So, over the past couple of months I have been auditioning and having interviews for various universities and drama schools. Wahey. My life will possibly be moving from stressful procrastination in the comfort of my own home, to stressful procrastination in a dark and dingy student flat. Not that I’m complaining. I mean, I’m sure it’ll be an incredible adventure and I’ll make so many memories that I can look back on when I’m old and decrepit. It’s more the process of getting there that has me worried.
Drama school has been a huge goal for me since I started drama lessons seven years ago, and ever since then I have tried to map out all of the different places that training could take me (yada yada, cheesy childhood dreams etc.). But now that that time has rolled around and I have the chance to make those dreams finally happen, I don’t know that I have it in me to do it.
I am currently writing this the night before my last audition of the academic year. Not the best idea, I know, but somehow it seems to be helping. You see, I have auditioned for three drama schools and two universities so far: RADA (go hard or go home, am I right?), Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Guildford School of Acting, University of Birmingham, and the University of Leeds. Now, I have received offers from both of the universities, but not a single offer - or even recall for that matter - from any of the drama schools.
Don’t get me wrong, I am so, so grateful to have offers from both Birmingham and Leeds - they’re both incredible universities (Leeds even lowered my offer from the average ‘AAB’ to an ‘ABB’ after my interview, which made me feel absolutely wonderful), but to be rejected from all three drama schools sucked. And I took it hard.
It was hard to see all of my friends excited after finding out that they had offers from all of their choices - admittedly there were only a couple of us in the group that were applying for performance subjects, which serve up a much larger platter of rejections than other subjects, but it still hurt. Feeling like this then made me feel so much worse because it meant that I couldn’t be happy for the people who are closest to me, when I really wanted to be, because they absolutely deserved those offers.
Upon reflection, I know that I could have done so much better in every single one of those auditions, and the experience and lessons I learnt at each of them has helped massively. I also know that this is an incredibly difficult industry to break into, and there are thousands of applicants all applying for about 20-30 places on every BA in acting, of which the majority are obviously going to have to be turned away. The trouble is that, ever since I was a child, I have had an extremely lazy personality, and I generally tend to give up on things quite quickly (I probably have some kind of issue with commitment, tbh). I went to Brownies for six months, broke my foot, then decided I couldn’t be bothered to go back. I took up badminton and ended up getting drafted to the county squad, so I decided to quit Guides in order to balance my time better. A few weeks after quitting Guides I stopped playing badminton because it wasn’t interesting enough. You get the picture. So when I started acting and found that it was probably one of the only things in life that has ever truly captivated me, I was amazed. I originally started doing it outside of school because I noticed that it was boosting my confidence substantially. I mean, I have never been a confident person, I can’t even accept a compliment without it plaguing my mind for at least a week afterwards and telling myself ‘they were just being sarcastic’ or ‘they didn’t mean it’ (I’m still like that now really, but trust me when I say it improved my confidence).
There’s probably a few people out there that would find it weird that acting would help with confidence, and I can totally understand that, because you’re literally using someone else’s personality, words, mannerisms etc. to present yourself to the world, you’re essentially just hiding behind someone else. However, for me, that was all it took. The majority of characters you will play are far from the perfect cookie cutter shape. They will all have their flaws, whether it be in the way they talk, the way they walk, where they’re from, or whatever. They will all have something, somewhere that they want to hide from the world. Being able to understand that and seeing that despite those flaws, the audiences still love those characters, they still relate to them and root for them when they become the underdog or when they’re on their way up in the world, allowed me to accept the fact that no one is perfect and no one ever will be. So, learning that meant that I could finally start being confident in who I am and find the beauty in everyone’s flaws, including my own (yes, I am aware this just turned into a testimonial for a life coaching programme).
For that reason, among others, acting became the only thing I wanted to do, and it still is. But having those rejections ringing in the back of my mind, mixed with the still quite evident lack in confidence is really starting to make me worry. I worry that I’m not good enough to get anywhere in the industry. I worry that because of that I’ll never get anywhere in life because I have based all of my educational choices around acting, and haven’t left myself with a backup if it fails. I worry that I’ll be a huge disappointment to my family because they all told me that it was a hard thing to go into but I ignored them and went for it anyway.
So, as I sit here contemplating how many times I should go over my monologues before I allow myself to sleep, I realise just how scared I am at the prospect of life. Whatever happens tomorrow, I will have a huge decision to make regarding my future. The drama school that I am auditioning for (which I will leave nameless for now bc I’m superstitious and don’t want to jinx it) wasn’t my first choice. It wasn’t even my second in all honesty. If I get an offer, I have no idea what I’ll do. If I don’t get an offer, I will have no idea what I’ll do, with the bonus prize of another knock to my confidence.
I guess the whole point I’m trying to make really, is I have no fucking clue what I’m doing with life. I so desperately want to be able to go to drama school, but should I accept an offer to one that I’m not all that excited about (if they offer me a place, of course), or take the risk and wait until next year to apply again? I know there are so many other options (like doing a BA at university, then trying for an MA at drama school), but I am in such a daze about all of this that I can never keep a train of thought long enough to consider those options…excluding this one…
I have no idea if any of this is coherent and makes sense, or if it’s just a complete load of gobbledigook, but if anyone is reading this and you made it all the way to the end, well done you. You officially just visited the marvelous mysteries that are my thoughts, please do sign the guestbook and take a cookie on the way out, they’re free!
But in all seriousness, if you have any advice feel free to chuck it my way, I could really do with some right now.
A sincerely stressed student.
