If I could, this blog would be done as if it were a silent movie. Since I can’t physically put myself into the blog, I’ll just have to tell you about Stage Lights, which closes tonight.

Stage Lights is a wonderful play that catches the spirit of the Little Tramp films. The Tramp is a rather innocent, happy go lucky type who always tries to help those that need help (even if doing nothing would help him in the long run), and while he is subjected to bouts of physical comedy the real strength is that the actor is able to pull off plenty of deep emotions without saying anything, which is a beautiful thing to see because most people take the physicality of acting for granted when really, physical action is what makes acting work. If it was just a whole bunch of people standing around doing nothing while saying their lines, unless it was labeled as Post-Modernism it’s not going to be very good (looking at you Shyamalan and The Last Airbender). And a lack of dialogue means that the actors and writers can be rather clever in what they want to do onstage, and a nice amount of physical comedy helps a lot.

So if you haven’t seen Stage Lights yet, go see it tonight before it closes. If you don’t live in Indiana and thus aren’t able to see it… well, you missed out on a great thing.

The Classics Club prepares the sacrifice (No stuffed Animals were harmed in the making of this photo)

Speaking of things you missed out on, today was the day of the Classics Club’s Suovetaurilia… Have no idea what that is? Well, a Suovetaurilia was a Roman sacrifice to the gods where they would kill and then roast a pig, a sheep, and a bull. Since we can’t do the whole killing part, we just had the roast along with a bunch of other traditional Greek and Roman dishes that the Classics Club prepared. They even did a reading from The Iliad, a mock sacrifice involving rolled up meat and a stuffed tiger, and a Roman/Greek prayer asking Ios to bless the meal and give Wabash victory (specifically over DePauw, but we were doing pretty good in the baseball game when I left). The Greek and Roman gods probably don’t exist, but it is cool to see that old traditions and ideas are being honored, and it’s fun to spend some time eating meat and watching baseball. Sadly, unlike Stage Lights a Suovetaurilia can’t be a repeat performance unless you want to spend a lot of money on meat and other such items, and even if you did have money then you’d have to be careful to make sure that it stays fresh and doesn’t get stale (meat is good, but too much meat is not).

Specialization is both a positive and a negative attribute to have. On one hand you’re really good at something, and thus you are able to get the most out of performing that task, service, what have you. On the other hand, if you’re too specialized then that’s all you can do, and if someone asks you to perform some other task that doesn’t fit in with your skills, well then you’re in a bit of trouble.

I think my thoughts about specialization today came from a Youtube ad, of all things. I was watching something and an ad came up for people who had been hit by semi trucks, of all things, telling them where they could get an attorney to sue the company of those trucks. Issues of when and when not to sue aside, it seems rather odd that they would have a law firm that specializes in semi truck accidents only and… well, not much else. Sure, an argument can be made that there are claims and avenues that might not be seen by any other attorney, but you think that the law schools that these men and women attended might do some basic training in these various specifications so that if a specialist can’t be found, a person still has someone that can defend them.

Then that got me thinking; if someone does all their studying for a specific field, what then? What if there are not many jobs in that particular field when they leave college, or what if the job they’re applying for asks for a skill that they don’t have? I’m sure this problem is nowhere as widespread as I think it is, but still, it could happen, and if it does then all the skills and what have you that the person has developed suddenly aren’t that useful anymore.

Wabash prevents that from happening by teaching you a variety of skills that can be applied across multiple job sectors. The multiple courses can and are often tied in with one another, and can help greatly when dealing with different topics (knowledge of history and good writing are said to be very useful in business). I try to keep my skills and interests varied so that I never get bored, and if and when the time calls for it I can better react to a situation presented to me. Flexibility is a very good thing, and the flexible people like those here are Wabash will be the ones to get ahead of the pure specialists.

So my advice to any incoming Freshmen that happen to read this (there must be at least one out there), take a variety of courses. Mix things up, develop some new skills that you might need in the future. Who knows, maybe you’ll find your “calling” in something you didn’t even know you liked.