My acting teacher once told me to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, pick a painting to stare at for 30 minutes straight and then write about it. When you go to theater school, you get lots of cool, artsy assignments like this one. (Another drama teacher told me to practice drinking a cup of coffee mindfully on my own time.) The purpose of both of these assignments is the same -- to be able to memorize sensations when staring at a painting or drinking the coffee. This is to ensure that you, the actor, can effectively recreate the moment with nuance and specificity later when pretending on a stage to look at a painting that isn’t really there and ‘drink coffee’ when it’s actually water in the prop mug. Don’t get me wrong: learning to act is a lot harder than memorizing coffee and going on fun, hipster adventures to the museum. But this is beside my point. I went to the museum that day to master this lesson but ended up learning a different one.

Off to the Met I went and after some exploration, I ended up in my favorite section -- the European paintings wing. I found a beautiful painting that caught my eye called “Boatmen of Barcelona,” completed the assignment and took some notes on the experience. It was a cool, meditative 30 minutes, but I was disappointed. I think I expected my mind to explode with knowledge, or for my acting teacher to appear out of nowhere and bow to me like a sensei or to have a huge epiphany about acting and suddenly transform into Meryl Streep right there in the middle of the museum. None of the above happened.

"Boatmen of Barcelona" by Dionisio Baixeras y Verdaguer

As I was about to stand up and leave the wing, semi-dejected, I was struck by a peculiar scene -- not in a painting, but a real life scene. A little boy, about 8 years old, was marching around with a sketchpad and a purpose. Unlike other kids at the Met that day, he had very clearly dragged his mother there and not vice versa. With undying patience, she followed him supportively as he stopped at each painting to observe with an adorable, distinguished expression. This time, he came over to look at “Boatmen of Barcelona." I wanted to seem intelligent in front of this special 8-year-old, so I remained seated and we looked at it together. After a few moments of scrutinizing, he flipped the page of his pad and got to work. His concentration was so fierce that the edge of his tongue rested outside of his lips. The room was crowded, but he paid the other people no attention, nor did they notice him. (This is NYC, so acknowledging or caring about other peoples’ existences is not required or even expected.)

After his squinting and scribbling, he held his finished product against the real painting and smiled, satisfied with his sketched copy. I was unable to see his facsimile from the angle at which he held it, but my eyes were probably wide and transparently impressed as I watched his routine again. On he went to the next painting to do the very same thing. I knew I had to get closer to catch a glimpse of his sketchpad, which surely held extraordinary, uncanny works. Why else would he have such advanced taste and passion?

The boy stopped at the center of the room, and I followed his focused eye-line to the massive rectangular frame that nearly covered the whole wall. It was a gorgeous scene of a castle on a cliff with tiny people swimming in the cove below. The sunset in the background gave the piece a mystical vibe. I could totally see why this young prodigy would want to duplicate this eye-catching work. (He was a prodigy, I had decided.) And when I glanced at him again, the boy was still as focused as ever, sketching away. He would squint one eye, pause here and there and then resume creating his masterpiece.

"Evening: Landscape with an Aqueduct" by Théodore Gericault

I could not wait to see the other side of his sketchpad. I was beyond excited to behold genius in real life. I had seen my fair share of 4-year-old piano prodigy videos on the Internet, but right here in front of me was a real miniature genius. I stealthily sauntered over to the other side of the room, surveying the kid’s brilliant mind at work from up close now. When I was finally close enough to see his paper, I was shocked, but not for the reason I thought I would be.

On his sketchpad, was -- to put it crudely -- a stick figure. The artistic prodigy I had discovered had simply drawn a stick figure (and not, like, a great one.) The stick person possessed an awkward line for a torso, branches for limbs and an oblong shape for the head and if you can’t already tell by this description, it had absolutely zero to do with the landscape he was so intensely studying. There was, in his defense, a sun in the upper left-hand corner which was a ball with sticks coming out of it.

I had to cover my mouth to stifle a laugh. I didn’t want this kid to know I found his adorable attempt to make art, hilarious. But it wasn’t really his drawing I was laughing at; it was my own, crazy idea that I had invented so quickly. Because of his impressive work ethic for one so young, I got so carried away and caught up thinking that I had discovered the next Renoir. The stark contrast of my expectation and the reality was so comical to me that I just couldn’t help myself.

Now I was compelled to watch him even more, so I hung out for a little longer and sat on the wooden benches once more to get the perfect view of the two works of art (the painting and his replica). It was an awesome juxtaposition. I giggled, delighting in every adorable swirl of his pencil. But as he went on with unwavering concentration, I stopped laughing. I started to really think about what I was beholding and it became less and less funny to me once I began to see ‘the bigger picture’ as it were. There he was: looking down at a new blank page, left eye squinted, tongue out, pencil at work. Much to my surprise, my eyes began to fill and I got a little choked up. I began to realize that this boy was, in fact, gifted--not in the way I had expected--but gifted nonetheless.

Here was this little kid, spending a beautiful, sunny Saturday inside a museum, practicing his craft. He was not told by a teacher to sit there and stare at that painting while his peers probably played mindless games on their iPads. He was not doing this for attention or for any other reason than the fact that he was passionate about art. He was doing what made him happy and not worrying about what anyone else thought of his work. There may, in this world, be 8-year-old Georges Seurat’s or mini Monet’s, but none of them were there that day. This kid was there for longer than my meager 30-minute assignment, appreciating something bigger than him. And that, to me, was evidence enough that this boy was extraordinary after all.

This greatly touched me and was a better acting lesson than I could have imagined. Concentration, focus, appreciation and perseverance are all gifts that this tiny gentleman possessed. They are gifts just as valuable as talent. I was not Meryl Streep at 8 years old, I’m certainly not Meryl Streep now, and I’ll never be Meryl Streep, but I’m going to keep watching her films and taking valuable knowledge away from them. Not every day is going to have an epiphany in store for us; we have to put in the work first. Artists or not, we are all trying to create our masterpiece, to leave our mark. But before we can do that, we have to focus, practice, and have the courage to look at a masterpiece and draw a stick figure.