First up:

We tag-team mowed our massive front yard yesterday for the first time this year. We did a high-five and were proud of ourselves. Then, by the evening, we were frigging exhausted. And my allergies went haywire. The first mow is always the hardest and, eventually, it will be much easier. As will my allergies.

Started a new puzzle, but I was so stuffed up and tired after mowing that I didn’t get very far.

Today, we’re taking it easy.

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I’m sharing more today about my career. First, a clarification. My decision to teach was also based on the realization that after acting since I was 10 – that would be for 23 years – I no longer had any desire to act. I was done. Ironic, since I had just been granted an MFA in Acting. But without that degree, nothing that happened later would have happened. So, going back to grad school changed my life. It was a bold move for someone like me. I’d stayed in Michigan. I was cautious. At the time, I was not someone who could just pick up and move someplace far away. I had ties to my family, I watched out for my sisters, I had a support group of friends and family. But staying there, I realized when I turned 30, would have been lethal for me. I was stuck working in a job that I didn’t like to support myself. I worked 40 hours a week and spent another 25 rehearsing for various productions. I hated doing something I had absolutely no interest in. I had dear friends who knew me well and urged me to make a change. I knew that the way to do it was to audition for a graduate program and earn a post-graduate degree (which had always been important to me.) Once I made that decision, the rest followed.

So. Three times in my life I have changed my course. Moving away to grad school. Deciding to no longer act, but to teach instead. And eventually giving up a lucrative teaching position and resident voice and dialect position with the Old Globe Theater in San Diego to move east with my husband and freelance.

But back to Boston University. That job was everything for me. I worked my ass off. I was usually gone for 12 – 15  hours a day, teaching classes during the day, attending rehearsals at night. Since it was my first teaching job, I felt like I was about 2 days ahead of my students. Every night, I wrote a lesson plan for the next day. Then I ‘sold’ it. That is what I did when I interviewed for a job – I had to teach a class and I sold it. (I can be very funny and charming.) Same with teaching. I think all of us – at times – feel like we’re fakes, pretending to be qualified when, in our heart, we feel exactly the opposite.

That entire first year, as I taught phonetics and Standard American Speech (speech for the stage that had no discernible regionalisms and a rich, full sound) and another class in dialects, I was figuring out how to teach it. I was blessed in my colleague Robert Chapline, a brilliant teacher who became my mentor. I wrote about him a few years ago when he died. He was always there for me if I had questions –  a gentle man and a gentle guide.

BU’s program was a tough one and there were cuts made after the second year. (I hated making those decisions.) But it was a BFA program and when you’re 18 and coping with all sorts of changes in addition to the demands of classwork and performance, there comes a time when you – or the faculty – realize it’s not the right fit. But the students! Lord, how I loved them. They were fiercely talented and intelligent and funny and demanding and I remain friends with many of them to this day. They brought out the best in me. I had to become good at what I do. I coached everything; mainstage shows, lab shows, projects…I never stopped.

I worked there for five years, only leaving because I was paid too little to survive long-term in Boston, which is a very expensive place to live. When Bill Lacey hired me, he hired me as a visiting assistant professor. Since they hadn’t been able to do a full-out search, I was ‘on approval’ for that first year. I was so grateful for the job that I accepted a ridiculously low salary and, though I got a raise every year, it wasn’t enough to make a huge difference. Luckily, for four out of the five years I was there, I lived in a rent controlled apartment in Cambridge. But my first year? The smallest studio I have EVER lived in – three times the rent of the rent-controlled one bedroom I eventually moved into. The size of many walk-in closets I see on Instagram.

Many of those students are working to this day. Some of them are rather big in Hollywood; Krista Vernoff, the show runner for Gray’s Anatomy and Station 19. Michael Medico, who directs for both those shows, as well as others. Cynthia Watros, Daytime Emmy Award winner for her long-running role on Guiding Light, Abraham Higginbotham, producer for Will and Grace, Ugly Betty, and Executive Producer and Writer for Modern Family and multiple Emmy winner. Peter Paige,  actor in the series Queer as Folk  and many more, and producer and creator of The Fosters. Kim Raver, actress, who has had continuing roles on countless shows; 24,  Ray Donovan, Designated Survivor and currently, Grey’s Anatomy.  Anthony Ruivivar, who works constantly – he was a regular on Third Watch and has a new series starting up right now. He’s also married to a fellow alum, Yvonne Jung. And more, of course, I just can’t remember specifics at the moment. I am still friends with them to this day.

They shaped me. They made me want to help them and be the very best I could be.

Also, while I was at BU, I started to coach in regional theater, specifically, at the Huntington Theater in Boston as well as the North Shore Music Theater. All of that experience prepared me for my next job.

More later.

Stay safe.

Happy Tuesday.