Student Blog: I Hope I Get It. I Hope I Get It.

Hi my name is Leah Fridman and I’ll be auditioning for the role of summer administrative intern at your organization! I am 5 '2, can use Microsoft Office, and speak fluent Russian. 

Audition, interview, headshot, resume, cover letter, interpretative dance begging for seasonal employment….when will it end! We go from auditioning for the 5th grade school play to applying for our first real 9-5 in what feels like a millisecond. In a blip we become worker bees, still auditioning, but now for the betterment of our future selves. The Musical Theater Audition™ teaches you how to sell your brand, but somehow I prefer that to the number, resume, action word online submission. I’m so used to the immediate personal connection between the auditionee and the people behind the table. I’ve perfected the first five minutes of being in a room to an almost perfect methodical science.  

The Musical Theater Audition ™ is to Summer Internship Interview as Laser Tag is to Call of Duty: Black Ops: Real Life Edition.  I was trained for the MTA (we love an acronym) from the beginning of my theater career, but job interviews come in all shapes and sizes! Multiplayer options, solo player, full ballroom blitz, all the things. I’ve submitted cover letters and interest letters and done interviews over Zoom in person and one-way video recordings. Just when I feel like I’ve got my bearings in this internship no man’s land…..KABOOM. Everything I thought I knew shatters into a bulbous mushroom-like cloud of smoke, the comfortable state of being knowledgeable on a topic: G O N E. 

So what have we learned from the irrevocable condition of being a (mentally at least) exploded individual? That there is a benefit to taking on the identity of a learner and a student, I feel like I say this all the time and so often that it has turned into a visceral mantra:

“IT IS OKAY NOT TO KNOW THINGS SOMETIMES!! (Fridman, 2025)” 

Going with the flow, making sure your boat is safe and secure as opposed to making sure the waters are calm. That’s what is helping me the most right now. I’m keeping my silly little color-coded spreadsheets, filing all my cover letters, and applying for anything and everything. I’m learning from each and every interview and application, and I have yet to gloriously stick my foot in my mouth mid-sentence so a win is a win! I look at interviews as less of a critical examination of my worth as a person and more like a fun conversation. In that capacity, I’m about to meet so many people with the same career ambitions as me, what’s not to love about that! 

The digital age has made everything just a bit easier but I fear it also has enabled the employment doom scroll. Worse than TikTok, scarier than Instagram and more morose than Twitter. I present to you, ladies and gentlemen and everyone in between - of the jury: LINKEDIN/HANDSHAKE/INDEED DOOM SCROLL. DUN DUN DUN (sound designers please stop cringing this is an article and I’m having fun). I feel like it’s turned into a morbid form of therapy wherein I scroll for what seems like an eternity, looking at job after job after job. I don’t apply to all of them, some of them I just skim. Others I inquire further only to realize I’m not qualified or the job is in Idaho (where is Idaho?). But somehow feeling like a drop of water in a huge ocean doesn’t freak me out more than I already am. If we live in a world where Idaho is a state and it’s far enough that it doesn’t even pop up as a concept in this insular New Yorker’s brain, maybe we all can take a deep breath and contextualize some things. 

Whether you work this summer, or get an internship, or spend it all on your parents' couch. Life will still go on, birds will still sing and Idaho will still be a state. You will still smile. You will laugh, watch movies with your friends, eat diner fries and go to the beach. It will be okay. 

Something so very crucial that the Musical Theater Audition™ has taught me. Delulu is the Solulu! You have to be so delusional if you are going to constantly put yourself out there and be so incredibly vulnerable with such a huge percentage of outright rejection. Believe you are worthy of greatness no matter how much rejection you face, keep that belief burning as bright as the ghost light. Walk in with a huge smile on your face, wearing your best jewel-toned dress, 16 bar cut, and resume in hand, ready to take on the world. 

To set all your worries at ease, let me just deliver my own personal mantra that I currently have on loop like a more demonic version of the It's A Small World Song: 

I can’t control my future employment (not entirely anyway), I can’t control my employers, honestly can I even control myself at this point? (The venti pink drink on my desk as I write this says maybe self-control has gone down the drain along with my campus dining dollars). All jokes aside, as long as this summer I have my health, and my friends, I think I’ll be okay. 

It’s a cyclical migration as old as time itself. The semi-young professional twenty-somethings leave their little pockets of small college-town America and head for all four corners of the country. We live off Ramen, do all our own laundry, and even budget for groceries (still mostly Ramen). This tradition is a testament to the resilience and delusional nature of the American teenager. We are applying for jobs we’ve probably never done, in cities we’ve never been to, working for people we’ve only met over Zoom. 

Who else does that? At least, who else does that with the intense bravado and confidence of Generation Z?

We are crazy. We are happy. We are free. Let’s show this world what great interns us Theater Kids can be!