POP!! by Leslie Lau

POP!
POP, which stands for Power of People, is an event where all 4 sections of ethnic studies 210 show off their presentation and theatrical skills to show the struggles of todays Asian American culture. I was part of Irene Duller’s class. The show was a blast especially when your on it. For my class we decided to split the class into 5 sections, dance, skit, video, music and poetry. I was in the skit crew. However, our skit crew was two big so we decided to split the skit crew into two. I stayed in my group, which is called the CPG’s (Chinese Pilipino Group). The other students were from the other group called the Just So Sick Girls. We only had about a week worth of time to prepare for our skit. Together we decided on doing a skit where we show how experience changed us through our required blogs. It was kind of hard because everybody had conflicting schedules so practice was not enough. Though it was hard, we actually got the work and layout done, all we have do now is rehearse. The only time we got to rehearse was the day of the POP!. During the rehearsal there were some kinks in our skit but we fixed it before the show. I sat through the first classes performance, thinking “ oh man they’re good”. Thinking on the back of my mind, how are we going to top that. Our class was the second to perform. The order for our performances was news video, skit #1, dance, skit #2, poetry, music, and compilation video. I did not get to see the video or the dance because my group was backstage getting ready for our performance. We quickly did a quick run through. Overall I think the performance was great. It was better than how we rehearsed it even though the lighting was kind of off for us. At the end of our skit, we had a compilation video of our class that the music group made. I think their was a big mix up because they shown the wrong video.
The overall experience was great. I like how everyone participated and no one showing like they don’t want to be there. I especially like how this is going to be the last time we are going to have 4 ethnic studies 210 classes working together. Although planning the skit was kind of hard, it was kind of fun being able to speak out in front of people and saying what you feel like. Even though I left early, I heard the other classes did an awesome job as well. This was a great way for students to come together to show what they learned during the class. I believe that someone learns more about a subject by doing what they feel like doing instead of forcing students to write essays and read books. You get to experience and be a part of this generational movement we have. This whole project taught us that if you have the mind and effort into something, you can achieve anything you want.