the untold truths of a quiet person

Impressions

I think when you're extroverted, you can reach for any mask you want, show any version of yourself, and people can just decide if they react well to your theatre performance or not. When you're introverted, the audience almost has to make your mask for you. With your blank one on, they add the different ambiguous details from the very little things you show of yourself. Basically, people just make assumptions about you. Great... 

It's a pretty interesting concept I would say. How would people think of you if they had the only smallest  bits of information to go off of? Luckily throughout the years I've been able to discover some of their impressions of me. I like to start off the impressions I let on my teachers.

It's assumed that usually student and teachers have a mutual respect for each other as one is apt to learn and proceed through schooling and one is apt to get that money. However we all know, either your teacher likes you, couldn't care less about you, or completely dreads the entirety of your existence. I've had both ends of the spectrum, but just in one class. Theatre.(see now that weird theatre intro kinda makes sense lol.) 

My teachers before usually thought of me as hard-working, consistent, with some creative talents whether that be writing or some performing arts.(thank you for reading my resume, I hope you'll consider me for the role of a liked student.) Yeah, my theatre teacher didn't like my resume. 

Let's call him Mr. Sassy, cuz his name sounds like sassy, he was mighty sassy, and he sassed me every moment he could. 

I strived for good grades in all my classes, but with theatre, I wanted even more than that. This wasn't the class I wanted to sleep and study right before the test in. This wasn't the class I was forced to take to graduate. This was my elective, my actual interest. I wanted to practice, improve, and be the best actress I could be(at least within a high school time frame as I would inevitably forget all my interest in theatre in college in favor of a more reasonable career.)

So I took every small, tiny, minuscule lesson he gave us into all my performances. I made sure I covered the whole stage with my monologues and blocked. And with block I mean, I THREW A WHOLE CHAIR!! I said, "Senpai better notice me now," and yeeted that thing across the room. He did not notice me though.

After every performance Mr. Sassy walks up to you and critiques you. He just didn't for me that time. I embarrassingly had to walk up to him and fish for some kind of compliment. 

"Hi Mr. Sassy."

"Jennifer."(no joke, he actually greeted me like that sometimes.)

"How'd I do?"

"Fine. It was way longer than the others," Mr. Sassy said as he continued with his paperwork and LITERALLY DIDN'T EVEN LOOK AT ME!!

"Uh yeah, I guessed I got messed a bit from the audience's gasp from me casually projecting  a freaking chair out of nowhere. It just be like that sometimes ya know."

"Yup. How 'bout you start heading to lunch now."

"Um.Okay."

Well that was quite the freaking stab, but oh no, not the only dang one man. Every time he critiqued me afterwards, it was always "project more" and that's it. Never any kind of compliment or different critique at least that I can remember. Whenever he gave us our new partners for a scene, he would put me with the same people, almost like he just wanted to stick me somewhere. That kind of thing hurt the most when I was in theatre three/ my third year in theatre.

He told us in the beginning of the year he wanted to separate the theatre 2 kids from the theatre 3 and 4 kids. There was so little people in theatre that all the different levels of theatre were combined. So he wanted to do more things with the advanced people. One of the things we got to do was readings of the upcoming plays we were hosting at our school. There is like seven students in all here. I probably only spoke a few amount of times while every other person, theatre 3 or 4, got multiple roles and spoke so so much. At the end of the year, we did the readings with the whole class and the same thing happened. The theatre 2 students were getting to participate a multiple times, and me close to nothing.

I'm quiet, but theatre was one of the only places where I could express myself more through the delivery of my lines. Now it's like I was being forced to be quiet when I didn't want to be. 

It seemed like he was giving me his own secret, theatre teacher brew of karma. 

He had his own crew in his class They helped him with everything and participated in all the plays. They always got the starring roles. They never any classwork because they had their participation in the play as an excuse. Lots of people outside of theatre said that Mr. Sassy was biased to those people when it came to roles and I wouldn't doubt it. 

I liked them all and they were all extremely talented. They deserved everything they got in theatre. However it was still so apparent the hierarchy my teacher made. The "liked students" to him were the extroverted people that talked to him a bunch. It was the students that had friends in the play, while I didn't. I backed out of two plays for that reason. What's the use of having this three month commitment everyday after school if you couldn't enjoy it with anyone. I understand why he hated me for that reason. I really can't guess what kind of impression I gave him to be honest, not like my other teachers. (I know it's bad though so maybe it's good I don't know lol.)

Nevertheless, I tried immensely in theatre. I had over 100% in his class all the time (still with a "S" in behavior somehow.) It's not like I didn't have at least a little bit of talent though.  I remember one time one of the best actors in my class that I had so much respect for went up to me after a monologue. He said that I proved in my monologue that I wasn't just some quiet girl in this class, but someone with a talent and a care for theatre. 

That is exactly what I wanted to portray in my work. Boy did it feel amazing to see that that message reached someone, even if it wasn't Mr. Sassy. 

Well it reached two people actually. Mr. Sassy had a teacher assistant named Mr. Will. Like I said at the start, I experienced two sides of the spectrum in this one class. After the chair incident I went to talk to him. 

"Uh hi. I know we've never talked before, but how did you think of my monologue?"

"I was really impressed. You have a secret side to you I feel like. Almost like a fire. What sign are you?"

"I'm an Aries."

"Even after studying astrology in college, I would've never thought you were an Aries. I guess you're a quiet Aries then.

"I guess I am."

I became kinda buddies with that teacher. We talked only a few times, yet even so he gave me the constant reminder that your work can sometimes pull through over your charisma. 

Even with that in mind, it still hurts over and over again when this key characteristic of yourself only succeeds to impede you. Maybe sometimes it doesn't.