Any feedback would be most welcome:
When I started out in university, I chose to study accounting. It was the path of least resistance for me as someone who was always good at math and used to thinking about things logically and in terms of set, defined parameters. I cannot remember why I decided to attempt to study theatre, but I very clearly remember the day I made the decision. The change of major form at my university asked us the reason for our switch. My response was that theatre was difficult. It was something that I had to work hard to do. As a person who was used to puzzles and numbers, my body and my voice were things I was not in the habit of using. I welcomed the challenge. My training in theatre since then has always been that the unknown is the place in which I should live. I must have soaked up the essence of this very early on, because something enabled me to jump into this uncharted world of art and performance and never look back.
My first theatre teacher was a professor of voice. I have always considered myself extremely fortunate to have first worked with someone whose approach to theatre was as organic as hers. Working with her, the goal was always to speak the truth at any given moment: to always be honest in everything. The story, and theatre is storytelling, was always primary, and honest communication was the best way to tell the story. I continued studying voice for the rest of my time at university, and also attended Canada's National Voice Intensive in 2002. While still at university, I was given the opportunity to direct two full-length shows. I also started teaching my own voice classes while attending school. Directing shows and teaching classes changed something inside of me. Teaching became something I wanted to do; something at which I excelled. There is something about assisting others toward their potential that makes me feel like I belong: it makes me positive that teaching is what I want to be doing the rest of my life. I still direct shows and coach voice and dialect at Cal State Pomona, and I love doing it, but it isn't enough. I want to do more.
Graduate study is a means to an end for me. But the means is just as important as the end. I want these next five years in graduate school to change me as much as the last five years of my life have changed me. I am confident that graduate school will do just that. Graduate school is a path into the unknown, and the unknown is where I want to live. I want to be molded and changed. I have strong ideas about theatre, performance and the arts, and I want to be in an environment where these ideas can be challenged and studied. Most importantly, I want to surround myself with other theatre students and scholars with whom I can discuss ideas, test theories, and from whom I can learn.
I want to teach on the university level: to have an impact on young actors, directors, and other students of theatre. But most importantly, I feel that my education in theatre must continue and I know that I cannot do that on my own. Studying on the graduate level is something I have been thinking about for a very long time. It is what comes next in my path as an artist-no longer the path of least resistance. This is the subsequent logical step in my growth as a theatre teacher, an artist in my community, and a student of life.
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