My College Essay

Playing on the BC High JV Tennis Team was a blast. I had improved my playing skills, made a bunch of friends and matured mentally. Although I was a little disappointed that I wouldn’t get to work on this awesome play a bunch of my friends were writing, I was looking forward to playing on the team, so sure that I would make it again. A week of tryouts later, I was officially cut from the team. By Monday at about 3:30pm, I had totally forgotten about tennis. At that moment, I was in the theatre, helping out with that play my friends and I were working on. I was having more fun than I ever had playing tennis, and more than that, what we were doing felt very satisfying. Although I had been playing tennis for basically all my life, the satisfaction and enjoyment I was experiencing from theater helped me quickly move on from the disappointment of getting cut.

Now that I’ve started in medias res, let me go back to the beginning of my adventures in theater. My first experience with theater was at the beginning of sophomore year, totally on a whim. I had a friend who did theater tech, and I had nothing to do in the fall so I figured what the heck. With the exception of August 2011 and August 2012, I haven’t really stopped since. Mainly, I’ve done shows for school but I’ve also worked as an intern at a local summer theater company and even been a part of an all-teen acting troupe. My biggest regret in life is that I was narrow-minded freshman year and convinced myself that “theater just wasn’t for me.” I could not have been further from the truth. Theater fits who I am and who I want to be perfectly. I was always shy, but theater has boosted my self-confidence. I’ve always thought of myself as a problem solver and critical thinker, theater lets me stretch those muscles every day. Despite being shy, I have always been interested in people (psychology is one of my favorite subjects) and theater is possibly the most social performing art there is. I have always believed that the best friends are not those who are the most popular, but those who are the most interesting. I have yet to meet an uninteresting theater person. Actually, there is a quote that really resonates with me from Aesop’s Fables that states “You are known by the company that you keep”.  To be known by the company I keep means to be known as quirky, interesting, intelligent, kind, funny and most of all outgoing and confident. After an entire childhood and early adolescence suggesting otherwise, I have found that my true home, my true niche in life is being a theater person.