Reflections Post!

So I would love to take this time to reflect on the first half of the audition season and what I did wrong/right. Hopefully you can learn from my mistakes, or whatever. I will update this as I think of things!

What I Did Right:

• Did it for fun! I really tried (and succeeded!) not to get attached to schools. It was actually amazing. No tears were shed except the first time I watched my videos :) :) :) :')
• Don't fucking visit. Especially prescreen schools. It's so unwise. I have a special love for the BFA process but don't visit. Just don't. It's stupid.
• Choreographing my own prescreen? It worked out like...okay. I am not a dancer or a choreographer by any means but it was pretty handy (and inexpensive) to do it myself. 
• Honestly I fucking love my songs. I still do. I probably could have picked better ones vocally, but as far as age/gender/type, I think I rocked it. I never would have heard of either if I hadn't gone to Circle but still. I stand by my obscure material.
• Waited to send SAT scores. Best. Decision. Ever. I mean, if you don't pass whatever prescreen, you save yourself $11. No theatre department won't review your prescreen if you haven't sent scores. Seriously. EDIT: I'm pretty sure Michigan and Elon won't review your prescreen if you haven't sent scores. They have an academic as well as artistic prescreen. 
• Applied early! (Some places.) No but you get fee waivers! Hartt and UArts were free :) Wait, actually I had to pay a prescreen fee for UArts. But both applications were free because I applied early.
• Did extensive research very very very too early. It saved me so much damn work junior and senior year. I have a sophomore friend who is busting his butt looking at schools right now and he's doing it so right. 
• Used part of a long monologue as a short monologue. This is very specific but HIGHLY recommend. This way you don't have to learn another monologue a week before the audition because it was the only one that was like "2-3 minutes please" and yours is 1.5. Brills. Do this.
• Use songs/monologues you've already worked on/performed. This can be dangerous if you were in, say, Grease and were like "I'll just sing There Are Worse Things I Could Do since I know it already." But I have performed both my songs in cabarets before (and they're not from Grease. Lolololol) so when I went to pick audition material I didn't have to start from scratch. This is helpful because you never know when the only time you'll be able to film prescreens is tomorrow because your video guy is super busy.

What I Did Wrong

• Had like no time to actually film. Some of the songs I only filmed once. So if my voice cracked or if I looked shitty, too bad. Not a wise idea. 
• I thought hiring a videographer would be super worth it. It was not. Because we couldn't afford him for as much time as we needed. See above.
• Picked the wrong dance music. HAHA. I danced to Lady Gaga's Marry the Night. It was way too sexy for someone of my type. On the other hand, have someone choreograph for you.
• Act in your dance video. ACT IN YOUR DANCE VIDEO. I mean, yes, it was Marry the Night, but still. I could have at least smiled. I was deep deep deep in concentration and I have the grossest concentration face in history. I have literally been told this by dance teachers. We'll be doing chainees and my JLT (Jumps, Leaps & Turns--basically like, contemporary jazz) teacher is like "ABBY FOR THE LOVE OF GOD SMILE NO ONE WANTS TO SEE THAT." I will make sure not to make that mistake in any of my auditions. 
• Act in your songs. Don't freak about mixing that awkward part. Change the damn key. 
• Ummmmmmgetcoaching. I did this insane workshop with Cady Huffman the day after I filmed my vocal prescreens and it completely changed the way I thought about my song. I was pissed and thought seriously about refilming them.
• Hair. And. Make. Up. Do it. Well. I think I mentioned that I didn't brush my hair and it was the biggest mistake of my life.
• Don't sing something you get nervous about singing. I just changed my ballad because I couldn't mix the middle as well and it was distracting. 
• I want to say also you shouldn't sing something that shows NO range. My belt song shows zero range. It goes to a C, once, briefly. And I can belt almost an octave above that. But I chose it because I love it to freaking death and it is very comfortable, like I can even do it when I first wake up in the morning and that is saying a LOT. Find a middle ground on this one, I guess?
• Gotten too absorbed in The Process. Honestly, I love auditioning. I'm sure I've mentioned that before. And with the Whole BFA Thing, it is really really easy to get caught up in that love of suspense and challenge and everything working out OK in the end. I started out not tailoring schools to what I really wanted so much as what it would be like to audition for a lot--i.e., fun and exciting. And it IS! It's a blast! But don't get caught up in the blast and apply everywhere just BECAUSE it requires an audition. The blast is expensive. And might or might not be what you actually want for 4 years.
• Applied late to NYU. I was lucky to get an audition date that worked decently but if I had waited one more day it would have been so, so much worse. Basically I would be on a train right now and missing my midterms.

Things No One Tells You About Writing College Essays

• The word counts are freaking infinitesimal. You better use some giant descriptive words or you can sound so boring so quickly!
• There are 90298470389724508340875 kadrillion ways to approach every prompt. I've grown to love the good old "hook" technique, but I use the first time I heard of/fell in love with said college. It's all cute and storylike. So, pure me.
• Talking about campus visits is ridiculously tempting. I literally visited 3 schools, and applied to 2 of them. AND IN BOTH SUPPLEMENTS I WROTE ABOUT VISITING. It's really hard not to. Really really hard.
• You have to do actual real fucking goddamn RESEARCH. This is not an AP Gov paper. You are not allowed to pull sources from logic or memorized court cases. Oh no. You have to troll the college web site until 3:22 am (what time is it again?), looking for some evidence of some program that interests you. Because they ask that. Oh yes, they ask that. Fuck you, Engle v. Vitale. (I just picked that one because I'm really passionately against school prayer because I am a raging Vermonter cow-tipping quasi-atheist liberal. Hilary 2016. EDIT: Bernie 2016! Vermont, indeed!)
• Some schools give you options. "The fun prompt or the not-fun prompt?" No, just kidding. But beware: the fun prompts can be a trap. Brandeis, for example, asks "why do you want to go to Brandeis?", "if you could uninvent one invention, what would it be?" and "tell us about a law you feel is unjust and why it should be broken." (I'm paraphrasing.) I wrote the boring one, because I do love Brandeis and it was easy. I will admit that I was tempted to write about why Kinder Eggs should be legal in the US. But alas. My common app essay is weird enough. 
• Do not write your essay in a junior class with a teacher who thinks everything you do is perfect!!!!! I made this mistake. And so I trashed my generic ass essay A WEEK BEFORE THE DEADLINE.
• On having other people read it over: honestly, I suck at taking criticism of my writing. I just want to be a weirdo goodball nuthead and write exactly what I feel and what goes through my brain (oh, like how I talk) (oh, like what I am doing right now). So when people pick my essays apart it feels like they are vultures picking away at my intestines or something. I have no trouble being criticized if it's a performance. I guess because I know whether it sucks already. With writing I legit have no idea. Moral of the story, be careful who you ask for help. Make sure they know what they're doing and will let you down gently.
• YOU DO NOT HAVE TO TAKE EVERYONE'S ADVICE. IT IS YOUR ESSAY AND YOUR LIFE. 
• I never thought I would say this, but Google Docs is my savior. I hadn't used it except on group projects since about the 7th grade, but it has been a godsend for sending works in progress back and forth from school to home as well as peer editing. 
• If you have to do a video personal statement, have that shit fucking MEMORIZED. I made this mistake and we did like 40945784 takes before one was even semi-acceptable. All I had was a vague outline of what I would talk about and there were so so so many awkward pauses. Please. For me. Write it out. 
• On using the same essay for two different schools: I won't lie, I started out doing this a lot. And I won't say don't. But. But. Make sure it actually answers the prompt. And make sure what you're copy/pasting is a fucking gold mine of truth and insight. If you're putting in half the work, it had better be good.
• Be unique! I quoted Legally Blonde in my common app essay. It sucks a little, but it is so me. I suck a little too. Okay, I suck a lot. But anyway, don't be generic. It must suck to me a college admissions officer reading the same failure/success essay over and over. Personally, I think if a college doesn't want unique, it doesn't want me. :)

Hope you learned something amidst my 3 am sassiness. Sorry I swear so much. It's even worse in real life, I...swear...

Update 12/31: Aca-demics

Pitch Perfect ftw.
Since the last time I posted literally anything, I auditioned for college (!), received my last prescreen rejection and FOUR academic acceptances: Marymount Manhattan, Webster, University of Hartford and Columbia College Chicago. I am going to college! Somewhere!
A recap of my Hartt audition will come soon I swear. Right now I'm totally busy trying to fine-tune all the supplemental essays that are due on the 1st--gulp!--tomorrow. Northwestern's is killing me. And, haha, I still haven't even DECIDED whether I'm applying to BU! I think I'm just going to work some copy/paste magic and go for it. I was going to apply for communications or something but.......why not just do theatre? It's a fantastic program that I have no chance of getting into, AGAIN, but what do I have to lose? Just money!!!!!
God, I am really feeling BAs lately. Or like liberal artsy BFAs. That's probably because I'm fixing up my nonaudition school essays right now. But still. Lord. College. Somehow I'm still pumped.

12/8 upd8

I called UArts, and they had invited me to audition, so I was supposed to be in Philly last weekend. But I rescheduled and now I'm auditioning at NY Unifieds. Thank god! I was not ready last week. This weekend I'm off to my first live audition at Hartt! I actually think I might be ready. Haha. Today I have another audition for a theatre near me that is putting on Legally Blonde and I'm pumped!

Update 12/1

OK OK. So I have been like pretty bad at prepping for auditions. I thought I would be super super driven and motivated at this time but...yeah. My first one is on the 13th for Hartt. I have a workshop this friday, an audition for a local show monday, a college audition the next sat, and a cabaret I am performing in a week after that. And then break!
I ended up applying to Ithaca for theatre management, not MT. The more I think about it, the more I realize I want to do all musical theatre performance all the time, but for undergrad, it makes so much more sense to get a degree in something a bit more broad. I think theatre can be broad but I'm not sure many BFA MT programs are.
I withdrew from schools where I didn't pass prescreens and sent scores to all the rest. Plus all my auditions are scheduled. Now I just have a buttload of supplements to write for non audition schools. Woo.
Something weird happened today. I never got a prescreen decision from UArts so I just kind of let it go and assumed it wouldn't be happening. Then today I got an email reminding me of my audition this weekend?!?! It was from the school, not the theatre dept, so it is definitely possible they got their wires crossed or something. I have to call tomorrow and ask. Joy. I would still love to audition there, just...not this weekend. Oops.
Also, school is cray. I have an enormous AP English project due Wednesday and I am going to die. Plus tons of AP Music Theory homework from over break that I only kinda did. Hahahah it is going to be a loooong night. Kill me now.