The page you are seeing right now is the culmination of a few months' work in Freestyle Academy and may I tell you, it was both an incredible experience and an incredibly demoralizing one.  I spent a lot of time hunched over a keyboard, forsaking my friends for the chance to finish that last scene, that last sentence, to get that final touch.

From design to english to webaudio class, a lot was going on. In design we created two works of art with lots of thought put behind them. A photo narrative and illustration were made, exploring unorthodox ways of telling stories. In Freestyle, we love the power of the metaphor and the messages you can send subtley. With both our cameras and our tablets, we spun tales and wove adventures and reached new ends of the world that we thought previously non-existant.

In webaudio, we learned the ways of Flash Animation. From the beginning tutorials on basic shape making to the end product of our very own feature length (read as: 1.5 minute long) films, we were excited about the capabilities and nuances of this both relatively new and relatively old (to us at least) form of storytelling. I stayed afterschool with a few of my peers just to see how far I could push things. We explored the field together, giving critique and celebrating with each other when a scene was finally finished or a tricky background was finally conquered. We ate pizza and learned, for ourselves, what it was like to be our own producers and directors and managers.

In english, with the helpful and good-natured Mr. Greco, we learned the nature of short-storytelling. The hows of plots and the instructions and hints of masters like Kurt Vonnegut. We danced with O'Brien and drank tea with Sedaris and in the evening of the semester we finally tuckered down and with our newfound knowledge of the land we sat comfortably and created our own stories. We were far from masters, of course, but when we were done we were pleased with ourselves and our progress and the small part of the universe that we had just become a little bit more acquainted with.

At the end of it all, we were tired and pushed and some of us a little bit sour. However we were all there together- at least most of us- and we could collectively look back on it and reminisce. It was a hard road, we agreed, but we had grown together as a group and as individuals. There was sweat on our brow and a few of us probably had a mild case of carpal tunnel, but we were done and the exhibition loomed over the hill now, not menacingly, but like an old friend that occasionally took your things without asking but was nice to see anyhow because he wasn't really any threat anymore.

I mean to say there was a lot of time going into this, and I would like to think that in the end it produced some good in this world. So please enjoy yourself now, keep your hands and feet inside the moving vehicle at all times, and enjoy the ride..