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Minnesota Six - Text

Interviewer’s Name: Amanda Baker
Recording Date: 11/14/08
Recording Time: 00:06:53

The subject is a white, female student who is in her fourth year of college. She studies acting. She was born and raised in Montevideo, Minnesota. She moved to California and has lived in the Orange County for 3 years. She has been trying to eliminate her accent due to her career in theatre, so in the recording, there are some obvious California sounds mixed with her Minnesota accent.

In the unscripted part, she describes her choosing of her college and her move to California, as well as her change of majors and views on theatre. She then changes topic and beings speaking about the cold weather in Minnesota and her upcoming Christmas she will spend there. She ends the recording with her thoughts and views on Minnesota salting the road versus putting dirt on the road to melt the snow.

TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH

So, my mom and me came down here for the orientation that they do every summer, and we drove around, oh my God, it was horrible. We flew into Long Beach airport, which was stupid in itself, and um, and then we like got on the freeway in the middle of, uh, like rush hour traffic and my mom had no idea where the hell she was going- at all. So we ended up, we thought we were in Fullerton but we were actually on the other side of Fullerton, like over by Malverne and those, like way over on that side of town. We stayed over there and woke up so early in the morning, and had to go to orientation and stuff, and drove around, found me a place, flew back to Minnesota. Couple months later, I flew out here. Her distant cousin picked me up from the airport. I brought my cat, Ninia, who I sedated, on the plane. We had a layover in Vegas, it was horrible. I had a litter box in my backpack, with my new computer, and when we had a layover, like, she was so drugged up that I had to bring her into the bathroom, and I had like a bag of litter, and I kept putting, I would put the litter out for her in hopes she would go to the bathroom, but she kept trying to run underneath all of the stalls, so I had to keep trying to catch her and, like, get her to go, and then we had to catch the next plane to go to California. It was the most horrible experience of my life. So I showed up here, and um, he brought me to my apartment here in Fullerton and I walked around for four days, I didn’t know anybody, I didn’t have a fridge yet. I-it was hor-it was really weird. And then I started school, I was a dance major at first. And then I started, I got, I got hurt, I hurt my knee, so then I started acting, which is, which is cool, it’s just been different and hard and stuff, but I think dance is something more that comes more natural to me, and it’s something I-I have to work hard at, but it’s more am I lazy or not. I have no problem expressing myself in dance. Finding my expression in theatre is very different, it’s a lot harder for me, to… to trust myself and trust that I, I feel what I’m doing because there are so many different expectations and there’s so many different (stutters)y-y-, y’know, people, what people think is right and what people think is wrong, what certain people think is good theatre, other people think is horrible theatre, so it’s really subjective, as opposed to dance, y’know, if your foot is pointed or it’s not, I know whether or not you’re a good dancer, and you can kin- you can see that in someone else, but, it’s just different, but I, yeah, I think so. It’s cold in Minnesota. I friggin’ hate going back there for Christmas. I’m going back for five days, I’m excited, I’m bringing my boyfriend home with me again. And, last Christmas I went home for about, um, about two weeks. Froze my ass off. Oh my God, it was so bad. And I have to- I wear the same boots the whole time I’m there because I don’t have any other shoes, I don’t own any other shoes that I want to wreck in the slush and mud of k- winter. Y’know, I have nice flats I that wear here, like, y’know, things I can wear in the rain that’ll get wet but they won’t get gross and muddy. Everything there, the slush after it snows, like, y’know, the-the-s- cars will be driving and stuff in the dirt and gravel and then Minnesota is the only state that puts salt on the roads, and so it’ll melt the snow and it rusts your car. Like, Wisconsin uses dirt, the Dakotas use dirt, all that kinda stuff. We use salt that like, it-it heats, it’s a heating salt, so it like really rusts your car, it’s really nasty.

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