To the high school senior who has participated in every show since elementary school. To the kid who feels alive when he/she steps onto the stage. To the person who feels like they can't do anything quite as well as they can perform: this is for you. Don't listen to the teachers with judgmental glances or the family members who always ask what your "back-up plan" is. Don't let your class mates with future degrees in neuroscience and finance discourage you. It is more important to be happy than rich.

Or is it? I guess this open letter is a letter of tough love for the future theatre major because everyone needs some tough love. Before you pick this career path, think about it, are you willing to give it all up, money and stability, to be happy in your field? Are you willing to face disapproval and rejection time and time again from family members and friends as well as from directors, teachers and virtually everyone in the business? Are you ready to face your inner demons, the ones you've tried to hide and ignore to making living day to day life a little easier?

I've only been in school for a year and I've already faced many challenges, mostly within myself but I see a long future ahead of me. I feel anxious when I think about getting work after I graduate, about getting cast in shows or not getting cast in shows here at school. I stress out about the work I will put into working average jobs while trying to pursue my career. I think about all the ways I need to educate myself to even keep my head above water in this business. I need to read plays and books, see shows, study people. Not only that, but I've watched classmates not take this major seriously, and trust me sometimes you'll just have to laugh at the work you do in class, but you need dedication. You need to want this more than anything else. This is not a major that will let you skate by. This major isn't a place holder until you find out what you want to do. If you're not serious about being in this field, don't enter it from lack of a better option. Don't take it as a joke because so many people outside our craft already do.

If you decide this major is for you, congratulations. Be prepared. Be prepared to memorize you lines on time, not only for yourself and your experience, but for your scene partner's sake. Every bit of work you will do will be for you, not for your teacher, not for your degree. You don't have the luxury of forgetting the things you will learn and you don't have the luxury to neglect the work. You'll be wasting your time and your professor's time and your classmates' time and your (or your parent's) money. Be ready to break down walls you didn't know you had. You don't have the advantage of being a heartless bitch. You need to know pain and joy in order to be successful. You need to face the things that hurt you. You're going to have days where you are so emotionally drained because you just worked on a monologue that hit close to home for 30 minutes or because you just spent 3 hours in Improv class putting yourself into imaginary situations that would crush your entire world if they were real. Be dedicated. Be accepting of criticism because that is 95% of this major. You will almost never be spot on the first time you present something. You can't be offended or hurt every time you're given an adjustment or told that you're wrong. That is what being a theatre major is all about.

Be ready to step outside your comfort zone. Be ready to randomly cry in Script Analysis because you didn't realize the father in the play cheated on his wife and you have to relive your parent's divorce. Be ready to be a piece of bacon sizzling on a pan at your teacher's request. Be ready to pant like a dog to help you find proper breathing technique. You're going to do warm ups and progressions hundreds of times and you're going to be sick of them. You're going to want a day off but you'll still need to go to class because you're not allowed to miss class. You're going to be so physically and emotionally tired you won't want to see friends. It'll become so easy to hate yourself. You're going to have other majors scoff at you because you don't have the regular homework that they do and they don't understand just what it is you do.

Of course, I'm still here though because I have always seen it as more important to be absolutely happy than rich or famous, it can't be about what the art may bring you. It has to be about what the art form gives you everyday and what you give back to the world through it. You have to be so passionate about being a performer that your love of the art outweighs the practicality of a stable job and a stable degree.

So if you really want this more than anything else, this major, this art, is beautiful and rewarding. You'll grow so quickly you won't even realize it until your fellow students stop you and tell you how much you've improved since your first monologue or scene. You'll learn things about yourself, your strengths and weaknesses. You'll be observed and told how interesting you are as a human, with your own quirks you never knew you had. Yes, like I said, it'll be so easy to hate yourself but it will also be so easy to fall in love with yourself, as paradoxical as it all sounds. You'll meet amazing people who are so fun and unique and who are in love with this art just as much as you. You'll feel understood and at home because even in every high school's drama department, how many kids actually looked at performing as their passion and their future? You will create things that have never been created and will never be created again and you will make beautiful art. You will be art.