A Facebook notification popped up on my phone the other day... "See your Memories." Upon refreshing my feed, I saw that it was that day that marked two years since I started up a public relations department for my high school's theatre clubs. This sparked a lot of reflection.

I had started promotional work as a way of staying involved in theatre after not making the cast list. All of my friends (and even my sister) had been cast in the play, and I was lost on what to do. Bored, I began creating a social media platform for the drama club and conducted a few promotion campaigns on different sites. I also created advertisements for the show. It ended up being something I was really interested in and came to love. I was even recognized by my whole cast on closing night for all of the work I had done.

Then the next show rolled around - the musical. What had started out as a few social media pages and some posters for the drama club spiraled into a full-fledged public relations department, in which a group of students conducted promotion campaigns, designing posters, and merchandise for the cast. This only grew the following year, and as PR chairperson, I loved spreading the important stories that theatre tells anyone willing to listen.

Fast forward to now - not only did I come to fall in love with what I was doing... I'm now pursuing a career in doing it. I am currently a public relations major at the Newhouse school, and I hope to someday promote theatre professionally as a social media coordinator. I was also recognized nationally for my work, being named a finalist in the Jimmy Awards Student Reporter Search.

I started out really sad about rejection and ended up finding something I truly loved, and am now pursuing. Sitting in my dorm room bed and seeing that Facebook notification made me realize just how far I had come from first seeing the absence of my name from the cast list.

Moral of the story, things will not always go the way you'd hoped for... but they will go the way they're meant to. Find a way to spin your situation positively, and who knows? Maybe it'll send you on a completely different path from anything you've ever imagined. I thought I wanted to be a judge for nearly my entire life, yet here I am now. When life gives you lemons...