Editor's note: The Eastern Echo staff meets regularly with interesting people on and off campus. Engage in those conversations with us through our Q&A reports.
Eastern Michigan University student Adam Weisman has lived in multiple places in the U.S., including Florida, Georgia and Ohio. Weisman moved to Michigan from Atlanta, right before starting EMU classes. He is a graduate student studying theater for young audiences, even though that wasn’t always his academic goal. His academic career took an unexpected turn before he came to Eastern Michigan University, but now he is on track to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree in applied drama and theater for the young. Weisman said he'll be seeking jobs in academia and higher education when he finishes his master's degree at EMU.
Q: Where are you from originally?
A: I was born in Covington, Kentucky. And then my grandpa on my mother’s side was diagnosed with cancer, so my parents moved down to Clearwater, Florida, to take care of him. After he passed away, we went to the other side of Florida, to Fort Lauderdale.
Q: Eastern's theater department hosts a drama day. Are you involved?
A: Drama day is when students from high schools in the area, and some middle schools for the first time, come to Eastern to take some workshops, hour-long, theater workshops, in three sessions. They got to see a special matinee of "Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief the Musical," just for them. So, I taught three workshops, all about stage directing.
Q: What do you usually do for fun/relaxation during the weekends or breaks?
A: For relaxation? If I can. I’m a very busy guy. I teach Fridays, which I somewhat consider weekends. I teach Friday evenings, but generally, my Friday mornings are open. And I hope that I can get enough of my homework done during the week so that I can take that Friday morning off to bake something or read a book. But it seems that the busier my schedule gets, the less time I have to do that. When it comes to the actual weekends, right now, they’re very open.
Q: If you could change one thing about yourself, what would you change, if anything?
A: Are we talking about something real, like a superpower kind of thing? OK, so my answer for changing something really arbitrary that would give me a really cool superpower would be the power to jump really high. I think that would be funny, because I’m very short and having a short person jump very high and dunk a basketball would just be very funny to watch. So, it’s a really versatile tool if I was able to jump really high.
In terms of changing something about myself in real life, probably not. I’ve come to the point in my life where I think my small stature has benefited me more than it has hurt me. I think a lot of the reason why I’m able to be extroverted and meet new people is because I look very approachable by virtue of looking very young and small, which is great.
Q: Do you know your height?
A: I am 5 feet 4 inches, but I slouch. I’m really, in the grand scheme of things, not that short; but I am 5 feet 4 inches.
Q: The next question is, what’s your favorite food? It can be more than one food, if you’d like.
A: I feel the need to preface this one because of the fact that my parents are from Ohio. And, they are both big fans of Skyline Chili. But, at the same time, they think it’s kind of gross. I’m sorry for any Ohioans reading the article. But it’s a huge thing, because once every two weeks my dad would make a big batch of chili, more so in the winter, when it’s colder, 60 instead of 90. And that chili is a very comforting homemade meal. But because my parents are weird Ohioans, they serve it on top of spaghetti. But spaghetti, with chili on top, is my favorite food.
Q: What are your favorite hobbies?
A: First and foremost, I would say my favorite hobby is baking. I like to bring baked goods to my graduate classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which gives me a goal to bake at least two things a week. When I left for college, both my dad and my sister, who were major big-time bakers, were not in my house anymore, since I was in a new state. And I realized that if I wanted baked goods, then I’d have to make them myself. So, I’ve started making them, and I haven’t looked back.
Q: What’s your favorite thing to bake?
A: Oooo, that’s a killer question. I will say that my family has a very special relationship to our family banana bread recipe, which I love, and is on the healthier side of baking. My grandmother, who unfortunately passed away last year, had a Rolodex of recipes, not necessarily from her youth, but from her adult life, and those family recipes are some of my favorite family recipes to make. And some of them are traditional Jewish recipes like hamantaschen for Purim, a classic Judean pastry. And some recipes I’m brushing up on, like for fall, I make apple cider donuts. And, my favorite are her pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.
Q: Do you have any favorite seasonal pastry to bake? Is fall your favorite season?
A: I think my favorite might be summer, when all the berries are the best. So, I can make a killer berry tart, some blueberry or strawberry pie. So, I would say summer is my favorite.
Q: Do you like to cook at all?
A: I do, I prefer baking, though. I think baking is a little more fun, because people say that baking is more of a science. And that part is the part that I like the most. I do enjoy cooking; I have a relationship with cooking in that, when I get sick and tired of baking every single day.
Q: Do you have any passions, besides baking and theater?
A: Theater, I feel as though it might be cheating saying that. But yes, I would go with theater. I also have a passion for teaching, especially when it is in a theater-adjacent field, public speaking, communication; anything that involves talking to people.
Q: Would you say you're more of an extroverted person?
A: It really depends. Many people in my life think so. And I do feel rejuvenated when I am around friends, but it’s also combined with a little bit of social anxiety. Especially in large crowds. I can’t do concerts, there’s just too many people. So, yes and no; I enjoy meeting new people, I enjoy talking to strangers, as long as it’s not on the phone, I hate the phone. I also tend to have social anxiety when it comes to larger crowds.
Q: Do you have any pets at home?
A: I have two cats here in Michigan. One of them, the older one, his name is Pork Chop. And the other one, her name is Brisket. Pork Chop is four and Brisket is two years old. They’re both named after meats, as you can tell. Pork Chop came with that name and we decided we couldn’t improve upon perfection. When we got a kitten, me and my partner were like, well, we want to keep the meat theme. Because a pork chop is not a kosher meat, we felt the need to balance it out with the kosher. So, we used Brisket.
Q: What breed are they?
A: We think that Pork Chop has a little bit of Maine coon in him, because he’s very fluffy, but he’s also very small. They’re both rescued, so just, your general domestic short hair. Pork Chop is very fluffy. Brisket is not.
Q: Do they get along well?
A: They’re best friends. They love each other so much. Part of the reason why we got a second cat is because we’ve been fostering for a long time, and Pork Chop was a foster fail. So, we got him and he was so scared of everybody and then we won him over and we were like, nobody could take this cat from us. Then we decided to keep fostering and we just saw ... it was magical how much Pork Chop took in these other cats and was so friendly and would play all day with them and snuggle with all of the fosters. Then we moved to Michigan, from Atlanta, and we realized that he was just kind of lonely with no other cat in the house.
So, the next week before we moved to Michigan, it was adoption-fee-waived week ... at the Humane Society in Atlanta. We got Brisket and it was a genius idea and they love each other so much. It worked out every time except for one. There was one very nasty cat that we fostered, who did not like Pork Chop, even though Pork Chop tried very hard to be friends with this cat. It was Fiona and she was evil. Like, the stereotypical evil cat, who watches you and waits for you to die so she can eat you.
Q: Have you ever fostered dogs?
A: Only short term. Because we’ve lived in apartments for the past six years, it’s a lot harder to dog-proof your home than it is to cat-proof your home. So the dog would get into things that we would not want the dog to get into. We’d done some short-term weekend fostering with the Atlanta Humane Society, because people would go on vacation and need somebody to watch their foster dog for a couple of days.
Sometimes they’d have this event where foster parents can come to the shelter and walk the dog for a day. You’d just hang out with them for a day outside of the shelter, just to give them a break from the environment. We did that a bunch. For a while we were walking foster dogs almost every weekend. That was fun. Me and my partner thought it was very important that these animals got a little bit of life outside of the shelter, especially the older ones. Because the puppies are quick to go.
Q: What kind of teacher do you hope to become in the future?
A: That’s a great question. I’m in this very exciting part of my life where I’m finishing my degree this winter. I will have a terminal degree in theater for young audiences, and my hope in life is to continue teaching college and continue in higher education. Not the best time to be looking for jobs in that field; so, concrete plans, unfortunately, not yet. But if everything goes according to my hopes and wishes, I will still be teaching college in the next couple of years. Hopefully, theater, communication, that realm.
Q: Did you know that you were always going to be a graduate student or was that new?
A: No, and I really expected to be doing theater after college in terms of further education. I was actually planning on being a dentist. I was pre-dental in college, and I took all my pre-dental coursework. That was completely separate from majors and minors in my university. It was just like a series of courses I did to be ready for dental school. But I was always a theater studies major first and then I had a second course of study in sustainability sciences, which was through the anthropology department. But my initial plan was to become a dentist. I ended up taking the dental admission tests, and my parents really encouraged me to go down that path. I was more interested in theater because it’s what I enjoy.
Q: What kinds of activities did you do in theater?
A: Last year here at Eastern, I was in the Theatre for the Young tour. The play was called "The Girl was Called a Cactus," and we went to a bunch of elementary schools and performed. I’m part of the Spinning Dot repertory company, which also performs in the community. ... I play a narrator called Finnegan Krokermeyer in a play called "This Girl Laughs." I am going to be in a new play soon, and it’s a devised work called "The Little French Hen," based on the folk tale. I will be in that as a mime-clown character, which is very exciting. I do still perform, not as often as I did when I was an undergraduate student. I was pretty much always in at least two shows at once in college.
Q: Has there been anyone who inspired you to teach?
A: Yes. When I was in eighth grade, my history teacher, Mr. Arnold, was just so happy and excited about sharing history with us, like it were stories. I didn't feel like I was getting lectured every single day; it was more interactive, and more visceral. And his lectures, to me, felt like theater, looking back at what it was. I wasn’t doing theater yet, but his lectures were so lively, and so joyful, where I could just learn about history in a really exciting way. And then, more recently, when I was in college, I had a professor, Dr. Michael Evenden, who is just the smartest man I’ve ever met, and every day I strive to be as caring and as passionate of a professor as him. His lectures are more of a lecture-style, but they were just groundbreaking and would change people’s world views when they would take his classes.
Q: Do you have any tips for people attempting to earn their master’s in a teaching program while juggling other things in their lives, such as family, extracurricular activities and personal care?
A: I will say that 30% of a master’s degree would be coursework. What’s far more important than your coursework, and obviously don’t neglect your coursework, is building professional connections, getting involved in the community and the institution. Making connections with not only professors, but also the undergrads, and meeting as many people as you can. I really encourage people to fully immerse themselves in the school culture, get as involved as you can.
If it’s more socially, definitely make connections with the professors at the institution. At the end of the day, because you’re a graduate student, the professors are closer to being your peers than they are your mentors. You’re going to graduate with your degree, and then you’re going to be peers. You're going to be co-workers. So, definitely make the right connections. Try the teacher’s assisting classes if you’re interested. ... If you're a STEM person, go work in a lab; make connections with people and the STEM area because then, those are the people who will help you find further research opportunities.
Q: Did you ever grow up super Orthodox?
A: No, never. At some points ... we went to a more conservative-style Judaism temple, but we were never very religious. We observed the Sabbath and that we would have a family meal, and my parents would give my sister and I blessings, and that was the extent of it. I wore a kippah only in the temple. I went to the temple semi-regularly. I went to Hebrew school, but only once I had my bar mitzvah. My family stopped going to temple outside of the High Holy Days, and we became much more secular. It was a shift being a little more conservative to being very secular.
Q: Explain what a Bar Mitzvah is?
A: So, there are Bar, Bat and B'nai Mitzvah's. Bar Mitzvah, if you are male identifying; Bat Mitzvah, if you’re female identifying; and B'nai for twins, or two people at once. It’s the sort of Jewish rite of passage showing that you’ve become a man or a woman or an adult person. It’s this big, fantastic ceremony where you are assigned a Torah portion to read out. Then, generally, there’s an additional service, where people talk, family members talk and then a party afterwards. And a lot of Jewish children around ages 12-13 start taking public speaking classes because you have to get ready to not only speak, but also sing, your Torah portion in front of all the people coming to your Bar, Bat or B'nai Mitzvah, which, for some people, is your entire congregation. For others, it’s just your family and friends. I had a very low key one, but reading your Torah portion is a very big deal.
Q: What’s a Torah portion?
A: A Torah portion is just a story in the Torah. Let’s say you get a story about Moses in this particular instance. You’d be getting one small chunk of the Old Testament story, and it would be based on your birthday.
Q: How was your Yom Kippur feast?
A: My feast was great; my fast was rough. But every year for the High Holy Days, one of my professors, Decky Alexander, invites me and my partner over to her home, and we would break fast with her and her family. And, this beautiful, wonderful community she’s built, of people she’s known throughout many years, some of them are, like, completely random. It’s the most random community of people who all just come together and chat, feast and celebrate the end of the fast.
Q: Were there any major obstacles that you have had to overcome in your life? What did those obstacles teach you?
A: I was bullied a lot when I was younger, primarily for my small stature; and I think that’s also helped shape the person I am in terms of empathy, trying to befriend everybody and not making judgments about people based on their identity or things they can’t change. My chronic illness, I think, has presented a whole lot of challenges that I’ve been able to overcome in terms of just versatility and resilience. It was very hard for me during the pandemic to do much of anything, because I couldn’t leave my house, because I was on drugs that left me severely immunocompromised. And, I was just not feeling well; it was hard to eat, hard to sleep. I think it was a lesson that I still take with me now, even when I have hard days, and even if I have Crohn’s flare-ups, I know that it will get better. My mom would always say, 'this, too, shall pass.' So, I think through that resilience, I’ve definitely gotten better at, especially as I’ve been navigating this life with a chronic illness.
Q: Do you mind elaborating on your Chron’s Disease?
A: My sophomore year of college, I was having these inexplicable, terrible, terrible, stomach pains. I did not know what it was, it was so random. I would wake up in the middle of the night, at three in the morning in excruciating pain. And then I would be in excruciating pain all day until noon, and it was exactly noon, the pain would go away. And I would be able to live a normal life from noon until I went to bed, and then I’d wake up at three in the morning, and the cycle would start over again. It was life-altering. I would be at all of my rehearsals, because in the evenings, I was fine. I would be able to do most of the things I’d be doing, but I would not be able to show up to any of my morning classes.
When I went to the hospital a couple of times, the Emory hospital system told me to be less stressed, and to change my diet. Then, I went on a very bland diet; I would eat the same things every day at the same time, and nothing helped. Thankfully, medicine is magic, and I was able to go back to school the following semester. I only withdrew from one semester, but I was so ahead in credits and classes that I was able to graduate on time. So, it didn’t really affect me academically, aside from missing a few opportunities here or there.
Q: Finally, are you happy with your life?
A: I think so. I’m in a really great place right now. I’m enjoying what I’m doing. I love being in school, I love teaching and I’m teaching two sections of Communications 124 this year, which is amazing. I’m teaching at Spinning Dot, which I have so much fun doing. I get to do playwriting workshops this year; everything’s going really well.
Editor's note: Writer Benni Klenczar is a student in the news reporting and writing class at Eastern Michigan University.
