__On this cool evening just a few days after Thanksgiving, I find Gabby Brooks nestled on the couch, reading a novel with her brightly colored scarf and pink bag lying next to her. This theater and elementary education major has clocked many full days in recent weeks with seven and eight-year-olds at her student teaching position in a second grade classroom. I talk to her about Christmas, why she has a Facebook group about her, and what it’s like to be called “Ms. Brooks.”__

*What are you looking forward to about the winter and holiday season?*

Christmas is my favorite season; we just decorated my room. We have a little tree, and we put up lights and ornaments. My boyfriend’s Jewish, so we’ll do some Hanukkah things as well. I love the winter and holiday season at William and Mary too.

*Are you into Christmas music?*

I have Johnny Mathis and Kenny G. in my music collection, so we were listening to those when we were decorating. I don’t know if it’s the same down here, but there’s a radio station back home that just plays Christmas music after Thanksgiving, so I love that.

*What’s your biggest pet peeve when it comes to your students?*

I guess when they do random obnoxious things, like they’ll start singing or humming in the middle of class and I have to stop in the middle of what I’m doing and say “stop.” In my head I’m going, “Why are you doing this? You’re supposed to be writing or doing something; why are you singing Hannah Montana?” Just the weird things they do.

*What surprised you most about student teaching?*

I hadn’t expected to get to know the kids that well; I’m really going to miss them. They’re all really different. I didn’t know I’d like it this much either. Any time I sit down and talk to someone about my class, I could spend hours talking about each of my students and what they’re good at and what they need help with and what their personalities are like. They’re really cool people — only seven and eight years old.

*What’s it like being called “Ms. Brooks?”*

That’s weird. Especially because some of them don’t grasp the concept [that] I’m not a Mrs. — I’m not married. I have to correct them because I’m not married to my dad — that’s creepy.

*Was it hard learning their names?*

We have them wear name tags for the first few days. There was a lot of “This kid is always raising his hand, I know his name,” or “This one has good handwriting; I learned his name really quickly.” We don’t really have a bad kid in our class; they’re all really sweet, but they’re all pretty chatty. Even if they’re not answering questions or talking to their friends they come up and talk to me, so it’s not hard to get to know them.

*What age group are you hoping to teach?*

I was in a fifth grade classroom for a while last year, so just any elementary level. I haven’t worked with kindergarten very much, and I’m kind of intimidated by them because at that age you still have pant-wetters and things like that. Right now, even though they’re only second graders, you can have really intelligent conversations with them.

*What’s a funny or embarrassing moment from your time at the College?*

I don’t remember the title of the group, but there is a Facebook group about me. I was at the Daily Grind freshman year; we used to go after a weekly movie night we had. Someone made me laugh and I had a mouthful of chai and I spit it all over someone, and then someone made a Facebook group about it. I don’t think I’ve looked at the group since freshman year.

*What are you involved in around campus?*

I’m less involved these days in things, but I’m in Phi Mu and [Alpha Phi Omega]. I’m technically in swing club; if I had more time I’d do it more often, but these days I’m lesson-planning all the time. I love dancing. I hadn’t danced before coming to college, but I took two semesters of modern, ballet, and I’m taking jazz this spring.

*If you could be an animal, what would you be?*

I’d be a giraffe. They’re tall; I’m not very tall. And they don’t have to sleep very often so I’d have more time.

*Least favorite animal?*

Do bugs count? Cockroaches. Sophomore year I got bumped so I lived with an RA in Spotswood. She’s awesome and I loved her, but it’s Botetourt and there were roaches. They were everywhere.

*Favorite number? Or anything lucky?*

I have a lucky guitar pick that stays in my wallet, and I like the number 2 because it seems cute; I don’t know why that is. A while back I decided that was my standard answer.

*Tell me about the book you’re reading?*

This is the “13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear.” It’s my boyfriend’s favorite or second favorite book, and he lent it to me a long time ago but I haven’t had a lot of time to read this semester so I was catching up over break. It’s kind of like the Phantom Tollbooth books: the main character goes to all these different lands. I’m not that into fantasy, but it has a childhood aspect to it too. If it weren’t so long I could probably read it to my students and they’d probably like it.

__Gabby loves people and kids and wants to give back to her community, so it’s no wonder that this senior will be looking for her own elementary school class to teach next year. Until then, Ms. Brooks will spend her winter break practicing by substitute teaching in her home county in northern Virginia, and enjoying the holiday season.__

When I was a kid I loved to role play. Cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, schoolhouse — you name it, I played it. But why should this fun have to come to an end when you grow up?

Stepping into someone else’s shoes — or out of someone else’s pants — is a great way to explore different dimensions of your sexuality. It may allow you to break out of your normal pattern in hookups and find new pleasures.

Roleplaying can be added to your sexual file cabinet under “spicing things up.” Vanilla sex is wonderful — it’s beautiful — but sometimes you have to change it up. Sometimes you don’t want to be a TWAMP with homework to do — you want to be Robin Hood and you want to ravage Maid Marion.

One thing to remember, however, is that roleplaying should be a rare treat. You don’t get to do it all the time, so enjoy it when you do.

How’s it done? Roleplaying can be as simple or complicated as you want. The first step is finding a partner. A partner must be someone you trust and most likely will be someone you’ve already slept with. You’d have to be pretty smooth to get a girl to pretend to be Tinkerbell the first time you find yourself in bed with her.

Next, you have to decide what the game is. Remember, this is a game. Just like in cops and robbers, using your imagination means more fun. Do you want to be specific individuals, or just yourselves in a special situation? Think hard about your fantasy, and make sure you choose one that can be maintained throughout the experience. It is an incredible turn-off when your partner decides to slip out of character halfway through a roleplay hookup.

There are three main types of roleplaying to choose from. Some games manipulate power relationships, in that one partner maintains a superior position. For instance, doctor and patient or police officer and criminal can be fun because they allow one partner to be in charge. Another roleplaying situation allows the partners to retain their real identities while imagining themselves in new settings. For instance, a long-standing couple could pretend that they are having sex for the first time together. This type of game is generally the most intimate. The most elaborate type of roleplaying combines new identities with new situations. You and your partner take on the roles of famous people and reenact their stories. For instance, reenact Cinderella and Prince Charming finding each other after the ball or, even better, historical figures: Who doesn’t want to have hot, sweaty George-on-Martha relations?

To add spice — or just to complicate the planning — try extending the roleplay. Wear costumes, rent a hotel room, buy props. Go nuts. This is a sexual treat. You can’t do it all the time, so put in as much effort as you can.

The most important step is setting boundaries. Pretending to be other people can allow us to act in ways we wouldn’t dare to normally. This can be a great thing, but you don’t want to take it too far. Laying down the law before laying down will make both of you more comfortable.

Lastly, remember that roleplaying sex is all about the foreplay. It’s a story, not a porno clip. Set the scene, act the part, and savor the suspense as long as you can before giving in to your animal side.

Now who says kids get to have all the fun?

__Maya Horowitz is the Flat Hat sex columnist. She sometimes wishes she’d majored in theater but doesn’t like an audience.__

While other students spent their summers working long hours at jobs or internships, Evan Callaway ’12 spent his summer in a woodshop, building a giant contrabass recorder with his Monroe research grant. The project began as a joke when Callaway approached his History of Western Music professor and Early Music Ensemble director, professor Ruth Griffieon, to ask for ideas on how to use his grant, which gives Monroe Scholars $1,000 from the Roy R. Charles Center to pursue a project of their choice after freshman year.

“She jokingly said, ‘Well, I think you should build a contrabass recorder,’” Callaway said. “Now, it was a joke, she didn’t mean it seriously — no one is crazy enough to do that ¬— but I decided to take up her little challenge, and the rest is history, I guess.”

Callaway went on to discuss the different types of recorders, revealing his intimate and burgeoning passion for early music. He highlighted the rarity of the contrabass, which gained popularity in the Renaissance era but it is rarely built today due to the manufacturing difficulties and the lack of models. The finished product stands at about 6’2’’ with the cap, only slightly taller than Callaway. The recorder is made of basswood, with a cedar insert in the mouthpiece.

The scarcity of the contrabass made production tricky, but for Callaway that was all part of the game. He consulted professor Keith Griffieon, head of the physics department, and took detailed measurements of the College’s recorder and bass recorder. Everything had to be scaled up, but practical enough to actually play.
The actual construction of the recorder posed a new challenge, as it was Callaway’s first try at woodworking outside of frame-type carpentry.

“[It’s like] the first jump into the water off the Olympic high dive,” he said.

To counter this, he built a test recorder out of PVC pipe before beginning the real thing. He constructed the contrabass in a friend’s machine shop, which houses metalworking equipment used to produce the titanium pieces in jet engines. The recorder’s complexity comes from the instrument’s conical center and the challenges of drilling large holes. Callaway consistently encountered new obstacles, such as the increasing price of drill bits, and decided to restructure his scheme. His project spanned the many weeks of summer, during which he would work every day for eight to 10 hours.

“It was just a matter of I knew what I wanted the end product to be, but I just didn’t know how to get there, so we were just constantly just making up things along the way,” he said. “It was about 95 percent improvising.”

Callaway first performed with the contrabass in the Early Music Ensemble in November, but he claimed the first rehearsal was still the most daunting.

“The really scary moment was the first time that we played four recorders together in a little concert involving this one, because you don’t know if the tuning is going to be quite right,” he said. “I was pretty sure it was going to be right.”

On its own, the contrabass sounds like a low, deep hum, but in conjunction with other recorders, it is quite powerful, creating a noise that is felt rather than heard.

“[After a performance in the Sir. Christopher Wren Chapel] people came up to me and said that they could feel it through the floor of the Chapel,” he said.

Although he’s completed one project, Callaway said he still wants to keep working with the recorder. He plans to improve the contrabass, which would require work at a recorder workshop in Boston in order to improve the design, and would like to develop a cutter that will cut the contrabass’ cylindrical bore in a single pass. Callaway made it clear that his plans for the recorder extend beyond a summer project. Modern contrabass prices range from $7,000 to $9,000, but in perfecting his mass-producing design, Callaway said he could sell them for much less.

“I’m figuring if I could produce one of these every two and a half weeks once I get production going, and I sold them for, say, five or six thousand [dollars], bottoming out the market, I wouldn’t be doing too bad,” he said. “[I’ll do that] until everyone that wants one has bought one, and I’m left with a bunch of them and wondering to myself why I didn’t learn something useful in college.”

All jokes aside, Callaway turned what was supposed to be a two-week project into a fervent, ambitious and ultimately fun endeavor. He has taken the contrabass, a passionate intellectual curiosity, and made it into something that could actually be marketable.

“What better summer job could you have than building giant recorders?” he said.

Across campus, there seem to be two prevailing sentiments toward High Street, the relatively new mixed-use commercial and residential development located off of Richmond Road: “High what?” and “Oh, you mean Movie Tavern?”

Although the complex is close to campus and currently houses a popular hamburger joint, a movie theater with the cheapest tickets in town, and various apartments popular for off-campus housing, it still hasn’t become the college hangout people had expected.

Although there are empty buildings still waiting to be filled by businesses, the often-empty parking lot also indicates that business is still not quite booming.

“I always passed it but I never knew what was in there until I saw the sign for Five Guys one day before fall break,” Tatiana Muldrow ’11 said. “I definitely didn’t know it was called High Street. I think a lot of people don’t know it’s there.

Although the commercial section of High Street has been open since the spring of this year, there have been only two operating businesses — Movie Tavern and Five Guys. The emptiness of the complex has started to draw attention from town members both on campus and in the surrounding community.

In a few ways, High Street is reminiscent of a midwestern ghost town — deserted buildings, silent streets and an expanse of dusty dirt from the on-going construction.

The nation’s poor economic situation is playing a major role in the limited selection of businesses looking to open or expand.

“While we’ve had many retailers express interest in locating their business at High Street, they are being more cautious about opening a new business, relocating or expanding during these economic times,” Lydia Kingsbury, the leasing agent for High Street, said.

Kingsbury, who is the contact for retail opportunities in High Street, said businesses are not the only ones being cautious. Banks and lenders are being more and more selective in deciding which loans to grant, making the decision to open, move or expand to new locations like High Street even more difficult for retailers.

In spite of the economic obstacles in place for hopeful businesses, there are promising signs pointing to a High Street that will be bustling with activity in future months as Plaza Azteca, a Mexican restaurant, is adding the finishing touches to its establishment and construction on a chocolate and desert shop, Kilwins, is coming along well.

“We have five businesses under construction at this time — three of which are scheduled to open in the next few weeks,” Kingsbury said. “As we have been seeing the economy improve, we have been seeing more retailers start discussions about opening their business here.”

The Williamsburg Trolley has also helped business since it began running in mid-August. The trolley, which includes High Street as one of its stops, has exposed students to the High Street area while they are on their way to other destinations like New Town or Merchants Square. It has also made it more convenient for students to go on weekend excursions to Movie Tavern or Five Guys.

“Every time I’ve been to the Movie Tavern, I’ve ridden the trolley,” Miriam McPhie ’11 said. “That was only two times, but I thought it was pretty cool. I really liked the theater’s atmosphere.”

There are big plans to continue to expand the area, including bringing in a grocery store, gym, nail salon and other retailers to provide a steady flow of customers to the shopping center.

“We are speaking to several grocery stores about locating here, Kingsbury said. “We are also speaking to a gym, a bookstore, dry cleaners, nail salons and several soft goods retailers. Grocery stores provide a great anchor for retail areas, while shops like dry cleaners, nails salons and other similar services provide constant foot traffic in the center which is great for all of High Street’s shops and restaurants.”

Although the economic climate is unsure, one thing is certain: slowly but surely, the High Street development is coming together.

“Our vision is to create a unique and vibrant community that can serve as a center of activity, culture, entertainment and more,” Kingsbury said. “We believe that High Street is and will be a wonderful place to live, work and play.”

Confirmed businesses to open are Kilwins, Terra Coffee & Wine, Plaza Azteca, Firehouse Subs and Subway.