Make Day

So, at my school, we have this event once a year called Make Day. We were told last year that our school has a theme every year, but that was, honestly, the first I'd ever heard of a school "theme" of any sort. The theme was "make." Well, that carried to this year as well. I'm thinking, from the enthusiasm of the teachers, that it may easily go from trend to tradition.

Anyway. A while before the actual day, students choose from many different workshops, classes, and activities that are scheduled. These can range anywhere from animal face painting to auto tune ups to balsa wood airplanes to lyric writing - you name it, and there's probably a couple of teachers who have paired up to provide a workshop on it for Make Day. So, you choose which workshop you want to do (well, you choose your top three, but this year the signup time slot was limited, so we could only choose one) of all the many options. As for me, I chose "Making Sense and Nonsense with the Written Word."

On Make Day, each division (grades 6 & 7, 8 & 9, and 10-12) meets quickly for attendance and announcements, then it's off to workshops from 8:30 am to 11:30 am. Depending on which workshop you do, this may not even be close to enough time, or you might feel like you'll die from boredom. For me, it was a little of both. I felt bad for the people who had picked outside activities, because the temperature was in the mid-40s and -50s, and it was windy and actually snowed for a little while, so, yeah. For my "make," we wrote haikus introducing and describing ourselves without using our name (except, yes, there were those lazy guys in the group that got permission to use names), then we wrote poems (or stories) describing a usual situation that has a surprising twist at the end. After "making," each workshop is required to set up a booth out in the quad to showcase our work, but the teachers figured poetry would bore everyone, so we declined the booth invitation.

I was just chillin' (literally!) at a bench outside before lunch, writing more poems

After workshops are over, everyone goes to lunch; you can go anytime between 11:30 am and 1:00 pm, depending on how long your workshop goes over or if you have to set up booths. At 12:30 pm, Nick, Sonal, and I went trekking into the wilderness to go scout shooting locations for our short film, which is semi-dystopian. (Just FYI, Nick and I wrote a short film script over spring break, and we are currently casting and figuring out locations.)

two roads diverged in a not-so-yellow, not-so-wood?

Nick and Sonal had to get back to work at their booths at 1:00 pm, so I hung out in the quad for a while before Corinne returned from her "make," which was at the lower school. (Corinne is my semi-goth friend; we both reside on the Island of Misfit Toys and relish in being evil and creepy and getting revenge.) She wanted to get a "tattoo" from the face-painting booth, and essentially dragged me into line there. There were many sixth- and seventh-grade girls in line behind us, and the girls getting painted tended toward animals, pandas and cats and bears and whatever else. I decided I would get the Joker, and Corinne thought that would be cool, but she thought I should get a skeleton or something. Well, I settled on the Joker.

 I thought it would be funny to wear it into the store and weird people out but act like it was totally normal. Well, hardly anybody even looked at me in the store, and if they did, they didn't even seem to think anything was strange. This one guy at Walmart stopped me and was like, "Wait a minute.... I like it." (All in the Joker voice, don't forget.) Irony: I don't actually know all that much about the Joker. Heath Ledger played him in The Dark Knight Rises. He's the villain to Batman, played by Christian Bale. The Joker also has long, stringy green hair and a purple suit, and always seems to have his arms stretched out by his sides, holding two knives. Or is that just my imagination? Honestly, that's all I know. And that he has that deep, scratchy voice.

After getting my face painted, my friends and I hung out in the quad until Nick rejoined us, then we all headed inside because he claimed it was "too cold," though earlier when I had complained of partially numb fingers he waved it off as nothing. We hung out in the hall inside until everybody had to leave. I guess we had early dismissal, but even if we hadn't had early dismissal, I still would've had to stay another hour in my Joker makeup, which made it impossible to scratch your face without smearing it everywhere. (I didn't even try that one.)