Set-back or an Opportunity?

If there is one thing I am no longer an amateur at, it would be getting bad news. 

My story is a long and convoluted one, though everything looked so straight forward when I was young and naive. I grew up hearing the same propaganda the rest of you did. Or maybe some of you didn't. Maybe some of you grew up without a life already planned for you. You didn't have to suffer through the long spiel of how you'll go to a good University and graduate with a sensible degree and then get an average paying job.

I never noticed how much I thought this was the only course of action until it was no longer a real option for me. Honestly, a lot of the blame could fall on me and my propensity to procrastinate, but there are some things that are just out of our control.

Senior year of high school, I applied for three colleges, but I only had my heart set on one. That's what you're expected to do. In the average, well advertised life, the young potential graduate becomes an avid fan of their University of choice. Then, when they are inevitably accepted, they celebrate by buying excessive amounts of spirit wear that they will only really wear on important game days. With all this in mind, I chose VCU, a well respected arts college where I could hone my cinematic skills! I was so excited to receive their decision that I proudly opened it up in the middle of my house... and then promptly wished I hadn't.

So my 'favorite' school had denied me. I did what any melancholy teenager would do and I got in my car and drove to the nearest quiet area. "Okay," I reasoned, "So I can't go there, but maybe the other schools..."

I chose to be logical in that moment because all I'd grown up hearing and seeing was that you needed to go to a four year university, you needed to pick a degree with guaranteed jobs, you NEEDED to follow those simple steps. But when the other two letters came in, I couldn't convince myself to settle. 

Liberty University accepted me. In fact, they seemed way too excited to bring me into the fold and shape me into an LU fan.  I felt... I don't know what I felt, but I couldn't picture myself at LU, no matter how much the letter insisted I would fit in. So I declined.

George Mason University accepted me. Their level of enthusiasm was sad in comparison to LU and I knew in a heart beat that I couldn't spend four years there. So again, I declined.

And this left me in a grey area, where I couldn't see any new paths to follow because... well because I never planned to get lost. Everything had seemed so straight and narrow.

Yet, for every low, there must be a high. An option suddenly presented itself and, though it seemed like a bitter pill to swallow at the time, it turned out pretty bearable; Community College.

You may shudder to hear it; that anyone would choose community college over a 4 year school. At the time, I was abhorred. I grew up in a bubble where community college was for the dumb and the underachievers. Only people with no ambition went there. My friends were perplexed by my choice to attend and tried to talk me out of it. "You aren't stupid, you don't need to go there." they would say.

And I learned they were right, for the most part. I'm not stupid, but community college has been so much more than underachievers and lacking students. It's full of a variety of people with multitudes of reasons to be there. I can go on and on about the virtues of attending a community college, but I'll leave that for another day.

So I had set out on a new path and already the instructions were being rewritten for me. I would study there for two years, get my associates degree, and then transfer to any college I wanted! I was doing well, until I heard about Full Sail University. It sounds like a cheap online school, but it's actually a renowned media arts college. I could study there for two years and graduate with all the skills and knowledge I would need for a job in film.

Encouraged, I dropped my work load that spring from 5 classes down to just 2. Then, I learned more and more about the school and suddenly it didn't appeal to me. Of course, it's a great school and I've heard amazing reviews, but I knew I wouldn't make it in an environment so far from home and so brutal.

So I was set back a semester and would need two and a half years to graduate with my associates. Okay, I could handle that. I worked hard an entire year and made and lost friends, and along the way, I started to discover that my future would never be straight and narrow. 

Life isn't a series of steps. Life is more like a cliff side. You can't see what's at the top from the bottom, but you know there's a ledge with an incredible view, so you choose to climb. You've never climbed this cliff before, and so as you go, each hand hold, each spot you place your foot, it's new and it's uncertain. You try to plan by looking up and ahead, but sometimes what you thought was a great foot hold turns out to be unstable or broken. And then sometimes, you're presented with a whole new path five feet to left, with a hundred new possibilities to factor in.

This week, I thought I'd finally found my next hand hold, only to look back up and see it had disappeared. I will graduate this fall with my associates in General Studies, but I will not be able to attend my college of choice in the spring. 

Understandably, I was upset. Another year, wasted. 

And yet, because of the person I've grown to be through my experiences, I feel immensely hopeful. I am faced with an entire semester to do with as I wish. There are more opportunities than ever before for me to pursue:

I can finally put real time and effort into my YouTube channel.

I can volunteer abroad and help underprivileged children.

I can apply for a new internship with any company I want.

What I thought was just another set-back has once again proven to be so much more than that; it's an abundance of opportunity.

I Was a Prostitute

So the title may be a bit misleading. I was not and will never be an actually lady of the night. I played a British harlot in the fantastically dark musical 'Jekyll & Hyde'. But, I got you to read this post, didn't I? That's some good old fashioned media marketing right there!

So the real story. 

My freshman year of high school, I decided to audition for the school musical, unaware of what it was and what it was about, and some how passed the initial rounds of casting. Let me tell you, I really should not have made it into the musical. My audition skills were amateur at best, and down right sad at worst. So here are the things I did wrong, and how you should avoid them:

1. I had no clue what I was auditioning for.
Knowing is the key to... not looking stupid. Also, your whole audition should be based around the show and the role you want. Freshman Baylee was not aware of this. She heard 'musical auditions' the day before and dove headfirst into the shallow end. 

If you are auditioning for a musical, the first thing you do is determine the genre. Is it a comedy? Is it a drama? Is it 'West Side Story'? If it's the third option, walk away and don't look back. Trust me. But, if it so happens to be a drama like Jekyll, then your song and monologue should be dramas as well. If you want to be the leading lady, pick a few bars from one of her more flashy songs. If you want to be Nellie, the child prostitute/ probably-a-pimp, use a seductive monologue.

2. I auditioned with 'The Only Exception' by Paramour.
I can't listen to that song anymore without cringing. I actually die a little on the inside if it comes on the radio. Don't audition with a pop song unless specifically told to. There will be regret. So. Much. Regret.

3. I probably looked like a tornado dressed me.
I say probably only because I can't quite remember what I wore, but I remember that I did not value fashion the way I do now. From what I recall and from the few surviving pictures of me, I would say I probably wore ratty blue jeans, some strange off-brand Toms, and a shirt that most likely said something about summer. My hair was dyed a streaky dishwater blonde and in the midst of growing out an unfortunate haircut. 

Do not dress like Freshman Baylee.

Wear something professional that you can move around in. There shouldn't be any logos or brand names stamped across the fabric. My advice to you, just throw on a plain black tee shirt, some dark and stretchy skinny jeans, and Keds. Can't go wrong with Keds. If you want to stand out, use your personality. Trust me, that'll impress them way more. 

(I'm the one with the legs.)

The rest of what I learned is actually second hand. At the same time I was making a fool of myself, a friend of mine was making an ass of himself. 

Cory walked into his audition like my polar opposite. He was confident in his abilities and just knew he would land the leading role. He sauntered onto the stage and peered into the audience, finding two women sitting side by side. One he knew, our chorus teacher, Mrs. Bruno. The other, he did not.

"Excuse me," He said, "But this is a closed audition." He probably raised his eyebrows and everything. The unnamed woman probably raised hers right back before replying.

"I know, I'm the director." Mrs. Cook responded.

Cory had made the fatal mistake of pissing off the director, and he knew it. He will claim this is where his audition went down hill, but I like to think it did the moment he opened his mouth.

After having his swagger ripped out from under him, Cory decided to just hop right into the rest of his audition. He started with the chorus of some popular rap song that I never listened to. Maybe this would have worked if he were auditioning for 'Hamilton', but the choice seemed a tad odd for a musical about Victorian Britain. He stumbled his way through it and finally came to the monologue portion.

This, he thought, was where he would redeem himself. He had chosen it carefully with the show in mind; a monologue from 'The Phantom of the Opera'. He began and then... stopped. 

"Um..." He muttered, than began again, making it about three lines in before... he stopped again.

"May I... can I look at the paper?" He had to ask sheepishly. He told me he felt like an idiot at this point. Mrs. Cook graciously allowed him to read from his printed copy, and he got about halfway through before she stopped him.

"That's not from Phantom." She said. Cory stared blank faced back, not really understanding. "I've seen and read Phantom, and that is not from the musical."

At this point if Cory were me, he would have started crying and then moved to some obscure place in Alaska to research alien life forms. Cory, though, is not me, and instead stood there until she said he could continue with his false Phantom piece.

Surprisingly, despite both of our atrocious first auditions, we got called backed. We then found our names on the cast list and thus, I became the child prostitute/ seriously-I-think-she-may-have-also-been-a-pimp Nellie, and Cory starred as Poole, the oddly incompetent butler.

(Cory (blue suit) is studying opera at Oberlin University. Here, he's preforming in Miami.)

Evacuate the Dance Floor

Do you remember when amateur music videos were all the rage on YouTube? I'm not talking about the cool parody songs, or horribly done official music videos. No, I'm talking about when a group of kids would pick a song (probably angst ridden) and lip sync along while filming the whole thing in their backyard. You know, the Dark Days.

Well, I may have... dabbled in that genre. Just a bit, and I never posted it anywhere. Okay, so I put it up on Facebook, but I deleted it so no worries right? It took me over 6 years to delete the monstrosity, but it's gone now and there are no existing copies of it. We are safe.

That's right, I was an amateur music video director. I picked 'Evacuate the Dance Floor' by Cascada and rounded up all of my closest friends to film what would become possibly the most amazing thing to come out of my middle school career. Well, other than the video project that almost got me expelled.

My closest friends turned out to be a group of people who could tolerate me enough to meet me at the playground after school. We donned ridiculous hats including a block of foam cheese and Darth Vader's mask. There weren't any smart phones at the time, so we played the song on repeat using my iPod touch and danced like we didn't know how. In my case, I really didn't know how, I still don't.

I had planned it all ahead of time, lyric by lyric, including a moment where we all roll down the hill for no reason other than what the heck else were we supposed to do during instrumental? Of course, we didn't finish filming that day, and scheduling more time to hangout when you're that age is more pain than it's worth. Therefore, I moved on to a different group of friends to help me complete the project.

That's right, half way through the video, the entire cast (minus myself) changed. Continuity everybody. 

Eventually the filming bit was done, and I was ready to move on to editing. I logged on to my family computer and opened Windows Movie Maker. I can hear all of you cringing. It was through this program that I learned what cutting together shots even meant and boy did that clear up a lot. Years of running from behind the camera and ending the video by awkwardly turning it off from the front, all for naught.

This video was horrible, but equally amazing. It was my first time putting something out there for people, despite all my misgivings. I had taken one of many first steps in my path to figuring out what I wanted to do with my future. I've changed my mind many times, travelling all over the job spectrum, but I've always come back to those early videos, the ones that lacked in quality but made up for it with personality.

So cheers to putting yourself out there, to taking the first step, and to finding a path worth following!

True Amateur Blogger

Amateur.

The word has some sort of strange stigma surrounding it. It's become an insult rather than a mere label. Even as I chose the title for my blog, it seemed like I was insulting myself and my ability. I could have humbly dubbed my blog 'The Awesome Blog of the Amazing Story of Baylee and Her Rise to Stardom', but that seemed 1. a bit long, and 2. a little too hard to live up to.

Sure, my life is pretty fantastic (in my mind) and I have a lot going for me (probably), but the blatant truth is that I am new to this scene. This is my first real blog; my first real blog post! My only other encounter with the art of blogging was a required weekly assignment for English 112 in college. So I kept skirting around the word 'amateur' until finally I decided, "I am an amateur, this is who I am, let's stop worrying about the title, move on, and freaking post something already."

So my internal dialogue is a little wordy, but you get the point.

All that being said, hello there!

I'm sure you are now sick of the word 'amateur' and I bet it has started to sound a little weird in your head. Good. I like to think that my personality works the same way, in such that sure, I should make sense, but no, the longer I think about it I do not in fact make any sense what so ever. I am a 20 year old woman trying to figure out what I like best about life and my opinions will change often and usually without reason. So can you really blame me if I get off topic a lot? 

I wanted my first post on this blog to be something of an introduction to who I am and what I will most likely be blogging about. I considered going with the typical "Hello, my name is Baylee and I am here to share my views on blah blah blah". Easy to read and totally straight forward, but oh my gosh, horribly boring! I can't not read that in a robotic voice or worse, in the voice of 15 year old me during high school presentations.

So then how would I go about introducing myself? 

My name is Baylee.

BOOM! There it is! That is all I'm telling you! The rest, you can piece together post by post or through good, old fashioned internet stalking. I'm sure I'll be posting plenty of pictures, and who knows, maybe I'll try my hand at being an amateur vlogger! 

For now though, I'll stick to learning the art of the blog. If you have any handy tips, tricks, or credit card numbers, leave me a comment below! I can't wait to share my mind with all of you!