4:00 p.m., I enter the NYU journalism building at Cooper Square, and think I see a beautiful face that I know I’ve seen somewhere before. Yes, there he is in all his glory, Paul Rudd, signing into the building. At first I’m convinced that it’s my eyes fooling me, so I walk into the elevator. Something tells me that it’s really him so I run back out into the lobby.

That’s fate working right there. As it turns out, Paul Rudd was going to the same floor as I was, so I waited for the next elevator and he followed me right in. Adorably handsome and a little short in person, but extremely nice.

So I asked the most obvious question: what the hell was he doing here at NYU? Turns out, Paul was being interviewed by some NYU journalism students (sadly, not my class) on the 7th floor. Hopefully we can watch that interview sometime soon.

He was a really nice guy, and as soon as we walked out, he was swarmed by girls. Well, at least I had my alone time with him. Too bad it was just rated PG.

Photo via Flickr used under Creative Commons.

Presented by the Chinese Student Society at New York, the EXPO is an annual fashion show that features all types of students’ creative work, from student fashion designers and models to choreographers and performers.

This year’s theme is progression, so the contest calls for your best “trashy fashion” – creating fashion wear out of things that would otherwise go in the trash. Aluminum foil, empty soda bottles, plastic bags – use them and flaunt them.

Sketch 3-4 outfits for a chance to win the contest, and download the application on the EXPO website. Got questions? Email nyuexpo2009@gmail.com. The deadline is March 1st.

If you’re not interested in all the mushy-gushiness of Valentine’s Day but have a vagina, like vaginas, or are just damn curious about what the vagina is thinking, come check out this weekend’s performances of The Vagina Monologues.

Based on Eve Ensler’s book, The Vagina Monologues takes over 200 womens’ experiences and discusses their fears, thoughts, and feelings about themselves, their bodies, their sexuality, and yes, their vaginas, through a series of monologues.

The Vagina Monologues are part of the V-Day  campaign, which is focused on spreading awareness about issues faced by women worldwide, specifically stopping violence against girls and women.

Presented by NYU’s Voices for Choice club, the play will be performed 7 pm on Friday, February 13^th and Saturday, February 14^th, and 2 pm on Sunday, February 15^th on the 4^th floor of Kimmel, in the Eisner and Lubin Auditorium. Tickets are available at Ticket Central and cost $7 for NYU students and $15 for everyone else.

“Be Seated,” the current installation by artist Loie Glasser, features rows of little chair sculptures with human legs attached to them. Each quirky chair and its accompanying pair of legs has a distinct personality based on “coordinated furniture design, upholstery fabric, and fashioned footwear.”

Washington Square Windows opened in 1996 with the intention allowing people to look at art without ever having to walk into a building. The exhibits are lit 24 hours a day and this one will be around until April 13th. Stop for a moment to take a look, it’s really not much of a commitment.

Photo by Karina Grudnikov

The introductory course of the Child and Adolescent Mental Health minor, “Child and Adolescent Psychopathology” deals with mental disorders in children and adolescents, teaching students everything from disease etiology to epidemiology and diagnosis. What that means in human words is that students learn about the causes of mental disorders, factors that influence them, ways to identify and diagnose them and everything in between. Learning disorders, mental retardation, eating disorders… you name it and it’s probably covered in this class.

Besides the fact that the subject matter is really fascinating, there are lots of added bonuses. For one, the class is taught by Dr. Jess Shatkin (pictured), not just a professor but a renowned child psychiatrist, as well as the Director of Education and Training at the center. Rarely do undergraduate college students get the chance to study with professionals that are really important in their field, let alone one like Dr. Shatkin (or Jess, as he lets us call him even though no one has the guts to), who is a really approachable guy.

Definitely cooler than smart, famous doctors who go by Jess is that students are required to sit in on a psychiatric evaluation between a patient and a doctor, and then write up an evaluation of their own. According to Dr. Shatkin, most students agree that this is their favorite part of the class, and it’s easy to see why. “Being able to observe a child and family suffering from mental illness puts faces, emotions, real people and real struggles to the often dry discourse found in psychopathology text books,” he says.

Surprised that inexperienced undergraduates are given such a privilege, I ask Dr. Shatkin why he’s built it into his curriculum. He explains that the sit-in gives students a chance to really imagine what their future in the field could be. “They get to see the clinician in action and, in their minds, play with the idea of sitting in that seat, taking on that role.” Shatkin acknowledged that undergrads rarely have much exposure to clinical settings but, “since we have all the resources of the NYU Child Study Center at our fingertips, we feel it’s important, and almost our duty, to share this opportunity with them,” he said.

For students as fascinated with psychopathology as I am, the fun’s not over when the class ends. The Child and Adolescent Mental Health minor offers plenty of other awesome classes, including new ones which are being added every semester. CAMS, as the program is called, began in the fall of 2006, partially as a response to the rash of NYU suicides of 2003-2004 and the attention they brought to juvenile mental health. While Dr. Shatkin says that “CAMS really is a separate issue,” he admits that the program was started during that time “because mental health was pushed to the forefront of the school’s agenda…it made terrific sense to develop an academic program of study so that students could learn about how these sorts of things, amongst many others, happen in the first place.”

The semester hasn’t even reached the halfway point… but I’ve already decided to add this as a minor.

Budd, a Gallatin sophomore studying what he calls “dismantling privilege: a combination of race relations, politics, history, and social justice,” could put us all to the shame with the amount of work he did during the campaign. While we were watching debates and cracking jokes at Sarah Palin’s incoherent statements, Budd was on the campaign trail, hard at work for then Presidential candidate Barack Obama. Oh yeah, all the while earning college credit at NYU.

After volunteering for over a year, Budd officially became part of the Obama campaign staff in June 2008, working relentlessly up until the presidential election. In Georgia, he was a field organizer, a “pretty much run of the mill job,” he says. In Florida, Budd was given the much more intense duty of Constituency/Base Corps organizer. No longer was he knocking on doors and telephoning strangers, now was dealing with elected officials and community leaders, “making sure that their constituents were taken care of by the campaign”. Not to mention that he “was a full-time student, but [he] wasn’t in the city,” he says, explaining that he was able to earn credit for an independent study as well as an internship. And while the pay wasn’t great, he isn’t complaining. “The motto was, ‘No one is doing this to get rich,’” he laughs.

So while Budd experienced more stress and lack of sleep than NYU students during finals week, he says that “the amount of [life] experience was unparalleled” and well worth it. “The [experience] definitely matured me. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that I’ve aged. The responsibility I had on my head has definitely carried over into college life. And, in this economic climate, any leg-up I have in the job market is one I will take.”

So how’s the political activist adjusting to life back at NYU after a semester without midterms and final papers? “I’m very, very happy to be seeing my good friends on a regular basis. But I’m already kind of bored.”

As happy as Budd is to be able to just be a college kid again, his experiences on the campaign trail have left him a little disenchanted with the academic life. Having been outside the much-hyped halls of academia, Budd came back ready to confirm our suspicion that life in the “real world” is only vaguely related to the lessons learned in school. He explains that he isn’t sorry to be back, but finds that there’s really a “limit to how much you can actually learn inside of the classroom. You can talk all you want about segregation and racism in the South, but if you’ve never actually been down there and seen just how much it hasn’t changed, you’ll never really understand.”

Though he’s temporarily returned to the drudgery of homework and finals like the rest of us, Budd’s well aware of the fact that his graduation coincides with the start of the re-election campaign. Something tells me he won’t be moving onto his parents’ couch after graduation.

Photo courtesy of Jordan Budd.

Photo by NYU Journalism

Regardless of her atypical past, Mara’s a normal college senior now. Excepting that her childhood stories are actually worth retelling. While you and I were making macaroni art, Mara, wanting to be professional, was finishing her lines before bursting into tears when her on-screen “Mom” accidentally kicked a soccer ball into her chest.

During the three day run of “Weren’t You That Girl?” a small TV screen overheard played clips from some of Mara’s films and appearances, nicely supplementing stories like these. And then there were the more raw moments in the show, when Mara talked about  the real human her, not Mara the child star.

By the end of the performance, it becomes pretty clear that what you think you know about “child star” Mara Wilson is far off the mark. Former child stars tend to end up more like Lindsay Lohan or the Olsen twins, in rehab and without real careers, not graduating college. “I’m just not like them,” she says. “I’m not very glamorous; I’m a nerd.”

So here’s what the self-proclaimed nerd had to say when I interviewed her after the show:

Q: It seemed like you wanted to maintain your privacy while here at NYU, and then, you do a show in which you really open up. I think it’s interesting to ask, ‘Why’?
I’ve never really thought of myself as a big famous person. It just never appealed to me. And I’ve been out of the public eye for so long that when I came here, I didn’t really think people thought I was that interesting anymore. I didn’t send out a press release. I don’t like to draw unnecessary attention to myself for what I did as a child; there was a time when I wouldn’t bring it up. When people brought it up, it was a little like when someone brings up an embarrassing memory, like, ‘Remember that time when you were at the water park and your top fell off?’

It was just not what I wanted to be known for. And I really tried to play it down: when people asked me [about my past film career] I’d acknowledge it but then move on.  I really don’t think I fit the stereotype of a former child actor: if anything, I fit more of the stereotype of the former high school drama nerd. I don’t want to be forever riding on the accomplishments of my six year old self. This was something that I didn’t think I could do.

Q: The piece? Why?
It was hard for me to talk about this for a long time—not because it was a traumatic experience, but there was just a lot of baggage associated with it and I wasn’t clear headed about it yet. I started writing a lot more in college—I’ve been writing plays, mostly—but when I started to write autobiographical stories, people were saying, “You know, you’ve had a really interesting life”. And I thought, “Oh, well, maybe I have. Maybe I should tell more people about it.” And I got a little more comfortable sharing my stories. This was sort of an experiment; I wanted to open up about these things and also to explain myself, because I don’t talk about it that often. I’m not what I was. Obviously, I’ve grown up since then. But it is still a part of who I am, and this is me coming to embrace it.

Q: So up until now, you didn’t feel like you had really embraced your past?
I think it was just that I was a little embarrassed about it. I’ve always felt very separate from it, even when I was young and living it. It always scared me when I would have a brush with fame, like when I’d be walking down the street and people would know my name. It was like I was watching myself from the outside. And I feel like the rest of the world knew a Mara that wasn’t really me.

Q: When you first came to NYU, was that hard? Were people recognizing you?
I remember cringing a bit and thinking, “Oh no, they’re going to lump me with the Olsen twins”. I’m not an Olsen twin. And the thing is, I have nothing against the Olsen twins. I’m just not like them. I’m not very glamorous; I’m a nerd. I came to NYU for academic purposes and it was strange to me when I lived in Weinstein and I would find people knocking on my door late at night, like Thursday night at 12 am. I would open the door in my pajamas and there’d be a crowd of freshman girls, saying ‘Are you Mara?’ ‘Uhhh, yeah’. And they’d say “Well, we just really wanted to meet you.” And then they’d look really disappointed, because they probably expected at least for me to be wearing more than my pajamas. I felt bad, like I was letting them down because I wasn’t being glamorous, because I wasn’t the exciting person they thought I would be. And then they would often ask me to party with them…

Q: Just to be like… “Oh, I partied with Matilda?!”
I guess so. And I never did, I mean, I am really not a partier, and second of all, would you party with people you didn’t know who showed up at your door late at night on a school night? Would they have done that? No. There were safety issues.

Q: It wasn’t flattering at all? Any of it?
It was flattering, just a little strange. As a child I didn’t really take it as a compliment when people would say these things to me. I never really took pride in my acting. I never knew the magnitude of it. It didn’t even register with me. Part of that was because my parents tried to make sure I had a level head, but also, I was just so stubborn with myself. I couldn’t stand watching myself act because I’d always think I did so badly. I remember a couple of years ago, I saw “Matilda” on and I called my father and said, ‘Dad, I really wasn’t that good of an actress as a kid. I was really pretty bad.’ And he said, ‘Oh Mara, you were just a tiny kid then.’ It’s only recently that I’ve come to realize that, wow! I really did make an impact on these peoples’ lives, and wow, I really did mean something to these girls. And it touches me now and I’m sorry that I didn’t understand it then.

Q: But then, that whole privacy thing… do you still keep people at bay, or do you feel like you’ve let your guard down?
I would like people to know me for who I am, especially since I think people have a very skewed image of me. I was playing a lot of cute characters, a lot of little girls, I was objectified. And I don’t want people to think of me as that because it’s not who I am, and because I’ve seen a lot of hostility towards that image. It’s a version of Mara Wilson that doesn’t exist. And I’d rather be known for my accomplishments and for things that I really do take pride in, rather than known for this doll-like image I had when I was a child.

Q: So how do people at school treat you?
A lot of people don’t know; they don’t put 2 and 2 together. And then there are people who do; they make a big deal out of it for two minutes and then get to know me as a person. Then, it’s like they have this split view of me, like there’s the Mara that the world knows and then there’s the Mara that they know. When I say I want privacy, I mean I don’t want celebrity. I’ve never enjoyed being a celebrity. I’m not really celebrity material.

Q: Have you ever thought about returning to film acting?
I’ve thought about it. In film, you’re so scrutinized. I think I might like to try film again just as an experiment but I know that I could never do the mainstream thing again. I just wouldn’t be able to do that.

Photo

But while NYU celebs like Peaches Geldof and the Olsens attention whore as much as possible, some are a little more low key, eliciting curiosity. Case in point: Mara Wilson, the now grown-up girl who played Matilda, every child genius’s role model. And yet the mere mention of “Matilda” brings out Mara’s wrath (or so I’ve heard). Seems like someone’s been trying to bury her former life as a child actor.

Until now! I guess someone is beginning to come to terms with her past, by creating a one-woman show about her experiences. “Weren’t You That Girl…?”  will be performed at the 3rd floor studio theatre in the Tisch building at 721 Broadway, at 9 pm, Thursday-Saturday, December 11-13. There will also be a matinee at 3 pm on Saturday.

I have no idea how to get tickets but am planning to find a way in anyway. This may be my one and only chance to see Matilda – wait, sorry, sorry, Mara in person, performing her craft.

On Sunday December 7th, from 6-10 pm, the lounge in Gramercy Green will be the place to get free munchies from Dunkin Donuts, as well as watch TV and play a killer game of Rock Band.
The same awesome stuff will be available on the 4th floor of Kimmel, in the Eisner and Lubin Auditorium, on Monday, December 8th, also from 6-10 pm.

Also on Monday, from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., the CAS Student Council will be hosting Bagel Fest in the College Café on the 9th floor of Silver. We all know breakfast is the most important meal of the day, so stop by and grab a free bagel.

The CAS Student Council will also be hosting Cocoa and Carols on Thursday, December 11th from 10:45 AM – 1:45 PM outside of Silver, on Washington Place. Get yourself into the holiday spirit by grabbing some candy canes, hot cocoa, and cookies. And if you really get into the spirit, you can even sing along with the carolers.

Finally, for all the caffeine junkies out there: come to Bobst LL1 on Wednesday, December 17th from 11 pm until midnight and grab some FREE Red Bull and coffee, as well as post-its and pens! As we all know, no one sleeps during finals week, so stop by and stock up on all the caffeine you desire.

Photo: flickr creative commons