A Testament to Never Giving Up

A Path Less Traveled 
Posted May 4, 2016 in "Staff"

For Mike Vaudreuil, lifelong learning provides a new start

It was 2007, a burdensome time for many.

Mike Vaudreuil had lost his house, his once-prospering business–and, worst of all, his hope. He was beaten down. He needed something, anything, to survive not only economically, but mentally.

So the Worcester native took a temp job as a custodian at WPI.

Eight years later, on May 14, he’s set to walk the stage in his cap and gown at the university’s 148th commencement ceremony. The 54-year-old will collect his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering.

His is a story of resilience.

“It’s taken everything I had, and a lot of things I never knew I had,” says Vaudreuil. “I’m so ready for the next chapter.”

Setbacks? You have no idea.

Vaudreuil, who’s spent his life in and around Worcester, initially studied at Wentworth Institute of Technology after he graduated from high school “many, many years ago,” as he described it. He earned an associate’s degree in aeronautical technology.

But by the time he graduated, the industry was going through a recession, following the 1978 signing by Jimmy Carter of the Airline Deregulation Act. So to get himself through, he took a job with a friend’s construction company.

He thought it would be temporary. But with the housing boom, construction prospered, and, naturally, he stuck with it. For the next two-and-a-half decades, he was a plasterer by trade, eventually running his own business.

And then: The Great Recession. Within six months, he was forced to shut down his business. “It dumped me out of the economy pretty quickly,” he says, much as he and his wife, Joyce, tried to fight it, losing their savings and their home in the process.

It was a traumatic time; he was jaded and disillusioned. “I worked hard and I did a good job, and I thought that was what the recipe was to be successful,” says Vaudreuil. “But it wasn’t.”

So he took the temp job at WPI, which soon became full-time. As an employee, he had the ability to take tuition-waived classes; on a whim, he signed up for some psychology courses, essentially as a “constructive way to spent time, occupy my mind,” he explains.

“I had no notion of getting a degree,” he says.

After a few courses, though, he realized that maybe there was something there for him–until he went to a job fair and came to the conclusion that the post-college job prospects in psychology weren’t all that promising. Another dead-end. He wasn’t going to let that happen again.

A NATURAL FIT

So he shifted his focus to mechanical engineering. It was a natural fit, because he was always a “hands-on tinkering kind of guy,” and mechanical engineering also has much broader implications in industry.

Still, at first, he wasn’t sure if he could do it. He was apprehensive; he was in his late 40s, he’d been working in construction most of his career. “I was questioning whether I had the aptitude to pursue it,” he says.

But after a few classes, he says, his confidence grew. “I realized, ‘I can do this.’”

And he did. He took more classes, and also enrolled in summer sessions (all the while working full-time second shift as a custodian, and also doing part-time work in plastering.) It was hectic, for sure, but things finally started to fall into place.

NON TRADITIONAL STUDENT

There were challenges, of course—No. 1 being time. Group work was especially hard, because he didn’t have a lot of leeway. He did see other “non-traditional” students along the way, although he quips that not many were at “my advanced age—my advanced experience.”

However, he notes, “I was extremely impressed by my fellow students—at no time was I made to feel like an outsider, like I didn’t belong. I can’t say enough about the student body here—they’re impressive young people. And the faculty, as well, treated me like any student, challenged me like the rest of the students, motivated me, inspired me.”

MAJOR QUALIFYING PROJECT

That included associate professor Ali Rangwala, with whom Vaudreuil did his Major Qualifying Project, (creating a reusable dust fuel cartridge). The project was “successful for the most part,” says Vaudreuil, who (if he can find the time, that is) would like to work on a second-generation prototype this summer.

But he particularly credits his wife, Joyce, with getting him through; for a while, they were all each other had.

“She has been my cheerleader, my greatest counsel, my shoulder to cry on—she’s also given me the kick in the pants I’ve needed at times,” he says. “She’s been everything I needed when I’ve needed it. Graduation will be a victory for both of us.”

As for the future? Vaudreuil says he is up for anything, describing himself as creative and hands-on–particularly when it comes to prototype building–and “very at home” in machine shops and manufacturing facilities.

“I’m open to many different opportunities,” he says. “I’m extremely motivated. I really want to hit the ground running. I want to make up for lost time.”

– BY TARYN PLUMB

Original story link. 

(Another) Al-Assad on Syria's Future

Al-Assad on Syria

Posted April 12, 2016 in “Campus”

Human rights proponent Ribal al-Assad to speak on Syria and Middle East tomorrow

Like any armed conflict where passions are high, lives are lost and in turmoil, and opposing parties stand on vastly contrasting sides of the political spectrum, the civil war in Syria is a complex and volatile situation. As is the case with many circumstances across the Middle East, it is one that has no quick fixes or easy answers.

“We need to hear all points of view,” says Bland Addison, associate professor specializing in history and international studies in WPI’s Department of Humanities and Arts. “We shouldn’t discount any of points of view until we’ve heard all of them.”

WPI students and other interested locals will have the opportunity to hear one of those distinct points of view in a talk tomorrow (April 13) by Ribal al-Assad. The Syrian human rights proponent will offer the discussion, “Syria, the Middle East, and the New Cold War: How three tiers of conflict created an Apocalypse,” at 11 a.m. at Fuller Labs in Lower Perreault Hall. The event is free and open to the public.

A Syrian refugee, al-Assad, 40, is the son of former Syrian vice president Rifaat al-Assad, and first cousin of divisive current president Bashar al-Assad. He is founder and director of the Organisation for Freedom and Democracy in Syria, and advocates for a peaceful transition to democratic order in his home country and in relations with Israel.

“We want to concentrate on our future country,” he told Robert Fiske, Middle East correspondent for the UK-based news outlet The Independent, in a 2010 interview. “A country cannot be built on past grudges. We have to forgive – I don’t know about forget – and we have to live together, all Syrians who believe in democracy and human rights, to have a new era. The Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union collapsed. Syria will change.”

Al-Assad’s talk was organized through the Worcester World Affairs Council, one of 95 such nonprofit groups across the U.S. dedicated to informing and engaging its members and their communities in international affairs. It is one of several such discussions scheduled this spring at various World Affairs Councils; he is also speaking this week in Boston and Portland.

Although the conflict has been raging in Syria for nearly five years – resulting in an estimated 500,000 dead and five million displaced refugees – the topic is particularly pertinent now, Addison points out. Russia, Assad’s main ally, recently announced its removal of some troops from Syria in an effort to prompt Assad to more seriously consider peace negotiations.

“The question is, ‘Where do we go from here?’” says Addison. “It is going to take a very complex solution – there is no happy fix.”

The conflict and the overall unrest in the Middle East are ongoing topics of discussion among his students, he says, coming up regularly in courses and seminars.

“We are delighted to have this source of information,” says Addison. “The students are eager to hear what he has to say.”

Who: Ribal al-Assad, son of former Syrian vice president Rifaat al-Assad and first cousin of current president Bashar al-Assad

What: A discussion, “Syria, the Middle East, and the New Cold War: How three tiers of conflict created an Apocalypse.”

When: Wednesday, April 13, at 11 a.m.

Where: Fuller Labs in Lower Perreault Hall

This program is free and open to the public.

– BY TARYN PLUMB

Original story link. 

The Missing Link?

Intel Science Winner

Posted on April 8, 2016 in “Students”

Mass Academy student Amol Punjabi a top winner at Intel Science Talent Search

Many of us can claim to want to change the world—but at just age 17, Amol Punjabi is already on his way there.

The Mass Academy senior has developed a software program that helps to determine whether disease-causing proteins are susceptible to drug treatment.

Named ViaPocket, it makes use of artificial intelligence, and with it Punjabi has discovered six “druggable” spots on intrinsically disordered proteins commonly involved in cancer and heart and immune system diseases. Typically, the instability of disordered proteins makes them a difficult target for drugs; that in mind, Punjabi sought a way to identify more stable pockets within those proteins where drugs could more easily bind.

“I showed that my program is more accurate than the best previous method,” said Punjabi, of Marlborough.

For his efforts, he was recently recognized as one of three top winners at the 75th annual Intel Science Talent Search in Washington, D.C. Considered the country’s most prestigious science and math competition for pre-college students, it is organized by the nonprofit Society for Science and the Public. Forty finalists from 38 schools in 18 states participated in the event, which featured astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson as keynote speaker.

ViaPocket took First Place Medal of Distinction in the “Basic Research” category, which came with a $150,000 award. Other top winners include Paige Brown of Bangor, Maine, with a First Place Medal of Distinction in the “Global Good” category, and Maya Varma of Cupertino, Calif., with a First Place Medal of Distinction for “Innovation.”

The trio of winners is “using science and technology to help address the problems they see in the world, and will be at the forefront of creating the solutions we need for the future,” Maya Ajmera, president and CEO of Society for Science and the Public, said in a statement.

Mass Academy senior Yashaswini Makaram was also a finalist in the competition. The Marlborough 17-year-old received a $7,500 award for a project she has been working on for two years that applies biometrics to cell phone security.

Punjabi, for his part, began working on his software project while involved in the Research Science Institute summer program at Harvard Medical School. He has also authored papers on nanoparticles, and serves as captain of the Science Olympiad team at Mass Academy, and lead pianist of its jazz workshop.

“I was shocked,” he said of his win. After spending time with the other finalists, he noted, “I knew how brilliant and unique each one was, and I in no way expected to win an award.”

He plans to use the prize money for his education, he said. He has been accepted to Harvard University, MIT, and Stanford University, and is still deciding which one to attend, as well as what his major will ultimately be.

“I’m not sure yet—maybe math, computer science, chemistry, or something I’m yet to explore,” he said.

As for his future career? That’s also yet to be determined. However, he stressed that “I want to continue working in the biomedical field, helping find cures and treatments with my research.”

– BY TARYN PLUMB

Original story link. 

A Revolutionary Film About a Revolutionary Woman

“Voices of Light”

Posted April 1, 2016 in “Arts”

WPI chorus, orchestra to perform Voices of Light to accompany The Passion of Joan of Arc silent film

It was literally lost among the ashes.

For decades, it was assumed completely eradicated by not just one—but two—fires amidst the tumult of the mid-20^th Century.

But then in the 1980s, tucked away in an unassuming janitor’s closet in a Norwegian hospital, an obscure version of the 1928 French film was inexplicably discovered.

In the ensuing decades, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc has been restored as well as rescored by award-winning American composer Richard Einhorn.

On Saturday (April 2), WPI’s music department will present its own resurrection of sorts of the acclaimed silent film in a rare and unique performance melding live music and cinema.

The WPI Orchestra and Festival Chorus will perform Einhorn’s Voices of Light as live accompaniment to The Passion of Joan of Arc. The event will be held at 5 p.m. on Saturday in the sanctuary of the First Baptist Church of Worcester, at the corner of Park Avenue and Salisbury Street.

“It’s a very fun and unusual event,” says John Delorey, festival chorus director. “It’s rare that you would get to hear a live score to any movie, let alone a silent movie.”

Considered by some to be one of the best films ever made, The Passion of Joan of Arc stars Renée Falconetti as the doomed heroine, depicting the legendary figure’s captivity, trial, and execution, based on actual historical transcripts.

Thinking ahead of his time, director Dreyer made use of unusual camera angles, lighting, and close-ups.

“It is considered to be quite revolutionary,” says Delorey, also describing the film as “…evocative. The bottom line is it’s a really good movie. It’s a compelling story.”

The film debuted in 1928 in Copenhagen, and was immediately acclaimed (although it was ultimately a financial disaster). Subsequent versions were cut and re-narrated for various political, religious, and social reasons, and Dreyer’s original vision was thought to be lost when the master version and several other versions were destroyed in two separate fires.

A few years following the re-discovery of Dreyer’s original cut hidden away in an Oslo mental hospital, composer Einhorn came upon a copy in the film archives of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. After viewing it, according to his website, he was inspired to write Voices of Light, which is scored for solo voices, chorus, and orchestra.

Delorey called the piece a “perfect match” for this year’s festival chorus, what he called a group of “smart singers” who have been rehearsing it since January. The performance is vocally challenging in that it involves sustained singing throughout the film’s 1 hour and 22 minutes, he says, and there is no sound effects work (performers don’t mimic any on-screen action).

“Once it starts, it goes, that’s the nerve-wracking part of it,” says Delorey. “It exposes students to a very high level of music.”

The score serves as its own entity of sorts, starting with St. Joan’s voice even before the film begins, then weaving itself in and out of the narrative. Incorporating chanting and minimalist note patterns, it is modern but also Medieval, according to Delorey, and “energetic and beautiful.”

Douglas Weeks, director of the WPI orchestra, meanwhile, calls it “unusual,” as well as a “haunting piece for strings and organ that fit well into the church setting.”

Cost: $15 general admission, $10 for seniors or with a WPI ID, free for students with valid ID. Tickets will be available at the door.

– BY TARYN PLUMB

Original story link. 

It Takes a Village...

MARCH 21, 2016
Central Mass. organizations fight childhood obesity

TARYN PLUMB

As the old adage goes, it takes a village to raise a child.

Adopting that philosophy, numerous area organizations are pooling resources and joining forces to combat youth obesity, which affects more than a third of local children and teenagers.

"The case against obesity has been made," said Jennifer Madson, associate director of programs at Girls, Inc. of Worcester, noting the increased risk of health problems in obese kids, such as diabetes and asthma, as well as impacts to mental health. "We are trying to find as creative and engaging ways as possible to address it. There's never enough that can be done." According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. children aged 6 to 11 who are classified obese increased from 7 percent in 1980 to 18 percent in 2012, while the rate of obesity in those aged 12 to 19 jumped from 5 to nearly 21 percent over the same period.

Youth from lower-income households – inner-city areas, for example, or, at the other end of the spectrum, isolated rural areas – are at an even greater risk of becoming obese.

"Poverty and obesity go hand-in-hand," said Kelsa Zereski, director of philanthropy for the Reliant Medical Group Foundation, which gifts annual grants to local organizations that dedicate resources to batting obesity.

Community effort

In 2015, Reliant provided $150,500 to 30 local charities, funding is made possible largely through two major fundraisers, a charity auction and golf classic in the spring and a 5K in the fall.

"It is cheaper to order off the dollar menu at a fast food restaurant," Zereski said, "than to go into the grocery store and purchase fresh food to make a healthy meal for your family."

In the inner city, particularly, children have limited access to sports fields and open areas, said Madson, and many are simply deterred from going outside because they live in high-crime areas.

"It screams all the more that we need to do these types of programs," she said. Many of the 1,800 girls served by Girls Inc. fit into this high-risk category.

Girls, Inc. threads the themes of health, fitness and nutrition throughout its daily initiatives.

Through its Fit Girls program, participants are involved in 100 hours of healthy activities over the school year, such as swimming or dance-offs – or hiking or boating in the summer – and are given healthy snacks daily. Various nutrition programs, meanwhile, inform them about reading and understanding nutrition facts or different ways to get the recommended amount of calcium.

"Nutrition can be incorporated into everything," said Madson. "Fitness can be incorporated into everything."

One program that organizations have found to be particularly effective is "5-2-1-0 – Let's Go!"

Initially developed in 2006 in Maine, the effort stresses a numbers approach: 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day, 2 hours or less of screen time, 1 hour or more of physical activity, and 0 sugar drinks.

"We did see an increase in healthy eating choices and physical activity," said Cindy Landry, school age director at YWCA Central Massachusetts, which held a 5-2-1-0 pilot last year at Worcester's Roosevelt and Wawecus Road elementary schools.

As part of that, 91 students from 14 local schools spent two days a week doing physical activities, learning about nutrition, and making snacks such as guacamole and dairy- and nut-free pesto.

Liking broccoli

Reliant Pediatrics has teamed up with YMCA Central Massachusetts to offer a similar initiative at its Central Community Branch in Worcester and Boroughs Family Branch in Westborough.

According to Dr. Martha Waite, a Spencer-based Reliant pediatrician, over the course of eight weeks, children work with nutritionists and personal trainers and do daily fitness activities. Participants establish their own goals to eventually work up to the 5-2-1-0 standard; for example, decreasing their soda drinks from three a day to one (and eventually none), or slowly increasing physical activity to 20 minutes a day (and gradually up to an hour).

So far, 110 children have participated in seven sessions of the program (through which they are required to bring at least one family member) and can maintain momentum with an alumni class.

"We really encourage an entire family to undergo a lifestyle change," said Waite.

In YWCA Central Massachusetts' Learning 4 Fun After School program children do 45 minutes of physical activity a day, learn ways to wean themselves off candy and soda, and plant, taste, smell and study the elements of fresh vegetables and herbs.

"Maybe they didn't even realize that they would like something like broccoli," said Landry. "It's opening their minds."

This is a key emphasis of the Community Harvest Project's Sprouting Minds initiative. Launched in 2013, the nonprofit based at Brigham Hill Community Farm in North Grafton offers various iterations of the program for different ages (pre-k through 12th grade) throughout the year.

Ranging from an afternoon to a full week, Sprouting Minds incorporates a farm tour, seedling plantings, nutrition education lessons, vegetable taste tests and cooking demonstrations. Older students can also "adopt-a-row" of vegetables that they care for from planting to picking.

"We see the excitement build. They change their attitude toward trying new things," said program manager Alicia Cianciola. She joked that parents will sometimes ask, "What did you do to my child? I can't believe they're asking for produce!"

The goal is to ultimately get them to not only eat fruits and vegetables, but like them so it isn't some sort of burden, said Tori Buerschaper, Community Harvest Project's education and outreach coordinator.

"It's getting kids more involved in cooking and tasting and trying all sorts of different vegetables," Buerschaper said. "Too often you try something once as a kid and you think 'Oh, I don't like that.' Those prejudices follow you into adulthood."

And other unhealthy habits can, as well.

"Childhood obesity can become a lifelong struggle," said Gabrielle Alan, resource development associate at the YWCA Central Massachusetts. "With a healthy start, we can make a much healthier future, make it less of a battle for them when they get older."

Original story link. 

From the Archives: A Coffee Table? No, that's a Casket!

Woodworker gives caskets two lives

Woodworker Chuck Lakin makes caskets that double as furniture, before their final use

By Taryn Plumb GLOBE CORRESPONDENT

OCTOBER 26, 2011

If you happen to visit Gini Landry’s home in Waterville, Maine, you’ll meet a vivacious, almost-octogenarian with an acute wit and a decades-long dedication to quilting.

And if you’re curious, she’ll show you some of her needle-and-thread creations, 20 or 30 of them, folded up and displayed in a roughly 5-foot-tall rack in her guest bedroom.

And if you’re even more curious, she’ll point out that that very case has a double purpose: When the final hour comes, it will convert into her coffin.

“I’m 4-foot-11-inches tall, and shrinking,’’ the 79-year-old said with a wry grin. “It’s made to fit me.’’

That’s right: Every day, Landry is confronted, quite explicitly, with her own mortality, with a custom-made coffin now serving as a quilt rack and situated conveniently in her home for that fateful day that comes for all of us.

Coffins don’t have to be lined with velvet and propped open vacantly and ominously on funeral parlor sales floors - they can have life before death, at least when crafted by Waterville-based woodworker Chuck Lakin.

The 65-year-old builds simple wood caskets for the not-quite-dearly departed that easily modify into bookcases, entertainment centers, storage chests, wine racks, even coffee tables.

“I don’t think coffins have to be serious, formal things,’’ said Lakin, a retired Colby College librarian.

His morbidly multipurpose creations (www.lastthings.net), starting at a base price of $800 to $900, arose out of his dedication to home funerals, a growing movement in which family members prepare a loved one’s body for burial, rather than having the process handled by a funeral parlor.

Having a coffin available simplifies that process, and also, in a time of grieving, makes decisions easier for the family.

And in the meantime, why not build them so they have multiple uses?

So far, Lakin’s built about 40, typically for friends, but also for Hospice and the Jewish Funeral Home in Portland, Maine.

With hinged sections that fold into each other, shelves that create interlocking lids, or sectional “quick coffin’’ varieties, each pine box can be customized, with those who will (eventually) eternally sleep in them required to lie down and measure their width and height. Lakin also does personalized carvings and engravings, and, upon request, builds the boxes out of different types of wood, such as poplar or walnut.

Seem macabre? If so, it’s only because our culture is so avoidant of death, says Lakin, who describes home burials as personal, moving, meaningful, and spiritual.

“There are people who don’t want to talk about death, or even consider that they’re going to die,’’ agreed Landry, a retired psychiatric nurse. “But death is a natural part of living.’’

She paused and mused, “it may be the best part.’’

In her case, once she “got past the 75 mark,’’ she started to think about her last wishes. She recoiled from the thought of a conventional casket and an elaborate funeral. She prefers her easy quilt-rack-turned-pine-box, in which she intends to be cremated, followed by a simple church service, and finally a burial at a local cemetery.

Still, though she has her final resting place quite handy, she’s certainly in no rush to use it. “I’m trying to stay out of that box,’’ she said with a chuckle.

Original story link. 

The 10th Circle of Hell: The SAT

Student play compares SAT test to Dante’s ‘Inferno’

By Taryn Plumb GLOBE CORRESPONDENT

MARCH 03, 2016

There’s the skateboarder in the midst of an existential crisis. The classic underachiever amidst a family of Harvard alums. The decidedly blasé heir to a thriving family business. The perfectionist who will exhaust herself until she achieves the flawless score of 1,600.

Together, this motley assortment (along with several others) sits in their own fiery circle of hell: an SAT exam room.

We all know the pain of test-taking: the pressure, the pent-up anxiety, the battle against the clock. Students from Lexington Christian Academy have brought that stressful, weighty — some might go so far as to say excruciating — experience to the stage with “Standardize Me,” an original play inspired by the new SAT that’s set to debut on Saturday.

Written and staged by academy students under the guidance of theater director Christopher Greco, the production has been performed four times, most recently at the Massachusetts Educational Theater Guild’s High School Festival preliminary round in Brookline on Feb. 27.

“It kind of feels like a Saturday Night Live skit — it’s absurd and it’s satire,” said Greco. “It raises questions about our standardized tests — are they helpful, are they accurate? It shows an inevitability in the need to be tested and the ability to transcend being evaluated. It also brings out the theme of rising to the challenge.”

With 14 actors, a moving, choreographed set of rolling desks, and frequent references to the hell-traversing protagonists Virgil and Dante of “The Divine Comedy,” the mockumentary fluctuates between the fantastic and the comedic, the realistic and the tragic. Test-takers with a range of backgrounds share their stories in a series of vignettes interwoven with passages from the portion of the epic poem by Dante Alighieri in which the author descends into the nine circles of hell with the forewarning, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

The play was prompted, in part, by changes to the SAT that take effect this testing season: obscure vocabulary words are disappearing, there will be no extra penalties for wrong answers, and reading passages will be more relevant to real life. Most notably, a mandatory essay added in 2005 will now be optional, thus lowering the highest achievable score (excluding the essay) to 1,600.

“While it’s grounded in reality, it’s also a journey of the imagination,” said senior Benjamin Rozonoyer, who plays four roles, including a College Board supervisor, a concrete baron, a father of an “average” girl from an overachieving family, and an “angelic” messenger who relays test scores.

“I like that it morphs the external and fantastic circumstances of the test,” said the Waltham 18-year-old. “It’s a lively and entertaining and fulfilling piece of work.”

Orchestral music and two towers emblazoned with “800” set the scene; characters include the serial test-taking tutor, a sparring boyfriend and girlfriend, a middle child afflicted with seasonal affective disorder who abhors math, the “inscrutable” supervisor who refers to students as “untamable wild rams,” a well-meaning proctor, and Dante and Virgil themselves.

The impetus for the repository of characters was a real-life gaffe: The accidental shredding of probation officers’ promotional exams — before they could be graded — by the state trial court in 2015. (Spoiler alert: Tests in the play are shredded and reduced to confetti.)

Senior Liam O’Toole initially proposed that cathartic destruction. “The situation would be funny for the audience, while simultaneously creating conflict and anguish for the characters onstage,” said the 18-year-old, from Arlington, who portrays a skateboarder with an identity conflict who doubles as Dante. “I thought it had a lot of comic potential.”

Meanwhile, another of the characters, “Chad,” played by senior Emma Bergstrom, was also modeled after actual events: She uses a fake ID to sit in and take a test for someone else, much like “test taker for hire” Sam Eshaghoff of Long Island, who was charged with fraud and criminal impersonation in 2011 for allegedly taking the SAT and ACT for paid clients.

“It is an interesting role for me because in reality I am afraid of cheating,” said Bergstrom, of Reading. “In real life I would never say, ‘Sometimes you have to break the rules to do good.’”

Much of “Standardize Me” formed through improvisation and tinkering, allowing students to create a sort of common ground with their stage presences.

“Like my character, I stink at math,” said 17-year-old Ann Rees Berry of the sneezy, wheezy arithmetic-hater who is equipped with an outdated, hand-me-down calculator. “I think my vehement hatred of all things numbers-related determined my casting.”

The Maynard junior added of her love of theater: “By becoming someone else, you’re better able to understand yourself, and that’s always a fascinating experience.”

Meanwhile, the play allowed both the students and members of the audience to reflect on the impersonal nature of standardized testing.

“I do not like that colleges put so much value in the four-digit numbers we receive,” said Bergstrom. Having taken the SAT last year, she recalled that it caused her “so much anxiety,” and “made me feel horrible about myself when I should not have.”

Rees Berry, for her part, will be taking the test this spring, but said she doesn’t yet have a date lined up, and hasn’t begun to prepare.

“A lot of people have told us how accurate our play is, and said it was a throwback to their own awful experiences either with the SAT or other tests,” she said. “I guess the play’s warned me about how terrible the test is, so now I’m expecting the absolute worst. Hopefully it’ll be better than the experience portrayed in the play – but I somehow doubt it.”

Original story link.