Hello!

Quitting college wasn’t my decision. Or rather, I always meant to come back. Sometimes things don’t work out the way you plan (cliché, yes—stay with me). But if you're lucky (like I am), the things you didn't plan will lead you to discover the things you didn't know you wanted. 

 

I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, dancing and doing theatre, and I decided I wanted to pursue musical theatre professionally. When you’re trying to go to college for any sort of performing art, you have to apply to the school like normal, but you also have to audition to be accepted into its artistic program. It’s not uncommon to be accepted academically to the school, but not accepted into the performing arts program.

 

So it’s my senior year of high school, and I’m in the process of auditioning for something like fifteen programs. It’s a lot of pressure. These are the first people outside of Nebraska that have ever seen me perform, and they get to decide if I’m allowed to pursue an education in the one thing that I’ve wanted since I was a little girl. Sounds dramatic, but remember: I’ve done this my whole life. I gave up family weddings to do shows. I gave up playing sports, school dances, making lifelong memories with my parents and siblings, and doing any of the spontaneous, weird things that teenagers do, all for dance. If it was all for nothing, if I wasn’t actually that talented even after all that hard work…I would feel like I had wasted nine years of my life. So yes, a lot of pressure. I didn’t know what I was going to do if I didn’t get accepted to any programs.

 

Spoiler alert: I didn’t.

 

I made the decision to go to a different school (a very prestigious performing arts school whose program I had not been accepted into), major in something regular, and audition for the theatre program again when I was already at the school (you could audition every year). Another spoiler alert: I auditioned again at the end of my freshman year and did not get accepted.

 

So, I decided to leave. Now, this particular “quit” was my decision. However, it wasn’t supposed to be a "quit"; it was supposed to be a gap year. I was determined to go to one of those prestigious performing arts programs, so I did it all over. I auditioned again for twelve programs.

 

It’s an important plot point to note here that during this gap year, I turned nineteen, tried to live at home in Nebraska, and complained so much to my best friend about it that he offered to house me in his apartment in NYC. The rest of this story would have never happened without the generosity of said best friend, and I can’t thank him enough. I got a full-time job at a coffee shop in Manhattan in order to make ends meet, and I moved in with my friend in his apartment in the East Village, where we shared not only a room, but also a twin bed. In this room with the twin bed, there were no windows, and there was just enough space for the door to scrape open, grazing the frame of the bed. Nineteen year old me was having the time of her life, living it up in New York City style and squalor.

 

One unforgettable day, I received a notification that my application status to one of my dream schools had been updated. I was at work, and at this point, I had once again been declined acceptance from every other school I auditioned for. My coworkers encouraged me to step off the floor to look (I was the baby coworker—they were so supportive). Heart beating, hands shaking, I couldn’t even make it all the way off the floor. I simply turned to face away from the register and pretended like customers were not waiting in a line out the door for their coffee. I opened my phone to find– “Congratulations! You have been accepted into [redacted school's name] program for a BFA in Musical Theatre!” My heart was bursting with emotions too complex for a teenager to identify. I had doubted myself so much for the past two and a half years, and finally, here was my reassurance that somebody, somewhere saw what I had to offer and said, “We want her.”

 

I was ecstatic. I called my parents that night and told them the news. I sent them the financial aid package so we could look at it together. 

 

No scholarships. 

 

Sixty thousand dollars a year. 

 

Uh-oh.

 

By the time I was done, I would be over two hundred thousand dollars in debt.

 

Silence on my parents’ end of the phone. Finally, my dad said, “Gigi, you can’t pay for this. By the time you graduate, you’ll owe so much in student loans that you won’t be able to move back to New York, and you’ll have to move back to Omaha instead.” I was in denial. This was my ONE school. My ONE lifeline to believing in myself. I called the school the next day and begged them for scholarships, to no avail. At the time I didn't realize that at these big name theatre schools, they don't need to offer everyone big scholarships, because if you can't pay the full tuition price, someone else on the waitlist can and will.

 

I was heartbroken. A few days later, when I was on the phone with my parents again, my dad gently suggested, “Why don’t you just stay there in New York? You don’t have to go to college. You don’t need a degree to do what you do.”

 

So I quit college. By accident, by circumstance, by…luck? Whatever you want to call it, and whether I liked it or not, I was now in the category of “uneducated white voter.”

 

So there I was, trying to start my career at nineteen years old. I had no idea what I was doing. That first year, I had some questionable encounters with people who were claiming to be “casting,” I performed for free a lot, and I let other people’s advice and opinions dictate everything I did. There are lots of scam artists claiming to be “performance opportunities” here in the city, and when you come from Midwest nowhere like I did, you don’t know what’s legit and what’s not.

 

But I learned. I took a lot of drop-in dance classes and slowly, my confidence built up. I started seeing a world of possibility, in and out of theatre, open to me because of the decision I had been forced to make. I saw options in life that I didn’t know you could take. Paths I didn’t know existed. I slowly realized that I was the only person able to decide the outcomes of my life. No matter what happens to me, no matter who or what rejects me, there is always another path for me to take. There is never a dead end. There is no such thing as fear of the unknown if you learn to enjoy the thrill of possibility.

 

I worked hard, and I kept learning. The next year, I auditioned for agents at a showcase, and eleven out of twelve agencies reached out to meet with me.

 

I booked my first acting job. Then I booked another. And another. And another. I’ve now performed regional theatre, concert dance, workshops of shows, music videos—I’ve performed in New York, Paris, Bangkok, Monaco, Munich, Lugano, Bordeaux; I have my name on the creative team and cast of an eight million dollar world-premiere show that I helped launch into musical theatre canon…like, this is the stuff of dreams.

 

All of this very long personal statement to say, quitting college changed my life. When I was really young, it threw me onto a path to explore the world with open eyes. Now, when I think of myself at nineteen, it reminds me not only to appreciate, but to marvel at everything that could possibly be out there for me. Leaving college when I did helped me discover that I truly can achieve anything I put my mind to, no matter how long it takes and no matter how many times I hear "no." Leaving college when I did gave me the ability to recognize that there is so much more to me than the performing arts; I am someone who loves to learn, experience the world, and reach across my differences with others to bond over a common thread. Leaving college when I did gave me the time and space to understand that learning is a privilege, and one that I am lucky to get to choose. After all these years, I am ready to return to college because I finally feel that I know what I want and how to value it. Right now, I am a performer, but I want to earn my bachelor's degree so that someday, if the time comes, I can be anything I desire--and because of the experiences that led me here, I know without a doubt that I truly can be anything I aspire to. I am lucky to have been forced to quit, because it gave me the life I live today; I am equally lucky to have the chance to return, because it will give me the possibility of any life I wish to live tomorrow.