Since I was little I wanted to be a actress, but there was a very specific viewpoint of my father, his children would get good and steady jobs, go to college, make money, if it didn't fit under his definition of 'productive' then it was not worth doing. I was not good at acting as a child, I had stage fright and for my first performance I didn't have enough time to rehearse and I had trouble speaking. But my father had always been like that, it didn't get me down too much. It was not until I was at half-price books with my step mother and wanted to get a book of audition tips that I lost sight of that dream. I showed her the book and she asked me “So you're serious about acting then?” And it wasn't so much the question as the way she said it, and the look on her face, she just seemed so disappointed. So I put the book down.
I convinced everyone that I wanted to be a forensic scientist, since I do also love forensic science and it fit my personality, I even managed to convince myself that was what I wanted to do, I had plans, I knew what college I was going to go to, I knew what I wanted to do and that was going to be my future.
It wasn't until I joined Leaves and joined the Shakespeare Performance class that my dream came back into sight, when I stepped on stage with enough time to rehearse and the confidence in myself and the people I was up there with I could do anything. I could live as the characters who I always loved, I could invoke emotions in other people that they wouldn't get just from reading it or that they wouldn't get from an other actor or actress because I could put my own spin on it.
When I am on stage and acting I am alive and happy and I can do anything. And it was then that I realized that acting is what I really want to do, that it calls my name, that it makes me happy and that forensic science, as much as I love it, will never have the same affect on me, will never make me so happy and will never allow me to connect with other people the way that acting will.

My dream was put on hold, but I now refuse to be held back by someone else's definition of 'Productive.'