Well, Manifesto is over and looking back on the project, I'm really glad that I was able to be a part of it. Being in the show gave me a drive to move forward with myself and has given me a goal to strive for. Working so closely with such talented people has given me a little perspective into my own advantages and shortcomings in theatre and has helped me realize where my potential lies and what I need to do to move forward with myself. I'm studying with Ed Crater for the rest of the summer, starting yesterday, and am attending a musical theatre intensive in Tampa for the next week at Linda Switzer's Florida Arts School, so I'm hoping to improve even before I get back up to school.
In the next 9 months especially, it's incredibly important for me to harness my vocal technique, not only for my sake professionally in my present situation, but for my sake personally as I move forward in my career. Giving myself a set of expectations and short-term goals to move toward, I feel, will greatly improve my incentive to study hard and learn while I'm up at school in the city this next year. Not that I wasn't before, I guess I just didn't really know yet why I was putting the work into it. I've always sort of second guessed my career choices, but after last week, I'm sure that this is the profession I want to pursue and I realize now what kind of work that I need to put into it if I want to be truly successful as an entertainer.
I'm in the process of trying to obtain a private loan so that I can pay for my apartment deposit in about a month, and it's proving to be a grueling process: my father is incredibly skeptical and paranoid about anything that has to do with dealing out his social security number and probably doesn't have a stellar credit rating, and he's the main person I'm dealing with in this financial conundrum. I'm thinking about asking my Grandma to help me co-sign, but I don't want to burden her anymore than she already is... as time ticks away, I'm starting to think it may be my only option, although it's the last thing that I want to do and it's an insanely embarrassing phone call because my mother has a history of debt and I don't want to seem as if I am fulfilling a legacy. But, then again, in retrospect I wouldn't have to reach out at all if my mom had her shit together in the first place. So is life.
I've been on and off the phone all day trying to figure things out, and have been on the computer for the past hour or so studying my options for borrowing, and have submitted an application already, but I can already tell that I'm going to need a co-signer to make this possible. I really hate having to be in this situation, but I know that if I suck it up for the next three years and just deal with it all, that I will ultimately benefit from the work that I've done with a bachelor's degree... which sounds incredible. I'll be the first person in my family I think in at least two generations to get a bachelor's degree, unless Grandma Jean got one, but I'm not certain. I know my mother and father didn't, and my grandparents on my mother's side didn't even finish high school, so it will be a kind of family legacy for me. Actually, I think my Aunt got her bachelor's, now that I think about it. Whatever, I still want a degree. Haha.
