Student Blog: A Return to the Fall Semester

Every student knows the feeling you get on the night before the first day of school. That nervous excitement courses through your body and if you’re anything like me, you stay up late at night thinking about what could happen in the weeks following. That feeling was especially powerful this year, as I knew this semester would be unlike any I’ve ever experienced.

I am in my third year as a student at the Institute for American Musical Theatre in New York City. Although IAMT is a two-year program, there is an optional third year you can take that acts as a transitional phase. The third year has an entirely different curriculum than the first and second years. The class sizes are smaller and it offers the flexibility to take the courses you need to be successful in the industry. Third-year specific classes include acting, audition technique, improv, directing, dialect, scene study, and film and television acting, but you have the option to take voice and dance classes with the first and second years as well. 

As a third year at IAMT, my day typically goes as follows:

I pack my backpack with the essentials for the day, and I walk to school. I quickly stop at the local coffee shop under our theatre space and then walk up what seems like miles of stairs (the stairs are arguably the hardest part of the day). We start with directing with Ryan Emmons, where we learn what it feels like to be directed by a Broadway professional, while simultaneously collaborating with and directing our peers. Next is dialect class with Mike Walsh. So far this semester we’ve learned the foundation of speech patterns, and we’ve worked on Transatlantic, New York, and Traditional Southern accents. After this, the third-year specific classes are done for the day, so I go to the main school to take voice and musical theatre dance. When my day is “done”, there is always something to work on- a monologue to memorize, an accent to practice, or a scene to block. Even when it was only a week into the semester, my mind was scattered in a million different places trying to manage it all, but it’s this kind of excitement that I thrive off of. 

This semester is dissimilar from any other I’ve had, because as I’m writing about my back-to-school experiences, I’m currently in New Jersey in The Conjuring, playing Cindy Perron with RWS Entertainment. I found out that I would be leaving school to do this job at the beginning of September. As soon as I accepted the offer I quickly switched into thinking about how I would tie up as many loose ends at school as possible. I did every scene I was assigned the week before I left, and I tried to participate as much as I could in my last couple of days. Luckily, because of the flexible nature of the third-year program, I was allowed to leave and come back at the end of the contract.

In a way, when I come back to IAMT in November, it’s going to feel like back-to-school season all over again. I will relive those feelings of nervous excitement the night before I come back, and I know it’ll take some time to readjust to being a student again. If you’re reading this and you’re a student who’s missed a considerable amount of class for an excused leave of absence, you know it can be daunting to come back and get caught up as everyone else has been learning without you. 

That being said, there is so much I look forward to about going to school again. I can’t even begin to explain how excited I am to be back in New York- learning new things, pushing myself as an artist, and working with my favorite teachers. It might take some time to get used to the hectic nature of it all, but this is the incredible life that I’ve signed up for, and I could not be more grateful to be coming back to school for a second time this fall.