Life Is Staged

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwilling to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances,
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered Pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
-As You Like It, Shakespeare

I am in Theatre, a way of seeing, this semester at Kent State. My nursing coordinator told me that it is a requirement for my nursing degree that I am working on. I'm not really sure why? I tell people that it is so that I can learn to lie to patients when they are on deaths door. My nursing coordinator also told me that this class would be an easy "A" grade for me. Well now that I just finished my first exam I beg to differ. I really HATE short answer and essay exams and this one was all of that(and a bag of chips), 5 pages later(front and back) and 1 1/2 hours of examining, I am pretty sure that I'm not sure at all in how I did. My mind is fuzzy and I haven't been able to see anything clearly for 2 hours since the exam. That "A" seems harder than I thought. In my studying last night for the exam, I did come across this script from, As You Like It, and I thought it really said a lot about a mans life in a short span. It puts everything into perspective; you start out as a baby not knowing many things, you grow up and learn everything and think you are "master of the universe", then you realize it was better when you were young and didn't know everything, so you start reverting back to when you were a baby and sleep all day and have others feed you. Wisdom, it's a scary thing, you have to go thru so much to get it and when you have it you sometimes wish that you could take it back.