There Is No Plan B

Three years after achieving my A-levels, and a month after turning 21, I finally have confirmation that I'm going to university. Yes, that is a resounding chorus of "Finally!" you hear, as my friends and family celebrate with me. It's been a long time coming -- four tries at auditioning for drama school and university auditions,　numerous gap years spent working and travelling and acting. I'm a very reflective person (I'm an actor, we're all about the inner monologue), and when you attend auditions and uni applicant days, people will ask about you. I got asked quite a lot what A-levels I was studying -- and then got a complete look of surprise when I said "Actually, I'm 21? Yeah, I know, I don't look it! But I did my A-levels a loooong time ago."


And then people ask what I've been doing all this time, and what a gap year is like (or in my case, a lot of gap years), and if I regretted not attending university along with all my friends back in 2014.. Did I ever feel like I was left behind?


I recently had an audition at one of the top drama schools in London (not naming any names, but it has five letters and　Benedict Cumberbatch went there, so it's pretty good). And it went disastrously. Drama school auditions all run a little different structurally, but the preparation for them and the feeling of absolute sheer terror is all the same. At 17, drama school auditions are daunting and a whole other world to get your head around. After A-levels, drama school auditions become a desperate ordeal of jumping through hoops to escape your involuntary gap year (or two . . . or three).　And they really are "involuntary" -- you don't choose to be rejected from all the drama schools in the consortium, and then have to spend the next year living at home whilst all your friends start their degrees in Liverpool and Bristol and East Anglia, and you have to decide between applying for that vacancy at Tesco's or dodging your parents' looks of "Well, now how are you going to pay board?"


I did not choose to take four gap years, but that's the way these last few years have turned out. Drama school auditions are exhausting -- there's the panellists, watching you perform your monologues in excruciating detail. In　the disastrous drama school audition I attended earlier this week, I was only　two lines into my Shakespeare monologue before one of the panellists actually said -- right in the middle of my speech! -- "Oh dear", in complete dismay, and then dropped her pen as if to clearly say, "Well, this is the shittiest thing I've ever seen."


Two lines in! I hadn't even gotten to my first "alas"! I powered through and finished my monologue as if I hadn't heard the interruption. Bloody hell, I'm not that bad of an actor. I know how to perform Shakespeare.


Luckily, I'm not new to this. If I had been 18 and that had happened, I might have been crushed and so discouraged I'd never audition anywhere again. At 21, I'm fully aware that the panellist was an entitled prick, that they were rude and unfair, and at least I won't be paying £50 to audition there again (oh yeah, didn't you know? Us auditionees have got to pay £50 per audition, for EACH SCHOOL).


There's the second-guessing yourself during the workshop, which test your ability to be spontaneous and creative, work in groups, and respond to different stimulus. Usually, you leave a workshop pink and soaked in sweat -- and usually, in my case, I'm the only short, dark-haired girl in a sea of willowy, beautiful blonde girls who look like they play five classical instruments and holiday in the South of France.


And god, I love auditioning. I wouldn't do it if I didn't love it -- I love practising my speeches to then have the opportunity to show them to an audience (even if sometimes that audience is a judgemental panellist). I love talking to all the other people auditioning and hearing where they've travelled from, what speeches they're doing, what other schools they've auditioned for. If there's one piece of advice I'd recommend to anyone auditioning, it's talk to the other people around you. You're all in the same boat! None of the competitive, bitchy "drama" stereotypes exist in a drama school audition; you're allll in the this together (oh, High School Musical, how you've ruined that forever).


Someone in that room is just as nervous as you. The girl next to you is probably doing the same classical speech as you (believe me, there are very few speeches us girls can do from Shakepeare's repertoire, so expect a few other Viola's and Rosalind's to pop up). Talking and sharing your the terrible train journey at 5am down to the school puts you so much at ease, and distracts you from the insane amount of pressure on your day.


You've got to give it your best -- your definition of your best, because that's not always enough to succeed at an audition. There are so many more factors than just your ability to act. And rejection can happen.


And so, you're taking a gap year. UCAS is prompting you to go through Clearing, but you decide you want to have another go at auditioning next year. You're set on going to drama school hell or high water, and so you break it to everyone -- your optimistic sixth form teachers, your friends, your confused family -- that you're going to take a gap year, and apply again next year.


Some people choose to take a gap year anyway after their A-levels. To take a breather from education for a while (after all, you'd been doing it for thirteen years) before committing for another three years; or take a gap year to travel, whilst still young and not tied down; to work and save money before entering themselves into years of debt. All of these reasons are valid.


I was fine for the first few months. My parents understood I was committed to auditioning again, that it was drama school and an acting degree or nothing, I wasn’t going to settle. Other people weren’t as understanding; mostly, they were just confused as to why I was wasting my A-levels and not going to university and making the most of my “intelligence”, as opposed to doing a drama/acting degree. But if I couldn't do drama school, then I was only going to a university that offered an almost identical degree. And I still wanted to have a go at getting into drama school first. (I’m a very headstrong person, and I can articulate my reasons for doing things very well).


I was applying for jobs and not really getting anywhere. My friends were in the swing of their degrees, and as they began assignments and lectures and freshers, it became harder to see them. I was busy starting a new amateur dramatics company, and they were busy with uni life, and it just meant I saw much less of my friends. A career in acting never felt farther away than it did those first few months after summer, when all of my friends had taken that big step and I was still at home, scrambling to adjust to not being in school anymore for the first time in years, having to find my own structure without the school day to do it for me.


That’s when I began to regret it. I remember, quite clearly, standing in my living room at home talking to my best friend like, “What have I done? I can’t do this. I’m not going to get into drama school this time round, I’m not good enough. But I can’t do any other degree, I can’t just give in and go to just any university and not do drama. What do I do?”


That’s when I felt at my worst. My friends had all seemed to forget about me in favour or their university friends and a new life on campus. I was the new kid at my theatre company, struggling to get roles and fit into an already established group. I couldn’t find a job or even get an interview because no where was hiring.


It was all very dire, cry cry, moan moan. There will be a point in that gap year where it looks like you made the worst decision of your life.


But your friends haven’t forgotten you. The pressure you feel to find a job and support yourself is all in your head — no one is expecting you to do anything except make the best decisions for you. The expected path of completing your A-levels to university to graduating to a job is not one path that fits all. There’s so much more of your life that you can fit in between those structured steps.

• Work, if you can. It doesn’t matter what the job — so don’t feel embarrassed working a til or cleaning tables - because if you’re planning on uni after your gap year, a job is a means to an end. It’s temporary. There’s so much that a job can bring you —
• Like a steady income! Weekly or monthly, I recommend so much that you save that money. Not all of it (I’m a big believer in treating myself), but some of it. Put it in a jar, an unused purse, in a savings account. After six months, there could be enough there to spend another six months travelling Europe or splashing out on a holiday. Last year, I saved enough money to fly to Arizona and spend a week in America visiting my best friend, and seeing the Grand Canyon. That hard work felt all the more worth it sitting next to her, on the ledge of the Canyon under the stars.
• A job means new people. As all your friends from school move away and make new friends at uni, you’re networking with your work mates and drinking jagerbombs at the work social. The difference between school friends and work friends is that you are often all of different ages, of different walks of life; some might be studying, and some might already have kids, and you can learn something from all of them. You really do mature and grow up in that environment.
• If you’re lucky, travel as much as you can. It doesn’t even have to be out of the UK, but see as much as you can. Take all of that to university with you.

If you want to know if would I recommend a gap year, then yes. I would. I’m not saying it should be a requirement, but if you’re already thinking about it, and want someone’s opinion, then there’s mine. I think a gap year well-spent makes you a little more well rounded, gives you a little more maturity entering university, and that coveted “life experience” people are always talking about. Yes, you’re one year behind from all your friends, but you’ve got a year of stories to tell.


As all my friends are about to graduate, I’ve begun making lists of what I need to start buying from IKEA. Just like everyone said, I got there in the end.