#ourclass

[arvindbalagopal]

There is No Class to teach how we should speak But the way we speak definitely decides Our Class.

[womensvoices-blog1]

Hola Humanos! 

I am Sarita Alejandra Balbuena! I am a proud 22 year old  Mexicana-Americana (Chicana)! Currently, I am a Senior at Middle Tennessee State University Majoring in Psychology and Double Minoring in Health and Women’s and Gender Studies. I plan on earning my Masters in Sociology and Women’s and Gender Studies Certification at Middle Tennessee State University. 

People, especially women, have always fascinated me. From a young age I was extremely observant and inquisitive about the world around me. I noticed that women were not treated as equal. In addition, my experience has been that my Mexican and Latin people have not been treated equal either. 

Combo: Woman + Mexican = Target for Sexism and Racism

Women’s Voices is an outlet for women to freely speak about their shared or unaddressed concerns and experiences with esta vida. 

I will start a conversation with some questions that fellow women have answered already on womensvoices.tumblr.com

How would you describe your love life or relationship status?

The 26th of May, Jesus and I will celebrate one year of marriage. 

I have NEVER EVER felt SOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH inner HAPPINESS and JOY in my heart! 

Jesus and I are two independent, intelligent, charismatic, and confident humans. We both are so similar, but never get bored with each other. 

I have found my equilibrium. 

Some days this equilibrium may be thrown off kilter because I am overly sensitive and he is being goofy when I am in a serious mood. However, the little triangle in the middle is the love and silly moments we have together. 

He is my biggest supporter and I am his. We go places and he talks about me as if I was the person to cure cancer. Jesus supports me in every endeavor I currently am doing or want to do. 

I suffered for so damn long, it LITERALLY feels as if I am dreaming.

I finally found someone who believes in me as much as I believe in myself! 

I love him un chingo de madre!

 Do you feel pressured by society, family/friends to be in a relationship or actively dating?

My family always wanted me to avoid dating growing up. This being said, if I did  date someone, they were never demeaning or upset about it. I had crushes and boyfriends since I was in second grade. I thoroughly enjoyed hugs, sweet pecks, playing, and emotional intimacy from my boyfriends at that age. 

Pressure to be in a relationship erupted when I could not stand living in a toxic home environment any longer. I found an outlet in one of my friends and ended up dating him for close to 5 years. His family literally adopted me from their goodness of their heart. I felt pressure to stay in this relationship because of the love, support, and stability I found with being in their family. I had never experienced this in my life before. 

Eventually, this boyfriend and I realized we were not meant for each romantically and no longer had any romantic feelings for each other. I will forever cherish this family’s friendship and loving sanctuary towards me. 

How do you think your relationship status has changed you as a person, and how do you view yourself as a woman?

I do not believe being in a relationship has changed me at the core. At my core I am an optimistic, energetic, intelligent, outgoing, beautiful, empathetic, and confident woman. `

However, I will say behaviors in me have changed. One prominent example, I definitely do not party Wednesday - Sunday anymore and go to work and school with less than 4 hours of sleep. 

I have definitely been my own muse for a long time. I have believed in myself, because others sure as hell didn't or did not have the time to believe in me. Being in a relationship has helped me grow emotionally and mentally as a person in a healthy manner. I am not accustomed to having affirmation that I am a rockstar. Being in a relationship has allowed me to trust in someone.

[womensvoices-blog1]

HELLO QUEENS🥰 My name is Nina Mariah Donovan, and these are some pics of me from literally 12 hair colors ago 🤗 (if you would like to see my latest color, you can keep up with me on Instagram @itsninamariah). Please follow my beautiful doggo on insta, @itsdiamondangel!!!!! I am a senior at Middle Tennessee State University, and I am majoring in Sociology while double minoring in Women/Gender Studies and Jewish/Holocaust Studies! I hope to eventually become a professor- but as for my years between then and now, I would love to live a million different lives. I want to work in all sorts of settings, learn from all sorts of people, and experience all that I can in this lifetime. I am a passionate Scorpio (sorry to scary anyone off hehe🦂✨) in love with a gentle Gemini (have you ever heard of a crazier couple), and we have been monogamously dating for over a year now! Her instagram is @celinajosie if you wanna see the most beautiful woman in the world :). While I don’t find myself staying in a relationship out of any pressure to be in one, or fear of being alone, I have definitely always felt a pressure to eventually settle down and get married, start a family, etc. These are expectations that I was raised with, and at times made to feel like I would not be fulfilling my “duties” or even fate, for lack of a better term, as a woman if I were to stay single/unmarried and never have children my whole life. As much as generations grow and progress from the one before, there are many values/unjust expectations (ESPECIALLY heteronormative ones) which still dominate our society and attempt to provide an irrelevant outsider’s determination of our worth or even marketability as women/future wives.

[womensvoices-blog1]

Hey! My name is Lauren Hamblin. I am currently a senior at Middle Tennessee State University with a major in English and a double minor in French and Women and Gender Studies. I am from Hendersonville, TN, and grew up in the area around Nashville, but I was born in West TN, in a city called Dyersburg. 

Apart from school, some of my hobbies included studying witchcraft and attempting to read my friends’ and families’ tarots. I also enjoy reading (English major!) and watching shows and movies on Netflix and Hulu. Along with tarot and witchcraft, I am particularly interested in East Asian cultures, especially Korean culture recently, I’ve been listening to a ton of BTS!  

After graduation, I hope to get my teaching license in order to teach English as a second language and I’d like to travel somewhere for a few years to teach English and have fun in another country. My long term career goal is to eventually get my Ph.D. and teach English classes focused on either Children’s and Young Adult Literature, or the idea of “celebrity” in popular culture. Ultimately, I want to be able to have an open dialogue about women’s issues not only in the Western Hemisphere but also across the globe and I hope that through advances and more studies done in Women and Gender Studies, we can achieve that. I look up to the many women around me for inspiration on how to navigate a world which is still largely male-dominated but has many women that are attempting to dislodge that idea in our culture. 

How would you describe your love life/ relationship status:

- I’ve never really been one to “date” because I have always been focused on myself and my school rather than being in a relationship. For me, it was always more important to be secure within myself than to look for someone else to essentially “complete” me. Dating was also something that I saw a lot of my friends doing when I was in high school and I saw how much of their time and energy was put into maintaining their relationship and I guess that kind of turned me off of dating because I felt like that’s how relationships were and I felt like if I was in a relationship, I would forget about my own needs and my goals because I would be trying to constantly maintain my relationship with another person.

Do you feel pressured by society, family/friends to be in a relationship or actively dating?

- I don’t think right now I feel pressure from my family to date just because I am still in school and my family has always instilled in me the idea that I need to be successful myself before I start a relationship with someone else. So no, I don’t feel pressured by them right now, but I can’t say for sure that won’t change in the years coming because I am graduating in a few months and I will be expected to start doing adult things, which may or may not entail dating and/or getting married. That is not something that I personally am looking for now, but my family and my parents specifically might start to put pressure on me to get married once I graduate college. Also, I don’t feel pressured by my friends because I surround myself with strong women who believe just like me that women do not need to rely on a man to take care of them.

 How do you think your relationship status has changed you as a person, and how do you view yourself as a woman?

- More importantly than anything else, I think not having been in a relationship teaches me every day that I can accomplish things on my own and that I do not need to rely on anyone else to be successful. I think my own self worth is so much higher because I know my own capabilities and I know what I can do without help from anyone else. I don’t think not having been in a relationship makes me feel less than or anything because I know that I am happy being single right now in my life and I know that I am not looking for a relationship at the moment. 

A song that defines me as a woman? 

- There are too many to count, but I guess I’d say NO by Meghan Trainor. ;)

Shout out to all the women out there who work their tails off to make the world a better place for women! #girlpower

-Lauren ;)

[openingnightposts]

Our Class

Our Class, written by Tadeusz Slobodzianek, directed by Igor Golyak, and adapted by Norman Allen, is a beautifully crafted psalm of degradation and destruction inflicted on humanity that deeply darkens the story like a heavy blanket. Despite the weight of the darkness that lies over everything, in another vein, it is also a narrative of love. How love for one another can overcome, heal, and transform.It has been carefully written with that pen of enduring love and colored with a brush of remembrance. A remembrance of ten children who were elementary school fellows, and the lives that unfolded for each of them that encompassed monumental beauty and cavernous flaws.Based on the true story of ten schoolmates, Our Class consists of five Jewish and five Catholic children who grew up together in a small Polish village in the early 20th century. The village’s location subjected them to a Russian invasion in 1939 and then a Nazi invasion in 1941 after the truce was broken with Russia. The Russians were difficult, but the Nazis brought with them the pogroms – massacres of millions. In this small Polish town, all the Jews are corralled into a barn that is then set on fire. Classmates forced those they knew and played with as children into that barn, some with newly born babies, and murdered them in the name of nationalism and self-preservation, wiping off the face of the earth those they once called friend and classmate.It is a tale magnificently and theatrically told. The stage at BAM is transformed into a classroom, a classroom of life. Here, the students and their teacher, Abram (gorgeously played by Richard Topol), tell their truths, interact and play their childhood games, and grow into young adults. The stage itself goes through many transformations, becoming a wedding reception where we will celebrate the wedding of two fellow students, one a catholic, Wladek (Ilia Volok), and his now wife, newly converted from Judaism, Marianna (Alexandra Silber). Marianna is her chosen Catholic name. The stage magically and creatively transforms again and again with little more than chairs and tables, lighting shifts, and a few props.The show is three hours long, with intermission, but never are you aware of the ticking of the clock, as Mr. Golyak’s direction has all transfixed again and again as the story plays out before us. The staging is in constant movement. The stories weave together with the impossibleness of these characters’ lives.The main feature of the set is an enormous chalkboard where the lessons of life are taught to us by Abram and where the use of film clips and live video radiate from. What I admired about the direction was the complete use of the playing space (my first time seeing the safety net that is suspended below the lighting grid used as an acting space).This is a grand performance, an event, a reminder of what we are capable of – the worst of us and the best of us. It is a must-see. You have the opportunity to see it now as part of the Under The Radar series. I hope that this production, this particular production, this sublimely gorgeous production, directed and polished like a precious gem filled with light and love, will return and stay long enough for all to witness its opulence of humanity’s capabilities for both good and evil.Our ClassDirected by Igor Golyak, written by Tadeusz Slobodzianek, and adapted by Norman AllenWith: Gus Barney, Andrey Burkovskiy, Jack DiFalco, Jose Espinosa, Tess Goldwyn, Will Manning, Stephen Ochsen, Alexandra Silber, Richard Topol and Ilia VolokCreative Team: Directed by Igor Golyak,
Written by Tadeusz Słobodzianek,
Adapted by Norman Allen
Scenic Design by Jan Pappelbaum,
Costume Design by Sasha Ageeva,
Lighting Design by Adam Silverman,
Sound Design by Ben Williams
Music, Composed by Anna Drubich,
Music Direction by Lisa Gutkin,
Projections Design by Eric Dunlap,
Chalk Drawings Design by Andreea Mincic,
Choreography by Or Schraiber,
Hair & Makeup Design by Timur Sadykov, Intimacy & Violence Design by Leana GardellaPresented in partnership with Under the Radar; Mark Russell, Festival Director & ArKtype, Festival ProducerPerformances: Tuesday – SundayFinal performance Sunday, February 4thRUNNING TIME: 3 hours, including a 15-minute intermissionVENUE, BAM Fisher Fishman SpaceTICKET INFORMATION Tickets start at $59Our Class contains material for adult audiences and mature themes. The production includes acts of violence, sexual assault, and antisemitic language, as well as the use of theatrical smoke and haze and simulated gunshots. Recommended for ages 16+.This event is presented by the MART Foundation and Arlekin Players. BAM house and ticketing policies may not apply. BAM membership benefits do not apply. All performances will adhere to protocols developed by New York State regulations and in consultation with medical professionals for the safety of our artists, audiences, and staff.Readers may also enjoy our reviews of Rachel Bloom, The Eagle and the Tortoise, The Sweet Spot, The Days of Wine and Roses, and Aging is Not a Fairy Tale.https://youtu.be/SUT_0c2QVzo?si=_1INMDR_bFYuhu1H

[kimeless-blog]

Our classmate.

Our class of LEA gathers students who didn’t knew each other and students who already know each other.

One day, we were having a conversation and we noticed that when we entered the class, the place of each student was already attributed. It means that the class was divided in groups even if everybody spoke with each other. Sometimes the class was separated in 2 groups, on the right side the girls and in the left the boys. We noticed that our group of friends was mainly composed of colored persons and on the other hand there was another group which gathered white people. Our class is full of diversity !

Concerning the people who are often late in class, we can observe that their are people who come in public transports and people who drive to go to the university. People who lives near the UPEM and those who have a car tend to arrive right on time or to be often late, while the people who live far arrive earlier. It can be explained by the schedules of the public transports which does not necessarily match the schedules of classes. But sometimes the ones who are late, are late because it is simply in their nature!

But despite the different groups in class everybody talks to each other and nobody is put aside, which create a good atmosphere in class.

[daisy-weberling]

#LawStudents #WithLaser #BestParty #Friends #OurClass #Law #Direito #Férias #Arrasando #ComeçandoOs Trabalhos #TOP (em Thais House)

[tamarabeck]

Wait, wait, there's more

Wait, wait, there’s more

One-Night-Only Event, Monday, April 13 at 7pm, directed by Cosmin Chivu, The Temple Emanu-El Skirball Center and the Polish Cultural Institute New York present a New York debut staged reading of Our Class, Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s critically-acclaimed play. The star-studded cast includes  Emmy, Oscar and Tony-winner Ellen Burstyn; Obie winner Alvin Epstein; Tony-nominee Boyd Gaines; Mamie Gummer…

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