I have been involved in the performing arts for as long as I can remember. Seriously, I was five years old when I first stepped on stage as the leader of the Teeny Tiny Mice in The Nutcracker in the William Saroyan theatre. Unfortunately, at the time I did not know the significance of this theater, but as I continued to perform and frequent the stage for plays, musicals, dance performances, and band performances (I have been playing the trumpet for over a decade now!), Saroyan's name started appearing everywhere in the theatrical lexicon. Most fresh in my mind is his wonderful black-humor show The Time of Your Life, which boasted some majorly impressive acting, dancing, and singing, all of which I love and aspire to work to improve at. Seeing the show served as a pointed culmination of my entire artistic love and all my desires, and I thank Saroyan for his contribution.

Then Junior year hit me. I had to start thinking about college, but I was more academically inclined in terms of results than I was artistically. More simply put, I had to offer the left side of my brain because it performs on a more proficient level that the schools I was looking at preferred. Thus began my short, and in retrospect rushed, journey to find a practical career to pursue, or at least get an idea of the field I want to work in.

After running into the movie The Big Short, I got the idea of learning about the stock market and its history, especially since The Great Depression plays such an influential role in our educated discourses about economic position. I tried out some stock market simulations with friends to test our knowledge of how the markets works. This also got me to read the newspaper, and I immediately began to feel like a middle-aged man as a result. All I needed was a pipe and a wool suit to complete. I initially saw two separate paths my life could stumble curiously down: economics or journalism. As it happened, my high school only offered an Economics course, so I scratched journalism off my list.

Here I am now. I am a Political Economics major with a minor in dance, just to keep my wits and creative thoughts about me. I feel like my creative exploits and adventures of running around on stage singing, dancing, or offering emotional dialogue, have simply petered off into the distant reaches of my memory. I find myself longing for those moments now more than ever before. All because of practicality.