Keeping Up With Kayleigh

As I promised last week in my blog, I want to walk you through the opening weekend of "9 to 5"! Since I posted my last blog we finished our last two nights of tech rehearsal on Thursday and Friday. On Friday night we had our traditional invited dress rehearsal. This is where anyone in the theatre arts department is welcome to come watch our rehearsal and the cast can invite close friends. This allows the cast and crew to perform for a small audience before we officially open a show. It is very helpful and gives us a way to get our nerves out before having a full audience.  Invited dress had a few bumps along the way, but we worked through them and it helped prepare us to open the show on Saturday night! After the last dress rehearsal we fixed what went wrong and went over our director and choreographers notes and got out of rehearsal at 12 a.m. It was a very late night, but they got through everything we needed to so we wouldn't have to come in early before the show the n...

We are officially at the busiest time of the semester! The last month of school is insane and I find myself struggling to keep up at times. I have been dealing with a mystery sickness for the last two weeks and it has really taken a toll on me which hasn't been helpful at all! After three different appointments at the health center, they finally put me on antibiotics so I am hoping that it helps get whatever this sickness is out of my system. On top of being sick, we are now in the busiest and most crucial part of "9 to 5". We began tech week this past Saturday and spent our weekend in two 10-hour rehearsals. For those of you who are not well-educated in the theatre world, tech week is basically the week leading up to the opening of a show. The cast and crew spend this week in very long rehearsals and many late nights working on putting all aspects of the show together. This includes working with lighting, sound, costumes, spacing, orchestra and more. It is a giant proces...

If you have been following along with my blog from the beginning you would know that I am a musical theater major here at ONU! Although I am pursuing a minor in marketing and really enjoy that department, theatre is truly my biggest passion! I always tell people that I am not a crazy theatre kid, and to be honest, those who make theatre their whole life really annoy me, LOL! However, I always say that I am just a person who does theatre because I believe I was given my talents for a reason.  Choosing to come to ONU to pursue my degree in musical theatre wasn't a difficult decision because they truly run an incredible department here and I know I am getting some of the very best training! Last semester we went through an extensive audition process for all of the spring semester shows. I was so nervous because I wanted to be in a show so badly, but I knew it wasn't common for freshman to get into shows their first year. However, I persevered and made it to the final callback for ...

Some people like to live a chill life where they do their work or school during the day but then come home and relax in the evenings. However, I am not one of those people. I love to constantly be busy and be surrounded by friends. I go crazy when I have nothing to do or when I am stuck in one place for long periods. Life here at Ohio Northern sure does keep me busy and for that I am very thankful.  I love watching TikTok videos of what people do in their days or perhaps throughout their week, so I decided to dedicate this blog post to tell you all about what I did throughout this week. My week started off bright and early on Sunday morning when my sorority fam picked me up to go to church. Most of us typically go to different churches but we haven't had much time to hang out lately so we deci ded to take the morning and go to church together. After church we got Panera for lunch and it was so wonderful getting to spend time with them. It's at these moments that I realize how l...

When I first came to ONU, I had never felt so lonely in my life. I knew that coming to a school 8 hours away from home wouldn't be easy, but I did not expect it to be this hard. I am a homebody at heart but I also am an independent person so I thought that I would adjust easily to college life but it was quite the opposite. Bid Day! Since I grew up in a large family it was quite the culture shock moving away from them and living in a quiet dorm when I am used to always being surrounded by family and noise. I had never met my roommate prior to moving in and she is on the volleyball team so was hardly ever home. Because of that we didn't get to know each other until several weeks into school. I am in a small major, so outside of that I didn't know many people. My fam! I felt as though I was missing something. A part of me was left at home and I felt like I would never be truly happy here. There were a few people on campus that knew I was struggling with this feeling of loneli...

  Welcome to my blog! I am so excited that you decided to visit today. I am Kayleigh Jarkowsky, a freshman Musical Theatre major with a minor in Marketing here at Ohio Northern. I wanted to dedicate my first blog to helping my readers learn a little bit more about me, my passions, and why I decided to come to ONU and study these two fields. I was born and raised in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, so life here in Ohio sure can be very different than my life back home. I have two loving parents, 4 siblings, and 2 sisters-in-law with whom I am very close, so living so far away from them is not easy some days. I am 19 years old, so I am the second to youngest in the sibling lineup. I also have one dog, named Maggie, who is a six-year-old Black Lab and Border Collie mix. Not seeing her every day is so hard, especially since I am a huge dog person! I was raised in a Christian household so faith is very important to me.  My family! I grew up in a very musically inclined family, and because ...