“Are you reading for an English class?”
“It’s for Choreography, actually. I’m a dance major.”
“Woah, that’s so cool! And you can read?”
Let me just start by saying… ouch. This is a real conversation I was accosted with late one night in Davidson Library. Find a dance major on campus and I promise you they have been part of dialogues like this more than once, and definitely more than they would like. Given that the kick off of another school year means audition season is in full force for performing arts students, I think it’s time to address the unit load we carry around unnoticed by a lot of our fellow students.
For the past two years I’ve been a dance major, and every quarter since, I’ve hit or exceeded the unit cap. I wish that were a sign of overachieving, but the average course load around here lands somewhere in the mid 20s. Typical schedules in our department look like two or three academics, three to four dance classes, and approximately 1 billion extra rehearsals scattered in as well. That is for those of us who don’t have jobs, internships, or a whole second discipline in tow. Talk to the plethora of dancers doubling in Chemistry and Biology, Communications, or our resident Computer Science genius, and they’ll give you something to think about.
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Right now, I live with two theater majors. No one is ever home! Twelve hour work days is a typical occurrence, which tend to end in physical, as much as mental exhaustion, not to mention the homework and studying waiting for us once we’re done for the night. Unfortunately, the units we receive per class tend to be cut short of what a typical academic workload is worth.
We love being cast in shows, even though no matter how much rehearsal time we are scheduled for each week (no less than four hours, I promise), you earn yourself one solitary unit. For a class that meets twice a week, for two hours at a time, requiring two separate hours of rehearsal time, in addition to outside research assignments, they bump it up to a hearty three units. Yes, even us dance majors can do that math, and understand something’s up here.
So, it’s a really good thing that we all love to dance more than anything. Our passion for the arts coming out of our ears. Those school performances students are required to attend when you take a certain dance or theater class, are actually a lot of fun for us to perform in. I’m not saying our majors require more work than everyone else’s, but it sure isn’t any less. We don’t perform for the validation, even though I get super excited when someone hears I’m a dancer and thinks I’m “like, soooo cool!” But I do speak for a lot of us performing art majors when I say please don’t treat us like we don’t have the same mental capacities as any other student at this school. Remember, we are pulling our weight at this school, too.
And yes, library boy, we can read.
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