Euno - Hamlab from the perspective of a student-mentor

When my professor announced that our class would be helping teach Hamlet to a class of AP English students, I have to admit I was pretty horrified. I’m not terribly confident in my ability to teach anything to anyone, much less at the hour of 7:45 AM where most mornings I’ll be smashing the “snooze” button on my phone’s alarm. As most of my colleagues will attest (and many of you future college students will soon find out), 7:45 AM is a godless hour for intellectual activity of any sort.

That said, working with Hernan, Joseph, Leslie, Erik (Eric?), Kaidy (did I get that right?), Sindy, Cindy, Jamal, Maria, Nemesis, and Leila has been one of the most fun and rewarding things I’ve done all semester. You guys are probably thinking “dude, Euno, your life must be pretty boring,” and that’s simply not true (OK… it kind of is… but that’s not my point).

First and foremost, I learned a lot of interesting things from Ms. Barrios regarding the performance of soliloquies. Actors, writers, musicians are all related in that all of them rely on the use of and performance of words. A well-written song and a Shakespeare soliloquy are both dependent on an understanding of the emotional context. You wouldn’t sing “I got the eye of the tiger” line from Katy Perry’s “Roar” as if you were reading out of your biology textbook, and you certainly wouldn’t call someone a “bloody, bawdy villain! Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!” as if you were reading over the menu at McDonald’s.

That said, the students are really lucky to have a teacher like Ms. Barrios teaching them aspects of Shakespeare performance that really wasn’t afforded to me when I was in high school. This is not only going to help the students in college, but also help expose them to Shakespeare at a level that allows them to form an opinion about Hamlet other than “I wish Hamlet would have just stabbed the King in III.iii, married his mom, end scene, roll credits.”

But in order for Ms. Barrios to be able to effectively teach those things, there have to be students who understand what she’s saying, and that was perhaps the most amazing part of the experience of all: I could easily see many of these students being my classmates at USC (or any other university, for that matter) and genuinely caring about and contributing to the areas they’re studying, which (for lack of a more formal phrase) is pretty awesome.

I do have a couple pieces of advice for the students:

-       When you read: don’t trust

the line breaks, trust the punctuation.

-       Like Ms. Barrios says, personalize the character. Make that character yours. For those of you performing soliloquies, Hamlet might have a lot to be angry about, but he’s not always enraged and shouting at the top of his lungs. He’s a lot more emotionally complex than that (that’s what makes him so intriguing), so try to put what he says into the proper context and pinpoint his emotions with each word or phrase.

-       Just general college/life advice: Don’t do it just for the grade or just for the credit. Do it because you love it! Be curious, don’t be afraid to ask questions, and try your best. Eventually the grades, units, degrees, jobs, fame, and the Mercedes-Benz will come. For now, though, don’t forget to love life and learning cause that’s what it’s all about.

Thanks so much for a great experience. Good luck, and I really hope to see you all on October 30^th.

- Euno (the big Korean guy).