Student Blog: Tips and Tricks: How to be Organized and Efficient

Transitioning from Highschool to College is more difficult than it seems as the process of the whole thing is two entirely different scenarios. This means that managing courses and theater hand in hand have to change based on what you do. For me, I am a Musical Theatre major. Although this can actually help in some ways, there’s still a whole lot of work to be done that can conflict with my own responsibilities and theater in general. 

Firstly, you never realize how much memorization you have to do until you’re actually doing it. There’s monologues, multiple scenes, plays, multiple songs and so so much more. It gets to the point where a majority of your school life is all memorization. It does get tiring at some point because your brain is filled with all these words that sometimes you can get confused or go on the dreaded “airplane mode”, where you just freeze and forget everything. Luckily, I found some tips to help me and others around. The first tip I would recommend is flash cards. I personally use an app for Flashcards that has different ways to help you memorize but I personally enjoy the flashcards as I feel it's the most efficient way and can do it anywhere at anytime. I also enjoy flashcards as you can mark what you did wrong so when relooking at your material; you're able to focus on what you’ve missed the most. Another tip is rewriting. This is something I personally do when I need to memorize something quickly. I rewrite the line multiple times then go back and forth with the line the other actor might say to me when speaking. If it's a monologue or song, I break down the monologue/song line by line and then rewrite it all together. Lastly, another tip for memorization would be listening to the material over and over again. Personally, this form of memorization doesn’t work for me that well so I use it when I have more time to work on things but I do know this works really well for others. Some will record themselves reading the monologue or listening to the song and repeat it over and over again! If you’re not a theater student and have another career ahead, I do believe these tips work just as well.

I use these tools consistently and I do feel as it keeps me more organized. However, that might not always be the case and maybe I do forget one or two things. What I started doing to be more organized with this is: list. List-ing things out on the remind app or writing it on paper and checking it off as you go can be really helpful to not forget things as well as keeping track of the work so in the future you don’t overwork yourself. Overall, these tips and tools are able to help me be a good student academically and help me be a good actress myself.