CAP 2018-19 End-of-year Self-Assessment

Assigned: Monday, 5/20

Due: Friday, 5/31, by midnight

Part 1 - Exit Skills Reflection, Spring 2019

Artists have to be particularly skillful at steering their own work lives, both in terms of
setting creative challenges for themselves and in terms of career management. Honest self-
appraisal is a fundamental component of this ability. Your self-assessments are finally
much more important than any assessment I can provide. Like last term, I’d like you to link
your self-assessment to the exit skills of the CAP program. But this time, you will consider
just three skills and examine them more deeply. Write one paragraph for each section
below (a-d).

Link to CAP Exit Skills: CAP Exit Skills

a. Pick a skill in which you believe you have grown the most this trimester.
Describe the project that allowed you to grow in this area and what you
learned about yourself as an artist in the process.

This trimester, I have grown in skill 4, developing self-discipline. This has

consistently been a difficulty for me, and still is, but recently I have regained much of my
drive to pursue my writing. I have produced three new poems over the course of the
trimester and am working on another. I learned that when I have academic pressure, I tend
to feel creative pressure as well, and I put my writing completely aside. As the year winds
down, I have had time to collect myself and get a better handle on my schoolwork, which
has freed me of a lot of stress and allowed me to dedicate more time to creative writing.

b. Pick a skill on which you would continue to give yourself a fairly low rating,
and write a paragraph in which you devise at least one strategy that might
help you improve.

I have not worked much on skill 10, broadening my acquaintance with significant
authors and poets. The last time I deeply familiarized myself with a writer was in CAP
Seminar, when I did a project on Langston Hughes. There aren’t many writers that I know a
lot about and feel inspired by, and I want that to change. I think I can improve in this by
continuing to read the novels on my list and learning about those specific authors, and
perhaps I can branch out from there. The person doesn’t have to be famous by any means,
my goal is simply to become acquainted with new writers and a broader variety of work.

c. Pick any other skill from the list, and invent a project that would be FUN and
that you could actually do this summer and that would allow you to practice
that skill.

I think a feasible, fun project I could do this summer would be related to skill 8,
collaborating with other artists. I have a friend who does digital art and it would be really
cool if we could create a piece together combining my words with her art. I think digital art
lends itself well to being combined with writing because it can be easier to edit projects like
this online. I will propose the idea to her and see if we can come up with anything exciting.

d. Wild card: What artistic experience would you like to reflect on that you have
not yet had a chance to write about? Why was this important for you, and
what skills did you use?

An artistic experience I have not yet had the chance to write about is the Future
Perfect Project with James Lecesne and Ryan Amador. I was so grateful to be a part of such
a accepting and loving group to produce something truly meaningful. During the final
performance, I almost made the choice not to get up and read the poem I had written about
encountering a very vocal homophobe at Pride. Then, I decided I would regret it if I didn’t
share my words with an audience. I was extremely nervous, but it was crucial that I took
this step. I was in a vulnerable position yet my message was strong. Reading that poem in
front of the school certainly helped me towards my goal of being comfortable sharing my
work in public.

Part 2 - Masterclass/Event Reflection, Spring 2018

Write a 1-2 page reflection on a masterclass or event from trimester 3. This should be an
event or class you attended, not one in which you performed or presented.

This trimester, I would like to reflect on our masterclass with Naomi Washer, an
essayist, poet, and editor and publisher of a creative journal called Ghost Proposal that she
started several years ago. During my time in CAP, we have had only two or three writing-
related masterclasses, and none of them really engaged me in the way that I was hoping. I
was not familiar with Naomi beforehand, however, I went into the masterclass pretty
excited and hoping it would leave me with a good take away.
Naomi is pretty young, which I think made me more curious to hear her story. I
want to know more about the processes of young writers, and older, more seasoned
writers don’t have that valuable perspective to offer for someone like me. I wanted to hear
how she ended up doing what she does, and the specific steps she has taken to get there.
Now, it’s definitely not an easy task to keep a bunch of high schoolers engaged when talking
about writing, which I can attest to, so I was interested to see what she had planned.
During the masterclass, Naomi started off by telling us about her own experience in
the CAP program several years ago. Her focus was on theater and dance, and she thought
she would go into professional dancing, but ended up finding her passion for writing at
college. I was impressed to hear that she did a writer’s residency at Yaddo, which is an
extremely well-renowned artist community. But I was even more fascinated to hear about
the press that she co-founded in Chicago called Ghost Proposal, and to see the chapbooks
that they have published, as well her own chapbook. It was inspiring to me that she has
accomplished so much and been able to establish such a strong presence in the writing
world at a young age.
Naomi was soft-spoken during the masterclass but her passion was still apparent. I
enjoyed the connections she made between herself and Wallace Stevens and how she went
on the Wallace Stevens Walk in Hartford with the intention to write a piece by imagining
how he felt as he went on that very walk every day. I thought this flowed very well into the
activity she gave us, which was to create something based an artist who we feel connected
to in any way. In the limited time we had, I wrote a quick poem about my connection to
Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken.” I was disappointed that I was one of the only
people to share my work, but I was also grateful for the opportunity to read my poem to
Naomi. Overall, the masterclass felt short and sweet, but I would still love to speak to
Naomi more in-depth about her work in the future.

Part 3: FOR SENIORS ONLY

Write a self-assessment of your work on the senior show. Address both the preparation
period and the show itself. Minimum length: 2 pages.

For the prep time: What support roles—programs, food, logistics, communication,
publicity, etc—did you carry, if any? How committed were you? How flexible? Did you
attend all the meetings? When there was friction, what caused it? What role(s) did you play
in that, and why was that so, looking back now? What might you have done differently?

For the show itself: Were you professional—on time, warmed up, tuned up, etc? What parts
of what you, personally, shared that day leave you feeling proud? Are there any moments
that don’t? Any surprises for you in what you or anyone else did, or in the audience
response? What did you do to help with setup or clean up?

Finally, what learning do you take away from the experience of producing your own show
together? What advice do you have for next year’s seniors that I might add to the original
planning document I hand out?

When the CAP students had our first meeting about the senior show with Ms.
Schrader in January, we had the opportunity to share some ideas about how we could
structure the show, but we didn’t revisit these ideas as a group for a while after. I got the
sense that a lot of the seniors were not feeling particularly motivated about planning the
show, likely because we didn’t even have a central theme yet. A while later, in our next
meeting, the thought of structuring the show as an awards show was proposed, with the
various awards based on the CAP exit skills. It seemed as though mostly everybody was on
board, but it was still frustrating when some people did not speak or give their input at all.
It felt like we were very wishy-washy and kept having the same conversations about the
theme over and over without setting the plans in stone.
We eventually realized we didn’t have that much time and we had to get serious
about the process, so we designated responsibilities to everyone. I volunteered to do
programs with Jamie, and I also feel that I took on a leadership role in the meetings when it
seemed that people were disengaged or that we were having difficulty finding direction. In
addition, as a part of the “closing” group, I came up with the idea of ending the show with
our favorite CAP memories, which ended up as a nice finish to the show. Looking back now,
I would have tried to be proactive by talking to my peers and encouraging us to think and
talk about the show much more between January and our first real meeting. I think this
would have prevented a lot of the vagueness and uncertainty, even in the days leading up
to the show: for example, the full closing of the show didn’t come together until the night
before.
As far as the show itself, I would say I was professional and a contributing member
of the group. I was on time and prepared, as I had been in rehearsals. It was so amazing to
see the show come together on the actual night. Even though it was the same thing we had
rehearsed the night before, it felt like I was watching all of my classmates presentations for
the first time. There’s truly something special about performing in front of your friends,
family, peers, etc. It’s a feeling you get in the moment that can’t be recreated. I was actually
very proud of myself for sharing three poems that I had never shared publicly before. In
fact, I had never shared a collection of poems with an audience before. Part of me had a
lingering feeling of embarrassment in the back of my head because I felt like my poems
were silly, and I was very nervous for the response they would receive. However, it was
definitely a confidence boost when people came up to me after the show saying they
enjoyed my work. I was particularly proud of having shared the second two poems,
because I really bared a lot of my inner conflicts and deep thoughts for other people to
judge and interpret.
Something that surprised me was the intensity of both Jashaun’s and Elizabeth’s
performances, although it shouldn’t have—they are both extremely talented actors. But
after both of their monologues ended, you could feel a tension hanging in the air that I’ve
never quite seen in the same way, especially with Jashaun’s. That moment of silence
between his last word and the applause was so packed full of emotion that I felt like I was
going to cry. Again, it was fantastic to see everyone’s hard work come to life on the stage.
The only logistical thing that could have been fixed was that at the end of the show, many of
us were unsure of when to unfreeze from our poses, because there was no blackout or
something that would signify that the show was officially over. I think if we had planned a
cue, it would have eliminated that little bit of awkwardness at the very end.
The major thing that I took away from the process of creating the senior show was
that it’s not an easy to task to get twenty people coordinated and cooperating with each
other to reach a common goal. It was somewhat difficult for us to have the expectation of all
collaborating together on the plans for the show, because realistically, twenty people in one
conversation was less productive than it was for us to work in smaller groups on different
sections. Because we were the biggest CAP senior class Ms. Volpe had ever worked with, it
was a learning experience for everyone. There were certain things that smaller classes did
in their shows that were simply impossible for us to do with our time constraints. For
example, I really wish I could have done a collaborative performance piece with a musician
or visual artist. My main piece of advice for next year’s seniors is to take advantage of the
small size of their group. They will have an large amount of flexibility and many options for
how they want to use their time. I would really encourage collaborative pieces, perhaps
even one with all five of them involved, because I think it would be a waste to have all of
that time and not create artistic interaction on the stage. Overall, although some stages of
the process for our senior show were bumpy, I’m pleased with how it came out and proud
of how far all twenty of us have come during our time in the program. I can’t wait to come
back next year to see what the seniors do with their show.