Martha, my dear, though I spend my days in conversation, please remember me . . .

I haven't posted in a while. So, how are you? Things been going well?

School's finally out. As you can imagine, this has made me quite happy. It felt like a REALLY long semester. Now, for the most part, it was a pretty good experience. But, as is often the case, there were a few different things that tended to make it a bit more difficult than it needed to be.

One of my teachers was a strange cross between a rather nice person and a complete jerk. I would have preferred that she had chosen one or the other, personally. Another one of my teachers was all right, for the most part, until the final exam. See, we turned in this paper before Thanksgiving, and we didn't get it back until the day of the final exam. On top of that, after writing no negative comments in the paper, he proceeds to give me a B. Now, if I deserved a B, fine, but at least tell me why, for heaven's sake. Personally, I don't think that I deserved a B. I know that I'm hardly objective here, but I followed the directions and wrote a pretty good paper.

In my production class, my teacher was awesome, except when it came to grading. She tends to be a bit too harsh, although this is offset by the fact that she's one of the coolest people I know. I got the chance to shoot a 4 minute "drama" live in-studio. Based on our strengths/preferences, my partner (for the assignment) and I made a deal: I wrote the thing, and he designed all of the shots. So, we ended up with a little comedy sketch set in an Italian restaurant. I had never tried my hand at writing comedy before, but I think it ended up pretty good. (again, I'm hardly objective here) It was pretty awesome knowing that we were taking something that I had written and actually shooting it. Unfortunately, while we got a pretty good score, I felt that we deserved better. Our talent (that's geekspeak for "actors") was awesome, and I thought that my partner and I did a really good job directing the piece. My partner was awesome too. You know those times when you get assigned to be a partner with someone that doesn't pull their weight? This was absolutely nothing like that. We worked together great and both shared the weight equally. Although we both kind of got stuck with each other originally, as everyone else already had a partner, I couldn't have asked for a better one. Oh, I almost forgot to tell you something else. I actually acted in another team's drama. It was a LOT of fun! Now, I hadn't acted since middle school, but this was great. It was a "dramatic" piece that my co-star and I were instructed to play like a soap opera. As you can imagine, the results were hilarious. Let's just say that that piece will probably be shown to a select audience. . .

But, despite all of that, the crown jewel of the semester was my Screenwriting class. In this class, I actually wrote a full-length screenplay. It's 91 pages, and it's called In Search of Puccini. By this, I mean the following: I wrote a blinkin' movie! What's more, I got an A on the sucker, which, as I'm sure you can imagine, made me very happy. My teacher was the man! I've had him for 5 classes now, and, to be honest, I wasn't sure how he would teach this class, considering the fact that it didn't seem to play to his background and strengths. But, in the end, I thought that he did an awesome job. At school, we have an awards banquet at the end of the year put on by the TV Film Society (which is the club for our major). I'm going to enter my screenplay in the writing category. We'll see how that goes. I already know what I want to write next. I'm hoping to get started during the break . . .

Now, I have a question for you. I tend to be somewhat random in terms of what I post here. Sometimes, it's poetry, other times, it's a rant based on something that's bugging me, other times, it's an update on my life, or a movie review, or the link to a video . . . et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Is there anything in particular that you'd like to see on Visions of Johanna? Is there something that you particularly liked that I posted previously? Maybe there's something in particular that you'd like me to comment on? I don't know. What I'm trying to say is this: if there's something you'd like to see here, let me know, and I'll try to accomodate.

Peace, Love, and Understanding,
-Adam