As a kid, I tried a lot of extra-curricular activities. I did art classes, swimming and soccer. I wanted to try karate, ballet and gymnastics. Everything I tried doing, never really grabbed my interest. That was until my mom suggested auditioning for the musical Aladdin at the local playhouse. It was the start of something new, and I finally found my hobby. But, like many things in life, it’s never as fun when you get older.

Getting that part in the children’s chorus was one of the best things to happen to little 10-year-old me. I loved the costumes, the characters and the guy who played Aladdin was all of my Jesse McCartney dreams come true. I didn’t do much but dance and sing quietly with a few other young girls, but I loved it. With that one musical, theatre quickly became a huge part of my life. I wanted all things theatrical and cinematic, and I always found ways to reference the play I was in.

I did plays at two playhouses, was in the children’s chorus in a high school musical, did three years of theatre class, and two of drama club in middle school. You could say I was really into it. It was my favorite thing in the world, and when I found out the high school offered an advanced theatre class, I was so excited.

I auditioned for the class and made it in! From there, I wrote it out in my four-year plan that I would do theatre classes every year until I graduated. If the theatre department was anything like I remembered, it would be long nights, busy Saturdays and lots of practice if I was in a production. It wasn’t until I started the class that I realized this was nothing like I had planned.

The class was full of familiar faces from my theatre classes and the playhouses, and I was super excited to get into it with everybody. Very quickly, though, the class started to form its own small groups and cliques. It became clear I wasn’t going to be a part of those, too.

I only had a couple close friends in the class, and a lot of the other kids were very 'friendly', but not necessarily friends with me. I felt excluded most of the time, because I wasn’t a part of the larger picture. I can distinctly remember instances where I was left out of things, just because I was me. I didn’t feel like I belonged in that class.

On top of that, I didn’t feel like I was benefitting from the curriculum. Theatre doesn’t have a set of guidelines for the class. There’s not a standard to be met or anything saying what we had to learn. Not having that made it so much harder to enjoy things. A majority of the class throughout the year was spent rehearsing monologues for the play auditions we were required to do. Once everybody learned their pieces, we’d waste the class period sitting around the auditorium. We could’ve been learning something or helping with something for a production, but we just sat…a lot.

There weren’t many learning units within the class. I recall learning basics of make-up, lighting and shadows, stage fighting with swords, along with the tortuous homework of reading An Actor Prepares by Constantin Stanislavski. I felt like my time was being wasted when I could’ve been learning more.

In the second semester every year, that class always picked a short play and performed it for the theatre classes at the middle schools. I knew before spring that I didn’t want to continue that class, but not having performed in a while, I decided to stay in it for that one play. I received a good role, and I rehearsed it like no other to get ready for the performances.

Last minute, we decided we weren’t going to take it to the middle schools, but just perform it for the other fifth-period theatre class. I can’t even begin to describe the level of irritation I had after that. I was done with that class, and with that, I was done with theatre in general.

The playhouse near me had shut down, and I switched all of my theatre classes in my four-year plan over to criminal justice. After six years of doing what I loved, I was done.

I miss theatre every day. I miss every little thing that made me fall in love with it. But one class, one which I was so eager for, has kept from the stage for six years now.

I’ve seen productions put on by the university, and I’ve always left with a sense of nostalgia and heartache. While dropping my theatre classes helped me get into criminal justice more, and find my love -- I still gave up a hobby I was so passionate about.

I wasn’t meant to be a high school theatre kid; it can be dog-eat-dog in the theatre department, and I’m not that person. I hope that one day, I’ll return to the stage and be reunited with something I still love so much. Until then, the world is my stage.