Love that song.


Okay but seriously. Blog time is 2:30 AM. Readysetgo!

Since it is summer and I am jobless and my parents work I take time to sing in our tiled living room. It's pretty amazing. I've discovered that I enjoy it more than I do acting. I find myself, just when randomally singing, putting emotion and feeling into the words and even softening my eyes if it's a ballad, naturally. I've never had such a feeling of expression when in a straight play. A full-on release. I know what I want to do in life and what I have to do to get there. My friend Chelsea even told me she sees me more as a musical theatre actress- she's one of the few people who has heard me sing and belt at an audition. Even my voice teacher was shocked at how fast I pick up brand new music for someone who can hardly read it. She's told me how much I have improved in a short time and how I have a different sound and the ability to change my singing voice and why not just audition for a "fancy-smanchy theatre school out east."

... The American Musical and Dramatic Academy gets hundreds upon hundreds of hopefuls to audition each year, each semester. It is competitive and people have been at it since they were little. Now, I haven't been singing since I was 8, but I feel that I'm devent. I can learn a song in a half hour when played to me... Thank you perfect pitch! I have wanted to go here since I was in high school. I feel I have something different to offer to the table.

Now for the lovely catch. My parents are contradictions. On the one side they tell me I can do it, my mom tells me she hears an improvement in my voice, that I've gotten better even after a few classes at ASU. On the otherhand, I hear, "It's a conservatory. You don't go there after only a handful of years of training and expect to get in." "It isn't an actual education. Theatre and music classes will get you almost nowhere if that's all you have." I even tried telling them I would take classes online for English and dabble in journalism as a fallback... Nothing.

... ASU is an awesome school overall, despite it's rather... lively reputation. (#1 party school for the last decade. I kid you not.) Our acting professors are phenomanal, we have several practice rooms for muscians all with tuned pianos, music stands, and mirrors; our dance department is one of 3 schools in the nation to combine media with live theatre (if a dancer hits a certain pose, computers pick it up and instantly change lighting and music)... But not one single person who has attended here as a theatre major, or music theatre has gone to to be an actor. They've become teachers at their craft. That is whatt ASU is known for- producing teachers. So many people asked me if I was going to become a teacher after I graduate. I laughed. They were serious.


I don't want that. I don't want to be just like everyone else who goes into something they love then become a teacher. That isn't in me... I lack the patience for one.

In "Ask K8" Kate told someone that you can get good training anywhere in the country, that she knows people who attended university who are booking jobs before those who attended a conservatory and that gets me thinking. But at the same time, I can't study voice at ASU with an actual professor; we have several top-notch voice teachers. I'm not music theatre.. I'm not because I never learned to read music and a friend who began reading music at 6 almost failed music theory. At AMDA, I doubt every single student there knows how to sight-read. Isn't that why we attend school? To learn?

I've always been told life is what you make it, and education is no acception. But I finally find where I find real happiness from and I just feel that it's out of my grasp and it kills me.