Student Blog: Surviving Finals Week

It is now winter break, one of my favorite times of the year. I’m currently sitting in my childhood bedroom, listening to some of my favorite music and relaxing and enjoying the relief of being home. This years’ finals were very long and seemed to keep going and going, but I made it through and they ended up not being all that bad after all. I wanted to unpack what my finals look like as a musical theatre major and how I prepare for them. Class by class and performance by performance.

First up was my final for my tap dance class. Over the course of the semester we learned two tap combinations, worked on them, and cleaned them. For the final, we broke up into smaller groups and performed both of the combinations for our final grade. We were graded on choreography retention, performance aspect, and technique. I felt pretty good about this final, I love tap. I love tap dancing and making sounds with my feet. This class brought me a lot of joy, so I had a lot of fun with this final and felt really good about it.

Next up was my Broadway Dance final. For this dance class we learned a bunch of different big numbers from Broadway shows throughout the semester and worked on making the choreography our own and adding character to our performance. 4 of those routines were graded as out movement exams/performance exams. Our final exam was learning a section of the Jellicle Ball from Cats and performing it. We spent three days learning the choreography and then we had one day to clean and really hone in on our characters and making the performances our own. We then broke up into smaller groups on the day of the final and performed the piece. This was probably one of the best dances/exams I did throughout the semester. I talked in an earlier blog about my struggle with dance and I struggled a lot with getting in my own head and not having great confidence in this class this semester. That being said, I really allowed myself to let go during this final and I was really proud of myself and the progress I had made in the class. I left feeling good about myself and proud of the performance I gave. And that was enough for me.

Moving right along to my voice jury. All musical theatre students at my school are required to take private voice lessons for a grade, and at the end of the semester for our final we all participate in voice juries. Juries are when you prepare the 3-5 songs you worked on with your voice professor all semester and perform two of them in front of 3-4 faculty members, including your voice teacher. They each give you feedback and grade you. You get to pick one song to bring into your jury and then one faculty member will pick a different song from your repertoire for you to sing that day. I went into my jury with Maybe Love from Shucked and then my professor picked Alma Del Corre from the 24 Italian Songs and Arias book for me to sing. This was definitely not the best jury I had ever given in my entire career, but I still left feeling good and I was happy with my performance. Juries can be really scary, but I’ve grown to like them. They can be really fun. They are an opportunity to sing. And I think that’s really cool.

For my other classes, I had written finals for the most part. For my Shakespeare class, I had a written test final and for my voice for the actor final I also had a written test final along with a group project/presentation where with my group, we led the class through the Kristin Linklater vocal/body warm up we had been working on all year.

I’m not gonna lie, the last two weeks of this semester were some of the worst weeks of my life and not because of my finals. I was exhausted mentally and physically. During the finals week and the week before finals week, my grandmother was in the hospital and then had to be put on hospice. My family told me not to come home and that I had time, which I did. So I stayed and finished my finals and then came home. I was not really planning to do well on my finals because my mind was other places. I kept telling myself that if I didn’t do the absolute best on my performances and tests that it was okay. Because it was. Because something more important than tests and exams was going on. I gave myself grace and I took the pressure off of myself. And that made me realize, that is something I never do. I always give myself these impossible standards that I would never expect any other human to achieve. That’s not fair to myself. I ended up doing really well on my finals because I wasn’t nervous or scared. They were just something that I had to do and that I got to do. I got to sing. I got to dance. And I ended up having more fun with them. All of this to say, in these next few semesters I have left, I’m going to work on taking the pressure off of myself and just doing the best that I can because that is all that I can do. 

It’s winter break and I’m still sitting in my childhood bedroom listening to my favorite music. I survived my finals and so did you. We did it! It is time to rest, relax, and to give ourselves grace (pun always intended). Let’s always give ourselves some grace. And let's go do great things.