I have tried to write about, make a video about, and journal about this for a long time. It is heavy on my heart and is something I am vunerable about, so bare with me. I will be sharing the story of my College Audition story. In order to go into great detail, this will have to be a 2 parter so this is a blog post, not a whole book. Before we start I like to say, this is my personal story, so it is different for everyone. Everything happens for a reason, and sometimes you have to work extra hard for the things you want and in the end, God’s will and plan are far better than any we could come up with. Remember in my first blog post when I said our testimony never ends and mine was far from over……this right here is living proof of that.
So this story starts in my junior year of high school. For the past 9 years, whenever someone has asked me, “What do you wanna do for a living?”, the answer has always been “A broadway actor”. Until high school, where I got lost a lot because I let a lot of people tell me, I wasn’t good enough and I would fail. So, for a while, I believed them and I decided, “I am going to go to school to be a dermatologist.” I do not know what I was thinking considering, I am not the biggest fan of science or math, but I was convinced I wasn’t good enough to go after my dreams. Amid my junior year, I had self-realization where I decided, you know what, no, I am going to go to school to study musical theatre because why should I let others tell ME who live my life when the God above says put your trust in Him alone. So I started in the middle of my junior year, researching MT(Musical Theatre) schools. I found quite a few I liked, but only got to tour a few due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. I had a lot of anxiety and depression about the entire process as I always felt I was never good enough to get into a program, so that was the mentality I had. I had convinced myself if others think I am not good enough, then I truly am not, but anyways. I still went forth with the process of auditioning for schools.
I think to make this story also make sense, I need to explain what the Musical Theatre College audition process is like as majority of people are not familiar with it, and neither was I, until I started the process. Usually, you audition for about 18-25 schools with hopes to get a couple of offers, as acceptances to MT programs are very competitive, the top musical theatre programs have about a 0.5 acceptance rate…….Harvard has a 5 percent acceptance rate, so you can see how selective this process is. Before you can even register for an audition for many schools, you have to submit what is known as a “Prescreen”. You are probably asking, What is a prescreen? A prescreen is usually a couple of videos you must send in before you are cleared to audition for a school, usually to see if a school is even interested in you. For musical theatre, a prescreen is usually, 2 60-90 songs(One Golden-Age and One contemporary, 1-2 60-90 monologues(One Classical and One contemporary), a dance clip, essays, and usually a “Wildcard’-which is a video to show off anything you want about yourself. Your material is very vital, if you hate your material, it will show in your audition, you will be singing/performing it 100 times, you have to LOVE it, and it is something I didn’t do.
Almost every school requires a prescreen to see if they are interested in you. I am not gonna lie, I was in a dark place when I auditioned for these programs and when I was prescreened because I had a mindset I was not good enough already. I was struggling with severe depression from the COVID-19 pandemic, as I was distraught at the loss of my senior year, I was heartbroken because I spent the last 10 years of my life seeing my sisters have these amazing senior years of high school, and I was so patiently waiting, and I did not get that. I was shattered at the fact, I was missing out on the last year with my friends, and my last year of show choir after 7 years. I was destroyed at the fact I never got to have a senior pep rally, homecoming, spirit week, Friday night lights, show choir season, heck I didn’t even get to go to the first day of school with all my friends because for the first few weeks we were staggered learned. I felt no one even cared either, no one was paying the class of 2021 any attention, and we were just forced to deal with it. So, I didn’t care, I just wanted to get the prescreens in and be on with it. Spoiler alert, that didn’t work.
Want to know how many prescreens I passed? One. I prescreened for 17 schools, and I passed one. I auditioned as well for 3 other schools along with that school that had no prescreen, but guess what? I didn’t get into one. Not a single Bachelor of Fine Arts: Musical Theatre program. I was shattered. I was exhausted. I was burnt out, I had felt like God was punishing me, and I don’t know why I felt He was abandoning me because God never abandons us. I was just wondering, “Why? I want this more than anything and I have worked just as much as everyone else, why me?”. I was just so confused about why God would allow this? Why would God give me this passion, yet not open a door for me? Why would God allow me to get rejected from my dream school when I knew it is where I belonged? There were times I just cried out to God begging Him for a miracle, but I realized something during this time, God is still faithful even if I am not getting what I want and God never says no, He says, not yet or there is something better out there for you.......
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