I just finished my 1st draft of my common app essay? Any thoughts?
I stood on the stage and wondered how I could have possibly thought wearing my jelly sandals today was a good idea. Oh yeah, I would impress the director with my quirky style, showing the desirability of casting me as the star in his play. Now, under the harsh, pretension-stripping 1000 watt lights, all I could think of was the pool of sweat that I was sure was about to spill out of my sandals. The only thing bound to leave an impression on the director today was my pair of shaking, jelly legs. Why had my previously faithful bodily functions gone haywire? My hands had grown sprinklers that shot forth perspiration and I must have accidentally swallowed a colony of butterflies. What was I doing here?
As if nothing else could top the terror already latent in that day, some genius decided to start the music! Through sheer instinct I opened my dry mouth to sing. It actually took me a measure and a half to discover that despite my hyperventilation, no sound was exiting. After pondering on this predicament for several more bars, I decided that my humiliation would not be entirely in vain. I heard a squeak leave the desert of my throat. Finally, a sound! “Why would a fellow want a girl like her?” Cinderella’s Stepsisters’ Lament was quavering its way out into the very first row of seats (if I was lucky). The words that had seemed so witty yesterday, suddenly took on an ironic twist of meaning. Why would a director want a girl like me?
I stumbled through the first page, promptly and thoroughly forgot the rest of the words, mumbled an incoherent apology, and squished down from the stage in wet sandals. What was I doing at an audition for musical theater? Why couldn’t I have stuck to what I was good at? Public speaking I could do, violin recitals I could give, I could even perform a hilarious improv skit when called upon, but a musical theater audition was obviously something that I did not excel at.<br>
Gasp! I wasn’t good at something! The very foundations of my thirteen-year old mind were shaken. From infancy I had been taught that there was nothing I couldn’t do if I put my mind to it, and to tell the truth, I hadn’t encountered many things (beside long division) that were substantially difficult for me. I told myself I would put this little incident behind me and go on with a life that no one else thought lacked activities. But I couldn’t. I loved musical theater too much to stand on the sidelines. Something definitely had to be done.
So, with the pleading persuasiveness possessed by every teenage girl anywhere, I managed to get myself into voice lessons and began the endless process of auditioning. Auditioning for theater, I discovered, takes more than just talent. I could improve singing and dancing talent just as I could improve a debate speech, grades, or a violin piece. But auditioning requires persistence and calluses. You learn not to take it too hard when you are rejected for no apparent reason, or when the “other girl” gets the part and not you. You learn you can’t constantly compare yourself to every “other girl” you ever meet. You learn to enjoy the road and do what you love.<br>
Last Sunday evening I dressed up as a man wearing a patched tailcoat and danced across a floor playing my violin in a silent and dark room. This is a situation that in and of itself I would not normally enjoy. But Sunday was different; it was closing night of Fiddler on the Roof and I was playing the fiddler and having the time of my life. It’s hard to express how much I love acting, but as I walked backstage to get ready for the curtain call, I realized that this was the reason I had originally stood on that stage shaking in my jelly sandals.