bunch of little toiletry kits with various items inside. My idea was that each kit would be a handmade bag and have basic toiletries and a blanket/pillow combo for someone to use. The kits would all be stored in a medium sized plastic box that could be put wherever and only be opened when needed, presumably in a situation of crisis. I envisioned that if they were ever needed, it would be extremely simple to give them out. I asked some embassy staff who were were working when the easter attacks happened what they thought of my idea, and they said that was great and a system of kits like that would be great in a crisis situation for people taking refuge at the embassy. That was the final step in deciding that I wanted this to be my Eagle Scout project and CAS project.

Pretty soon after coming to this conclusion about what I wanted to do, I began to reach out to certain people at the US embassy to see if this was actually feasible. While I knew that it would be logistically possible, I wasn’t really sure if it was gonna be legally possible. What I mean is that I was unsure if there would be complications for working with a government agency entity like the Embassy, and if I would need any special permissions. Luckily, it turned out that it was completely feasible in that regard, and there would be no issues whatsoever working with the embassy.

Plan Time Started

After getting the part about working with the Embassy sorted, I began to make a detailed plan of what exactly I should include in each kit. I made a detailed list of items, as well as an estimated number of kits, and then went to meet with the embassy representative I was communicating with. During our meeting, he gave me some ideas about what to change on the list of items and what he thought should be included. One of the big changes that I made to my original list was the specifics about the blankets and pillows. Previously, I had intended to include a small blanket and pillow with every kit, so that if somebody had to sleep on a floor, bench, hospital waiting room, or just about wherever, they could be more comfortable. During the meeting, we agreed that we probably wouldn’t need 30+ pillows and blankets and that the bags would have to be quite large to fit them. I decided that the bags and pillows could therefor go in their own small plastic box(small black and yellow durable home depot type boxes) next to the box with the kits, and to only have x12 pillows and blanket combos. Following the conclusion of this meeting, I came up with the exact items needed and how many bags were to be made.

Using an online pattern, I planned to make 35 bags. Each bag would contain a travel sized shampoo, conditioner, bodywash, soap, toothbrush, toothpaste, and pack of wetwipes.

To collect these items, I have a donations collection bin located at the community liaison office(CLO) at the embassy where people can drop off items. Through the CLO, I also sent out an email to the entire embassy community announcing the donation collection bin. My thought for doing the donation collection bin was that it gave members of the embassy community a chance to connect to the project and that it would be a good way to get rid of all of their excess travel toiletries without throwing them away. I figured that other embassy families and people would have similar amounts of unused toiletries from flights and hotels sitting around, and judging by huge response I got, I was right.

I also ordered the materials, which ended up being:

  • 8 square yards of blue flannel fabric(for the bags)
  • 20 yards of ribbon(for the drawstrings on the bags)
  • 500 yards of blue thread(for the actual sewing)

Now, the bags were one thing, but the pillows and blankets were another story altogether. The one material I had difficulty finding availability of was stuffing for the pillows. To get around this, I reached out to my great aunt, an avid seamstress who lives in the US and asked her if she would be willing to help with regards to the pillows and blankets. After emailing back and forth to finalize the measurements of exactly what I wanted them to be, she began to work on them and said that she would mail them in a couple of weeks. This was the last element of the planning before I began the large task of producing all of the bags and filling them.

In my next post, I will detail the production of the bags and the completion of the project.

SAISA Music 2020

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SAISA music was a very enjoyable trip, where I learned a lot about being a better player and had a ton of fun while doing it. This year, SAISA music was hosted at the American School of Bombay(ASB) in Mumbai, India. In addition to SAISA music, SAISA art was being hosted there as well at the same time as music, so the amount of people for each trip was more limited this year, with a maximum of 20 people total from teach school. With our flight leaving to Mumbai at about 11:45pm and arriving at roughly 2am, we were all exhausted upon arrival, and we only made it to the school by about 4am. This was not helped by the fact that we had to sleep on gym mats in a multi-purpose room, as it was seen as too early to try and go to our hosts houses, and it proved to be the worst part of the trip in my opinion. That same day, we got to experience a little bit of the city by going out for breakfast and spending the rest of the day at a mall, though it was certainly a challenge to stay awake after effectively getting no sleep the night before.

The music that we played at SAISA this year was much different from last year’s music. This year, the theme of the SAISA was “zero-hour”, and was aimed at raising awareness for several environmental activist organizations. Because of this, the music was aimed at more nature related pieces. We had 4 songs: “Lightening Field”, “Nurture”(actually composed by the guest conductor who led the ensemble this year), “Bellah, Sun Woman”, and “Freedom”(a piece sung with the choir and that was commissioned for SAISA music). In terms of difficulty, I’d say that they were about the same as last year’s pieces, though I enjoyed last years music far more. I enjoyed it more because last year, the music was much more varied in terms of the general sound, with last years having each song be in a different style. This year, all the songs felt way too similar for my liking. As well as that, last year’s music had some killer euphonium parts that made it super fun for me to play, where as this year I was relegated to pretty simple baseline parts. Still, the music did sound really good this year, and “Freedom” with the choir was really cool.

The schedule that we had this year was intense, but it was also quite good. We would play for a couple hours at a time, have a break, then some more hours. Some of the rehearsal times were solely dedicated to practicing Freedom with the choir. While I was exhausted and my lips hurt, I was generally having a really good time during the rehearsals. One of my favorite parts about band is just hearing a piece of music come together for the first time, and feeling part of an enormous, beautiful sound. In particular, the first time we did Lighting Field as whole after some practice was awesome, and it’s very hard to not get swept up in the music and get lost counting. Freedom was also really neat in this regard, because we got to hear it as a band first, and then incorporated the choir which managed to really elevate the piece to a new level.

However, as mentioned before, I did enjoy the music more last year. In fact, there was actually a song I didn’t really like this year, that being “Bellah, Sun Woman”. “Bellah” was a song based around traditional Australian aboriginal folk tales about the creation of the sun, and was split into 5 separate movements, each very different from each other. They ranged from shouting while whacking drumsticks against our chairs to more standard band pieces. The 3rd movement, “Kundna – Lizard Man” was particularly difficult as the low brass section(trombones and euphonium(me)) had to pat and clap out a fairly complex rhythm on our bodies, while chanting loudly. During this part, the band was also playing regular notes too, so we had to be very loud or we wouldn’t be heard. I made the mistake of not practicing this particular movement at home, and we did very little rehearsal of it during the actual festival. Unfortunately, I failed to really get the rhythms of it down, and couldn’t do it for the final concert. Despite that, I feel I learned much about percussion and grew in terms of dealing with complex rhythms.

The final concert rolled around very quickly. While we technically had the same amount of time as last year, it felt like it went by much faster this year. After the final concert, we would have time to briefly explore the SAISA art exhibition and then OSC would head off to the airport. The concert was livestreamed as it normally is, though the quality this year was really good, so major props to the AV team at ASB. The first piece we played was Lightening Field, which sounded very good and strong. Everyone really nailed the angry dynamics of the piece, and really gave it some punch. The next song, Nurture, sounded nice but I think that we’ve played it better in practice before. Then, we had Bellah, which turned out less than ideal. The conventional parts of the song went fine and sounded good, but the aforementioned 3rd movement didn’t turn out all that well. While technically correct, the problem was that the rest of the band was far too loud to hear the drumming and patting and chanting, which was one of the main focuses so the song was lacking without it. Finally, after the choir did their pieces, we had Freedom, which turned out pretty well. And with that, the official part of SAISA music was over. I said goodbye to my friends, went and packed up my Euphonium, and then immediately had to go, which was unfortunate because I missed most of the art exhibition.

First day at ASB

 

Dress Rehearsal
End of the band part of the concert
The massive banner that they had hanging up in part of the school. Pretty neat they got it made just for the festival.

Live stream link:

For those wondering why I’m not wearing a proper dress shirt, I had forgotten it at my host’s house in the morning. Lesson learned: Always, always check the closets.

An Introduction to Boy Scouts

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I’d like to start out by saying that this definitely isn’t a new activity for me. I’ve been participating in BSA(Boy Scouts of America) for the last 7 years of my life, since 5th grade. I’ve never really mentioned it mainly because I just assumed that it wasn’t something that could be counted for CAS, but I was told otherwise, so here it is. Doing Boy Scouts in Sri Lanka presents a unique challenge as there was actually no pre-existing troop here for me to join when I arrived. In years past, I’ve always been a part of a troop some place or another, even in locations like Kenya. However, since there is no troop here, I take part in what is called the “Lone Scout” program. In the LS program, I directly correspond with the nearest council(in my case, Osaka Japan) and send whatever completed work I have there. My mom serves as my scoutmaster, but this doesn’t mean I’m skipping requirements or having the work done for me. If anything, everything I do falls under more scrutiny than the average Boy Scout.

My mom and I have our official scout meetings every Sunday at 11:00am, and I get dressed in my uniform as I would if I were going to a real troop. This is important as makes sure that I’m in the mindset for Boy Scouts, and not just treating at as a regular part of my day. We’ve been doing this since August of 2018, when I moved to Sri Lanka. As mentioned previously, I’ve been doing Boy Scouts for the last 7 years, and am currently a Life Scout. For those unfamiliar with the boy scout ranks, they go as follows(lowest to highest) Scout, Tenderfoot, Second Class, First Class, Star Scout, Life Scout, and Eagle Scout. Eagle Scout is easily the most well known one, as it is the highest and requires a huge amount of effort.

I’m currently in the process of working on my Eagle Scout badge, and am almost there. While there are plenty of requirements for Eagle Scout, the most famous(or infamous, depending on who you ask) is the Eagle service project. The Eagle service project is a service project that the Scout decides on, which then has to be approved by their council before starting. Once the project is completed, the Scout has to send a moderately lengthy report to their council, which goes to the BSA headquarters to be approved. This process takes months, which is unfortunate for me as I become too old for Boy Scouts in July of 2020, meaning that I have approximately 1 chance to get it right. In fact, I’m actually almost done with the physical aspect of my Eagle Scout project, and will fully explained it in it’s own blog post.

Here are some pictures from some of the things I’ve done, the first is me working on a computer for the Family Life merit badge and the second is me updating my uniform with some stuff I’ve earned.

Oliver! Performances

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The end of Oliver is somewhat bittersweet for me. While it is nice to be free of all the rehearsals(especially the ones that cut into class and my weekends) I really enjoyed the production as a whole. Our months of hard work and efforts culminated in the 3 performances we had on December 6th, 7th, and 8th. After finishing those, it honestly felt like there should be more. Following the conclusion of the final night on the 8th, I didn’t really feel like I was done performing all of this pretty difficult music that I had learned over a long period. I was in denial, I felt like I should perform it more. Some of the other members of the band echoed this sentiment.

The performances themselves went really well, which is good because they were our only shots to get the music right. The first night was the hardest at first, mainly because I had serious nervousness to overcome. The saying goes “The audience doesn’t have the music” meaning that the audience won’t know if you make a mistake while playing. Though this is true, a wrong note in an exposed place is very obvious and is pretty embarrassing, especially on the opening song of the entire musical. In most of the practices, I had always been unable to hit the correct opening note at the start of the first song, but I managed to do it during all 3 nights. Sometimes a little adrenaline and nervousness is a good thing while playing. Once everyone got into their grooves

 

 

Oliver Musical Preparations 14.11.2019

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As is the case with rear view mirrors, sometimes objects in life are closer than they appear. This is an accurate representation of how I feel about the coming musical. What once seemed like it was far away is suddenly right here, and it’s not a particularly pleasant realization.

I feel like I’ve played decently complicated music in my past years doing band, but the music that I have for Oliver makes it seem easy in comparison. In addition to being challenging music by itself, it’s also music we have to play alongside the actors on stage, meaning that the tempo and length of each song is not guaranteed. Despite that, I think the hardest part is simply the volume of pieces that we have to play. While a normal band concert might be 4-5 pieces we have to learn, for Oliver we have 35. Taking out reprises of songs(same song but in a different key and general mood), there’s 31 unique songs to learn. These songs range from super slow(As Long As He Needs Me) to very, very fast(Food, Glorious Food). Despite these challenges however, I still think that we can pull it off. Everyone in the musical band group, which is a smaller subset of the regular band, has been putting in their best at every rehearsal, and also is practicing the music at home. Last year, I practiced my instrument only on weekends. Now with the musical, I end up practicing basically every night at home.

I’ve definitely made good progress in improving on the songs since the beginning, but there are still a couple of songs that always get me. For me, the hardest song is the aforementioned “Food, Glorious Food”. This is due to a couple of reasons, with the biggest one being it’s speed at an insane tempo of roughly 200 beats per minute. Add this into the fact that the majority of my notes are 8th notes(1/8th a beat), and you’ve got the recipe for a very hard song. Thankfully, the majority of my notes are with all valves open, as I wouldn’t be able to move my fingers fast enough to keep up otherwise. Regardless, I’ve actually been enjoying it as a song because it’s quite fun and I look forwards to learning it well enough to preform, and I’ve made significant improvements on it as of recently. Some of the other songs are just difficult through being slow and difficult to count as I have lots of rests during them.

Here’s a link to food glorious food, as well as the link to the Gecko Network video of the preparations. Take a listen to food glorious food if you can, and appreciate just how fast it is.

Food, Glorious Food:

Gecko Network video of the production preparations(I’m actually featured quite frequently!):

CAS Goals 2019-2020

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The start of the new school years marks the start for another round of CAS activities. This year, I’m doing pretty much the same as last year with some exception and changes. The 2018-2019 school year was really great for me in terms of the things I did, and I grew as both a person and in terms of skill within these activities.

Creativity – concert band+Playing for the musical

While I’m continuing with concert band, this year is gonna be a little different. That’s because this is the year where the winter gala is replaced with a musical, and some band members play for it. Unlike the regular concert band, you had to be specially invited to play in it, and I was. It will take place after school on Mondays between 2:50 and 4:30, meaning that I can do both of these things. I’m very excited for it as I think it will really help my skills as  a musician, with effectively double the ensemble practice time.

Activity – SAISA swimming

This year marks my 8th year of doing swimming as a sport, and also my last, meaning that I’ve got to make it really worth it. To do this, I’ve set some goals that will help me improve as a swimmer, and I’m going to reach for them with all I have. After all, it’s my last chance at high-school swimming. I’m also a team captain this year, meaning that I have to also look out for the rest of the team, which is a good sized responsibility.

My first goal is pretty simple, to drop time on all my events. While it’s a generic goal, it’s also a good one. Despite me not swimming every event at SAISA, I feel like my general swimming ability should improve. Additionally, I’m looking to get better at some events in particular. These are the 200 freestyle, the 50 butterfly, the 100 butterfly, and the 400 freestyle. I want to really get better at these events because I really enjoy swimming them and I’m actually fairly decent at them already. Still, it’ll be a challenge to improve that’s going to take a lot of effort on my part.

My second goal is to be a good team captain. I know that saying “good” is a really ambiguous term, but I think that it’s important to

Service – Gecko Network

Last year was something of a orientation year for me in gecko network. While there wasn’t that much content initially put out, the production of content picked up over the year. However, I still feel that there is room for further improvement, where we actually push ourselves to learn and create as well as we can. Therefore, my goal is to be responsible and put out more, higher quality videos, for both regular gecko network and for gecko news. I also want to improve on my editing skills, something which I began to learn last year but never fully invested in. It’s going to be difficult, as I’m coming from essentially no experience to making good videos, but I think I can do it.

 

That wraps up my goals for the semester/year for now. I will update this post in semester 2 to reflect activities that change, like swimming or Oliver band.

Spring Gala 2019

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On April 8th we had our spring gala concert, after several months of preparation. It was the culmination of several months of effort by well over 100 different people. There was a total of 21 groups and solos that performed, from classical to 80’s rock in genre. I partook in 2 ways, doing both concert band and backstage crew.

Concert Band

Concert band has been going since August of 2018, and the composition of the band has remained virtually the same. The music we played for spring gala was much more difficult than we played for the previous winter gala, and it was also more fun to play. The songs we played were called “Soul Bossa Nova” and the “Blues Brothers Revue”. They were quite challenging, but it was worth the efforts. I personally enjoyed the music played at spring gala far more than the one song we played at winter gala, as it really showcased our efforts and ability to grow as musicians.

Soul Bossa Nova was the easier of the two, as it was much shorter and had a consistent rhythm and melody. However, it still had some great parts, and a killer solo that I got to play about halfway through the song.

The Blues Brothers Review was very intimidating when we first got the music. Taking up 3 full pages, it has 4 distinct sections that vary greatly in tempo, rhythm, and melody. It opens with a very fast part for the bass instruments that does not let up, and brings in other instruments as it plows on. It was a very hard part for me because there was no good spot where I could breathe. It takes a lot of air to play Euphonium loudly, and there were no natural spots to breathe nor were there breath marks incorporated into the song. Despite these challenges, it was extremely fun to play both during practice and during the concert. During the concert, we played it a little slower than we practiced, which was somewhat helpful for my breathing. It’s definitely been my favorite piece that we’ve performed since I joined in August.

Backstage Crew

I did backstage crew for the first time during the winter gala, and it sure was an experience. It was quite fun to be handling all the backstage stuff and helping out the other performers, but it was very stressful. In backstage crew, time is money(not actual money in this case but audience satisfaction). You can only do so much to prepare yourself for the actual concert, and even then it is still difficult. Regardless of all of that, I still had a blast. After getting experience from winter gala and using lessons learned, we were far faster and more efficient as a backstage team this time around. While I was technically backstage manager, we all were equal when it came to clearing chairs and setting up microphones. The spring gala is even harder than the winter gala for the crew though, as it features the STOMP! performance from the 10th graders. This year, they had ladders, tons of buckets, and drumsticks and broom handles everywhere. We still managed to pull through however, and I think that we definitely did a good job, and also improved from last time. Maybe I’ll do backstage crew next year.

Here are some great photos that Gecko Network took during the concert

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