Finals Stress, Tearful Saturday (Revamped), and Coming Home

This past week has proven to be quite eventful.

1. I had my first ever experience with college finals. And let me tell you, it definitely caught me off-guard a bit. For one, my finals experience is vastly different than that of my peers. Since most of my classes are music-based, the majority of my finals were performances of some sort. I only had one or two written finals that I had to sit down in class and take. I had a musicianship final that I feel very confident on (more so than the midterm), and I had a vocal production final. I had a final performance in both English Diction and Speech and Diction, and then my choir class was done about two weeks ago when we performed in a joint choir concert. And of course, I had auditions, which were kind of like a mid-year jury, to see how I've progressed throughout the semester.

2. Tearful Saturday continues, though this time it was Tearful Saturday Night. An email was sent out to everyone in the program, with the cast lists for all of the spring Steinhardt shows, both program and NYU Players Club. I auditioned for four shows, and was not cast in any of them. While it sucks that I won't be performing at all next semester, I'm looking at this as an opportunity to audition for a capella, and to hopefully branch out into the rest of the NYU community to find something else to occupy my time.

3. I'M FLYING HOME TOMORROW!!!! It has been altogether too long since I've been home, and I'm so looking forward to seeing my family and my friends and eating In n Out and Maru Ichi and Le Boulanger and Jamba Juice's oatmeal. I swear, only half of my coming home excitement is food-based. The rest is people-based, I promise. Because I wasn't cast in any Steinhardt shows, this means I'll be able to stay home until shortly before spring term starts on my birthday, of all days. Not sure when I'm flying back yet, but I know I'll be home for over a month, at least. And I think this is a well-needed break. I'm definitely going to miss my NYU friends, especially my best friend Elle, but I'm glad to be going home.

SNOW!! And Auditions

This morning I woke up and went to the dance call portion of my audition for the Steinhardt spring shows. Came home, did some work, and around 4 my roommate came home and made a comment about it snowing outside. I looked out the window and sure enough, it was snowing!! I'm not ashamed to admit that I opened the window (well, as far open as it'll go) and sat by the window for a solid half hour watching the snow fall. And then I got cold so I closed the window, but I still sat by and watched the snowflakes. It was so cool to see the cars and trees (as many trees as there are in New York City) covered in snow. And then later when I left to get a sandwich for dinner, it smelled fresh and it felt kind of like I was walking around in Tahoe or something. Definitely had a dorky grin on my face. I know all my friends will probably make fun of me for being so excited about snow, of all things, but it's so exciting to live in a city where it actually snows! I don't have to drive four to six hours to see snow, it's right outside my building!

In other news, I'm done with three fourths of my auditions for the spring semester. My dance audition for Once on This Island went fairly well, the dance was not what I was expecting. It was set to "We Dance" and I guess I was expecting something more jazzy but it was more hip hop. The choreographer's name is Melissa, which is cool. When they called my name to go up, she was like "My name is Melissa too!". My singing audition went extremely well, I think. After I sang the director said I had a really pretty voice, and when he asked if I was studying musical theater or classical and I said I was musical theater, he said "Well good, we need more voices like yours". They canceled callbacks for OOTI and I don't find out anything until either Friday or Saturday. This morning was my dance call for Carousel, and it actually went surprisingly well. They split it up into girls first for an hour and a half, and then guys, and I was in the first big chunk of girls to go. I think I was one of two freshman in that entire group of at least 25 girls. It turns out that I already knew the combination the choreographer was teaching us because it's my ballet teacher, MK, and she taught the dance to us last week in ballet, saying it was just some combination she wanted to teach us. When we went to perform the combo, I was in the second to last group. After we were done, my friend Kaitlyn (she's a junior) said that I did a really good job and that I looked great out there, which was really nice of her to say. So now I've just got my audition on Wednesday at 7:05, and then if I get any callbacks those are Thursday and Friday I think, and then I found out either Friday or Saturday what I've been cast in, if anything. Fingers crossed!

Thanksgiving in Albany, and Audition Stress

This year, I had the great fortune to spend Thanksgiving in Albany with my best friend, Elle. We left Tuesday night and I got back Saturday, so it was definitely a full vacation (with waaaaay too much food). I spent a lot of time just hanging out with her family, who are all very nice and sweet. She has three older sisters, and I was "roommates" with her closest sister Brittany for the couple of days I spent there. Her grandmothers, aunt, and uncle were also there, so it was a very full house.

I have a theory that I've gotten used to a certain (very low) standard of dorm food in college, so when I had Thanksgiving dinner, I had the worst stomach ache ever because I wasn't used to having such rich, high quality food. I told myself I'd get a little bit of everything but because there was sooo much food my plate was overflowing! The food was absolutely amazing; I loved this acorn squash that they made with maple syrup, it was super sweet and yummy. And I actually really enjoyed the brussel sprouts that Elle's sister Meredith made, which is odd because I don't usually like brussel sprouts. 

When we weren't hanging out with Elle's family and her super adorable dog Bear, we hung out a lot with her friends from high school. It was neat to get to meet them all and to see how Elle interacted with her high school friends as opposed to her NYU friends. I have to say, Elle seemed to act the same way with them as with me, but our friend Sam (who went to high school with Elle and who lives on the second floor of our building) was a lot more outgoing and talkative with his high school friends. Funny how some people change.

I really liked meeting all of Elle's friends, and hearing some old stories about her from high school and whatnot. Like me, she had a few distinctive groups of friends, and I think I liked her musical theater friends a bit better, or at least I got along with them better because even though I didn't know them, we had a lot in common that we could talk about. It was kind of cool to compare musical experiences and to talk about shows we've all done. One girl Alisa talked about coming to the city and visiting us at some point soon, which would actually be really fun!

Auditions are coming up this week. I have a dance audition on Thursday and then on Friday is my vocal audition for Once on This Island, and callbacks are on Saturday. Sunday is dance call for the rest of the Steinhardt spring musicals, and my formal audition for Carousel and the other shows is on Wednesday. I only have to sing at most one full "legit" song and one 16-bar cut of a more contemporary song. It's not a very formal affair, nothing much to worry about from what I've heard, but it's my first NYU audition so of course I'm nervous. The cast lists for everything comes out on either Saturday or Sunday of next week, so either the 14th or the 15th.