Post by Lottii on Jan 13, 2011 19:53:39 GMT
Rowan Blaise Drache
PLAYBY: Cristina Scabbia
FULL NAME: Rowan Blaise Drache
NICKNAMES: Rose
AGE: Twenty-Six
GENDER: Female
ETHNICITY: Italian/English
STUDENT OR STAFF: Staff - Psychology, Vaulting and Endurance teacher.
HALL: Dakota
PERSONALITY: Rowan leaves you with a first impression of a strong, independent, confident woman. But not in a bad way. She doesn't come close to being over-confident, just able to hold her own, so to speak. She doesn't need to rely on anyone, she can take care of herself. And that's just the way she likes it. A string of boring relationships have left her sworn off anything serious, and her animals are the only beings she will admit to loving.
Estranged from her family - and younger sister - her caring, maternal instinct spent a long time hidden. Now it is slowly making an appearance, in the form of coaching her students to be the best they can be, coaxing their ultimate best from them. Despite feeling no urge to have children of her own, she keeps an eye out for the younger teens on campus, and is often a favorite with the town kids.
Just because she has a soft side, doesn't mean she lacks a fierce persona too. Rowan sets firm boundaries as to what is acceptable and what isn't. She loves an argument, but take if someone takes something too far, she doesn't hold back. Digs at her friends, animals or students aren't taken lightly. The one thing she abhors is insulting someone who isn't there to defend themselves - to her it's the cowards way out. If you have something to say about someone, say it to their face. She is non-violent by nature, only ever getting involved in such to break up a fight. Her slim frame is deceptively strong, and she has been known to hold back muscled teens when necessary.
As a friend, she provides an ear to listen and a shoulder to cry on. Rowan tends to stick to having a small circle of close friends, but she will be friendly and open with anyone who offers her the same courtesy. Small talk isn't really her thing, and she never feels the awkwardness in a long silence. This can lead to rather strained moments, but it brushes past her.
Rowan is diagnosed with the mildest form of the bipolar spectrum, Cyclothymia. As part of that, she has almost constant hypomania - restless, with excessive energy and constantly on the move. She often writes poetry or lyrics - the words seem to flow from her mind without her realizing it. Most people just see this as being part of Rowan, her personality. The hypomania is probably how Rowan manages to find time for everything she crams into her life - training an academic class alongside two riding classes as well as caring for her own equines. A part of the disorder is mild depression, but the medication she takes controls this practically completely, the majority of people do not notice it.
BACKGROUND: Rowan was born in Milan, Italy, the first child of an Italian mother and English father. Her family moved to America after her mother started suffering major depression as a result of having a stillborn child. Most of this passed over Rowan, she was only four at the time. California became her home for the next fifteen years. Her father had been an avid horse-rider before he met her mother, and he took up the sport again, and Rowan started learning to ride when she was six. This often caused friction between her parents, her mother had an ambition for Rowan to become a champion gymnast. Until her early teens, she juggled the two. Staying in California, her family moved a fifty miles with the birth of her sister, Channette. Starting up riding again here, her new coach soon introduced her to the equestrian discipline of vaulting - combining her two loves.
Rowan soon developed a reputation as in the world of Vaulting, primarily competing individually. She moved up the ranks quickly, using her coach's horse to perform with and her coach as the lunger. At fifteen, she competed for the first time at the World Championships, taking home a bronze for Individual Vaulter. Rowan returned each year after that until she was nineteen, taking home another bronze, a silver and two golds. What had started as being two different sports for the girl had combined into one and taken her to the top of her game. She continued gymnastics throughout this time, although she never managed to break into the top level. She tried many different coaches, but all disapproved of her involvement in vaulting and decided she couldn't dedicate enough time to gymnastics. Rowan herself recognized this as true, and took up a new sport - cross-country running. There is an emphasis on the perfect figure in vaulting, and running was her latest way to keep in shape.
Amazingly, Rowan combined this sport with equines six months after she took running competitively, in the form of Ride and Tie. Loaning a horse, herself and her vaulting partner took part in the events, taking it in turn to run and ride parts of a course up to forty miles long. This eventually took over from the vaulting as her primary sport when she was nineteen. But at that age, she suddenly found herself under pressure to find a career. After all, said her parents, you can't expect to support yourself around horses by competing. At twenty, she accepted this to be true and moved to England to train as a teacher after completing a degree in Psychology in America. This decision was regarded by her family as deserting them, and she didn't look back. Both her parents were pushing her too hard to compete, when she wanted a break.
Despite this, Rowan found herself on the England Vaulting team whilst she trained, and eventually at twenty-three, decided to get her first 'real' job and leave Vaulting behind. Teaching Psychology for the next three years, she picked up a lot of skills, but wanted a change. She saw a job as a Psychology teacher advertised and Park, and when she found out that it was an Equine College she leaped at the chance. After getting accepted for the job, she persuaded the head to let her start up classes for both Vaulting and Endurance. With a string of horses in tow, she picked herself up from her old job and moved halfway across the country to start was is, quite simply, her dream job.
MISC.: