who can afford this??

speaking of education being expensive...

why can't we be one of those schools where you can pay a fee to freeze your freaking tuition to what it is when you decide that you can afford to go to that freaking school? especially if affording it is based on scholarships that DO NOT get any higher when tuition does??

let's change that 40+ thousand to hmm say 80?? is that even possible?
i should have just been a doctor.

i don't mean that. but come on.

i have to map this out... bear with me

i wish priorities were simple. or that you could just have an idea and go through with it and not have to map out the repercussions and later live with them and try to figure out whether or not it was worth it.
i'm talking about school.
most people i know are seriously debating staying in school right now. ok that's not entirely true- most of them are realizing that it's an option to leave and we would be much less in debt and do we really need it or are we just here because it's the thing to do and where we are... but then we all get too scared of the actual possibility of leaving that we give up on it. like we don't have a choice. but we do.
im studying theatre. and i'm still not entirely sure that's what i want to do professionally, but i've come to terms with the fact that just an uncertainty about theatre doesn't mean the entire education is worth nothing if i don't use that specific part of the degree. and because i don't know whether or not i'll go professional, in some senses i already have the experience and ability to get into the theatre that i'd want to do without having the degree or title. but... graduating and having a bachelor's will ultimately be a benefit because the whole level of job potential is being reworked around my generation being college graduates. and i'm a bit of a nerd-- i like to run things, not just sit and watch. but any position like that will require a liberal arts degree. which i will have. if i stay in school for another year. and get another year's worth of debt that i can't even begin to pay.

and so what about traveling? what about living on just enough to get by and change and spontaneity of being young? how does that work with 40+ thousand dollars of school loans? we're chaining ourselves to a grind stone... but what other option do we have, especially when we already have three years of school under our belt? my parents had it so good- moving to cali right after high school and living on whatever they could gather and sharing with friends and traveling and living it up while they could. but now they're suffering from middle-age-middle-class-syndrome, with very little wiggle room in any direction. my dad still drives trucks around all day to pay for the groceries. he's 51 years old. and he's brilliant. but in a lot of ways he's just stuck.

so rational thinking...

i guess i'm staying in school. above, when i was talking about people considering radical possibilities then just giving up and going back to knowing that they won't actually make the hard decision and quit school... yeah that's me. but other options... some of the humanitarian aid programs will defer school loans while you serve with them. americorps does. so i could still take advantage of my not-settled-anywhere-yet position and my extremely low budget and my need to go out and do things that aren't spending thousands of dollars to make myself more marketable-- and still get out and about for a while.

yeah but then theatre comes back up. i'll never be more prepared to do well than right after 4 years of training. but going straight to theatre means going straight into loans. going straight into a low income that has to get me normal things like rent and groceries. straight to hoping for a touring job because they're exciting and pay the best, but are a strain on things like... hmmm relationships? and as much as i would love to put my art before everything else, traveling around and leaving behind someone who i finally just got a hold of... does not sound like a fun idea to me at all.

back to square one? or maybe just an educated square one. education is expensive.

frozen.

and then there are the times when everything you try to do to save people just hurts them worse. intentions apparently are not what they seem to be. so now i struggle with the evidence that anything that begins with the base intention to make hurt go away... will serve just to hurt them even more.
and so i remain in limbo... too scared to make a move in either direction... because maybe if i make all my intentions go away and don't move at all... that will be the only way to not hurt anyone more.

like a cartoon frozen in some bizarre shape where nothing moves but its shifting eyes, knowing that if it moves a muscle anywhere else on its body, more of the tense strings connected to the rest of world will snap and let relationships down. but the shifting eyes can't help but see the damage they've already caused.

and even that seems to leave the rest fuming and/or bleeding.

crazy little thing called art

so i'm in milwaukee, wisconsin. competing at the American College Theatre Festival. yeah i'm that cool. i fought and bled and raised some money to bring in a respondent (representative of the Festival) to see A Streetcar Named Desire in November when I played Stella, managed to get nominated by said respondent and now i'm competing with my friend lisa. ok so we had he preliminary round today and we didn't get past that, but no one from anderson ever has. i'm not losing hope though. tomorrow we get feedback from the judges about the three minute scene we competed with this morning, and i'm hoping to get some good tips. learning is good. and that's what this week is all about. now that the competing part is over, the rest of the week is workshops and shows, from which you can learn as much in one intensive week as you can in a semester of liberal arts studies. this will be a good week. thanks to everybody who supported us along the way : ).

i had a late lunch with ronn, my theatre professor from au, today (long story but basically we ended up having to rely on him and a school credit card anytime we want to buy food... but i'm still thankful to the sponsors who made it possible to be here) and it was really great to sit around and talk about acting and coaching and directing and etcetera. i have yet to completely settle on what function theatre will have in my life beyond this point, because i'm starting to realize it may have to be all or nothing, at least for a little while. or at least it will definitely have to be all if i want it to be more than a hobby. nobody gets into the arts for free or easy. but then i have to really figure out why i'm doing it and where i would like that to take me. i didn't audition for any nyc schools or anything because i knew any attempt to get "famous" would go to my head and make me a horrible person. or just horribly depressed. but you gotta fend your way through no matter what. and in case some of you haven't noticed... i only take risks when i have a general idea that they could possibly work out. im a selective risk taker. i guess it makes you look good though, because when you don't do things you will probably fail at, you can convince people that you very rarely fail. my apologies to anyone who i've convinced of that. it's not true-- i'm just a coward a lot of times. so all of that to say- i need to keep taking risks and maybe even take some more to find out if i'm just doing this because i'm sufficiently "good" at it to at least keep my head above water for now, or if i'm going to find out how to make it work with my general life plans.... you know, try to care about people. or if, to a certain extent, they don't have to mix.

and thus the circle continues. i'm just gonna go to workshops and shows and keep thinking for now.