Over-Preparation; the Dream Killer.

What happened to the days of “You don’t need to know what you want to do with your life just yet”. All the way through secondary school, even through college, we were told this constantly. GCSE subject choices aren’t the be-all and end-all, you don’t need to know what you’re going to do with your life just yet. A-Level choices are fairly important but don’t get too stressed, you’ve still got plenty of time to decide what you want to do.

You get to uni and then BAM, you’re surrounded by careers advisors and work experience and “This Will Be My Life”. “This Will Be My Life” is haunting me, and if you ever have to do it, chances are it will haunt you too. It’s looking ahead five years or ten years and describing what your life will be like if everything has gone your way – I’m assuming, from the way we were discouraged from saying that we’d won the lottery, that it is to encourage motivation rather than a “What would you do if you had all the money in the world?” kind of question.

I’ve been notoriously bad at deciding what I want to do with my life for as long as I can remember. I mean, when I was younger, I wanted to be a teacher, Fireman Sam, a dog, a nurse, an actress, a journalist, a historian, a writer, and so many other things. Most kids grow out of that, but I didn’t. All through secondary school and college, I cycled through potential careers like there was no tomorrow – lawyer, journalist, writer, English teacher, play therapist, nurse, children’s nurse, paramedic, policewoman, army nurse, so many different options and yet none of them ever really jumped out at me in the sense that I knew instantly, YES – THAT’S WHAT I WANT TO DO.

I always envied my friends who had such clear-cut ideas of what they wanted to do. The ones who wanted to be doctors, or lawyers, or bankers, and they knew that was the only career for them, and from GCSEs onwards they had such clear-cut ideas of how they were going to achieve that. I hated the way I drifted through, trying different things, testing the waters and thinking “Maybe” all the time, but never really knowing for certain. I’m sure there’s several blog posts on here where I’ve said “This is definitely what I want to do, and nothing is going to change my mind”. That’s all well and good, but it isn’t true, and nor is it healthy – because when you find that actually, you want to do something different, the sense of panic when you realize you’re completely unprepared is horrendous.

I know so many people who’ve dreamed of being doctors or lawyers their whole lives, and they’ve never entertained the idea of doing anything else, and they’re so set in their ways that when that one anomalous module grade results in four or five missed offers, and countless interviews and aptitude tests and BMATs and UKCATs and LNATs prove worthless when you get that e-mail and find out that it hasn’t gone your way, it’s like their entire lives crumble around them. I’m pleased to say that most of them have found a Plan B and are successful, but nothing is worth that moment of heartbreak when everything falls down around you.

So, from now on, I will not say “This is definitely what I want to do”. At the moment, my desire is to be a primary school teacher – particularly in the nursery/reception/key stage one age, working with really small children. I’m fairly determined in this – to the extent that I’ve already started doing practice aptitude tests, and I’m considering re-sitting my GCSE Maths to give me the best chance possible – but I know that nothing’s definite. Things change, and that’s just a fact of life.

So, if you’re in school and college, and you’re sick of being told “You’ve got plenty of years”, don’t be too eager to plan your career down to the last dot. You could be the most prepared, determined candidate in the world, but one false slip at an interview, or a mis-read question in an exam, could make you feel like your whole world is ending, and it isn’t worth that hassle. I’m not saying be like me – drift through life with only a vague idea of what you want to do – but find a nice middle ground. Prepare yourself for the career you want – but be prepared to have a re-think.

My Future

So, as you may have guessed, this is a blog post all about… er… my future! And the uncertainty that no doubt lies ahead, joy of joys.

I’ve always been quite envious of the people who have a firm idea – or even any idea at all that doesn’t change almost daily – of what they want to do when they’re older, finished school/college/university/whatever. I know that it sometimes makes it harder and makes the disappointment worse if you’ve been planning for something your whole life, and then suddenly one bad exam session or one bad piece of coursework, even, and you’re screwed. I think that might be why I was never really drawn towards the idea of Oxford/Cambridge/medicine courses… one mistake and you’ve got no chance. There’s also the fact that I’d never be good enough at the sciences to be a doctor… although, if I’d tried harder at school and got better GCSE grades (I didn’t do badly by any stretch of the imagination, but Oxford usually demand something ridiculous like 7A*s and I got 1 A* so that was the end of that idea), I might have applied to an Oxbridge University, and potentially gotten an offer.

So I never really had this amazingly firm idea of what I wanted to do until I was about fourteen. Before that, I’d gone through all the options – fireman (I used to want to be Fireman Sam), teacher, doctor, nurse, princess, all the usual careers that little girls tend to want. Then, when I was nine, I got an interest for history and I wanted to be a historian for a while. When I realized that I’m good at English, I decided that I wanted to be a journalist. Then I joined the youth and community theatre groups that have made my life so enjoyable the past few years – it’s where I’ve discovered a passion for acting and also where I met the man I’m madly in love with.

Acting had never really seemed like a career choice. I liked it when we did drama in school, and in Year Eight I was in the school musical and had quite a lot of fun playing one of the bad guy’s “minion” type characters, but it had never been something that I’d considered doing for real. I always used to love dressing up, playing imagination games like in the little toy house at school, playing Mums and Dads – but that’s a bit different to performing onstage in a theatre – but that’s what I ended up doing. I was in a production of A Christmas Carol, which was great, and then the next year, when we did a pantomime at Christmas, I was given the role of principal girl – the girl the hero falls in love with, and I absolutely loved it! The rush I got from acting and singing onstage, not in a chorus but actually on my own, was immense – it was pure adrenaline to me. It was around that time I started properly singing too – actually practicing and finding songs I was good at rather than just bopping around my bedroom with Pop Princesses 2 in the CD player and a hairbrush in my hand. I entered competitions including Park Resorts’ Karaoke Championships – I got through to the park finals, which was brilliant because we got a free holiday and I got to sing onstage (“Mamma Mia” and “Let It Be”, if you were wondering. Don’t worry – I still sing Beatles, but not so much ABBA these days!).

It just kept getting better and better – the next year, I played Little Red Riding Hood in the pantomime of the same name, and although that was a stressful year, I loved the performances. The best part is that I get on really well with the members of the theatre group, which is why I’m going to miss them so much if I go to university this year. In between pantomimes, I performed in revues with the youth theatre – acting, singing and dancing, sometimes on my own and sometimes in a group, but no matter what it was, I always loved it. And like I said, I met the man I love at theatre – the adult’s group were doing a serious play, and I was in a bit of a crappy relationship at the time, and that’s when our friendship became stronger – we’d known each other for a while, but then we did Aladdin for pantomime and got even closer and I love the fact that the first time I held hands with him was backstage during the pantomime. If nothing else, I owe the theatre group a lot for introducing me to him – although I know I owe them for a lot more, for everything they’ve done to me.

In short, I love acting. I love that my confidence has skyrocketed since I started acting, that I’ve made new friends from it, it’s something that I always look forwards to and it’s encouraged me to try new things, to step out of my comfort zone and to improve my skills (although I can sing and act, my dancing leaves a lot to be desired) but I’m getting there!

So, you can probably see where this is going – I decided I wanted to be an actress. Not just any actress – a musical theatre actress. I wanted to perform numerous shows every week in the West End, singing and acting my heart out and ending to rapturous applause. I figured it would be easy – after all, all you have to do is act and sing, right?

Last year, a lot of things combined to help me change my mind (unfortunately too late, because I’d already submitted my UCAS application to study drama, which wasn’t even the subject I particularly wanted to do, I just figured there was no way I’d get into an Acting course so I may as well try for Drama instead). I did “BLISS!”, a 60s musical directed by Russell Grant at Theatr Harlech, and being in that – having lots of lines to learn as well as solos in songs and dancing (I was one of the main cast) was exhilarating and I met so many new friends and learned so much – but it was also exhausting, and I was introduced to just a smidgen of how tough I imagine being a professional actress must be.

I helped with the props and stuff for the pantomime this year (Sleeping Beauty – I played the prince) and it made me realize just a bit of how much work goes into these shows that, as an actor I’ve just taken for granted the past few years and assumed that it comes from nowhere or something. It hasn’t made me resent acting – but I’ve realized just how easy it is, as an actor, to not appreciate the people backstage, the tech crew and the propmakers and wardrobe, and I think that if I was to become a professional actress, there’s every chance I’d turn into a person who people wouldn’t want to be around.

I like acting as a hobby, but if I had to study it every day for three years, I think I’d grow to resent it, and I wouldn’t want to do it again, as a career or as a hobby, and that would be a shame because I do love performing. So, I cancelled my UCAS application and decided that I wanted to be a children’s nurse. Or a midwife. But if that doesn’t work I’ll do creative writing. Or I’ll become a journalist. Or maybe I’ll just do drama….

These next few months could be fun.