The Frank Sinatra School of the Arts is a specialized high school located in Astoria, Queens, founded by Tony Bennett. This is where talented students decide to further their education through the arts like singing, acting, or through painting. This is where Cecilia Kurtz, 20, attended during her high school career with the dream to further her talents in singing.
“I sing just about anything,” said Kurtz who is now attending St. John’s University as a communications major. Putting her singing career on hold for now, she is just trying to focus on life. Living in the moment is Kurtz’s most important aspect in her life. When asked what her plans are for the near future, more specifically five years, she becomes flustered. “I don’t know!” Kurtz said, as if not wanting to deal with anything more than a week away. “I mean I hope it's something with singing, but I just don’t know.”
So with graduating from a specialized performing arts school in singing, Kurtz attained high enough grades to get a hefty scholarship from St. John's University. The reason no one has heard much from Cecilia Kurtz before is because there was nothing to talk about. She had all this ambition, but no tool to use it, which was until she studied abroad in Europe.
Up until about a year ago, Kurtz was just any other student at St. John's who just liked to keep to themselves. But one must ask, how many famous singers do you know that are afraid to speak? This was her main weakness, she had the ability to become something, but she didn’t know how to come out of her shell.
A mere 15 minutes away, Kurtz lives in Whitestone, but deciding to live across the Atlantic Ocean for a semester could have been the changing point in her life. “I used to have really bad social anxiety, I would get anxious talking to people I didn’t really know. It would take me a while to just warm up to people,” Kurtz said. But being abroad change all that for that better, “It strengthened my confidence and helped my social skills. I could finally talk to people so much easier.”
“I just gained more independence from being abroad, something about being there, I don’t know,” Kurtz said. But it is all right that she does not know. It is only human for her to try and see what the world is like and try to find herself through different experiences.
For someone who went to a specialized high school to sing, only to come out of it learning that she didn’t have the same personality as the extroverts around her; it was more than disappointing. She is beyond proud of how far she has come and you can hear it in her voice when she talks about her experiences there. “Being over there, I definitely learned more people skills and made strong friendships,” Kurtz said.
“Did we go to karaoke that one night?” she asks her friend Jasha Louis, who is a friend she made on the trip, who is currently sitting across from her. Somehow in a strange continent, Kurtz decided to shine and try some foreign karaoke.
“I don’t remember, it may have been too crowded that night. I honestly don’t remember,” Louis said. Her lack of memory couldn’t possibly have to do with the legal drinking age of 18 over in Italy, where the karaoke bar was located.
“Scholars!” Kurtz exclaims, “that was the name of the bar, it was an Irish pub, in Rome.” She realizes the irony and laughs to herself. “But I’ve done karaoke in Parsons for the past, like, six weeks.” This is a bar located off St. John's campus.
She looks down at her watch and realizes how long she has been talking for, “Jesus Christ it’s been 20 minutes? You see what I mean? When you first met me would I ever have talked this long?” And the answer is no, the Cecilia Kurtz who entered this university a few years ago is not the same girl. The introvert that flew under the radar is beginning to strut her stuff.
It may seem that this girl does not seem the like the normal “campus hero,” but she represents so much more than that. She represents the silent majority that doesn’t know what they want to do for the next 45 years of their lives at 20-years-old.
Now that she’s been talking for a while she goes back to the question about where she sees herself in five years. “My friend and I may open a karaoke café, we’ve been talking about it for a while,” Kurtz said. And that’s just as far into the future she wants to look, because living in the ‘now’ is more important in her eyes.
