Famously, I came home from school when I was 3 and told my parents I wanted to be a paleontologist. (Now that I have my own three-year-old, I realize how hilarious that must have sounded coming out of my young mouth.) My parents had no idea what that was at the time. But my dinosaur loving heart taught them.
I knew almost every dinosaur there was to know in 1988. I had a series of books about them, each one focusing on a different dino. (Don’t ask what my favorite is. Any kid’s favorite is the T-rex. They’re lying to you if they tell you otherwise. A lizard that big is too cool to not think it’s the best.) My supportive parents took me to the Museum of Natural History in NYC so I could gasp in awe at the fossilized bones regularly. It was my absolute dream to dig up more bones for the museum. And my backup plan was to be a tour guide. I could show others not just the dinosaurs, but the dioramas of mammals from North America, Africa, and Asia. The Hall of Gems and Minerals. The giant blue whale in the Hall of Marine Life. They, too, could marvel at the wonders of nature that were magic to my young, expanding mind.
I don’t know when, I don’t know why, but at some point the magic of dinosaurs wears down. I mean, listen. Jurassic Park came out when I was 8, and I still loved dinosaurs enough to see it three times in the theaters. You just develop new tastes and interests as you age. I may have gone through a chunk of time where I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life in mid-elementary school. In fifth grade, I wanted to be a lawyer for about a week after doing a mock trial in the academically talented program I was in.
I don’t know when I discovered that I had a better than average singing voice, but I knew it by the time I was in fifth grade. I enjoyed singing in the school choirs, especially in special descant parts and smaller, select groups chosen by the teacher.
Then, in seventh grade, I participated in a dance recital where we danced and lip synced to a medley of Spice Girls songs. I couldn’t believe how little of the audience was visible when the stage lights flooded your version. It was easy to forget they were there, dissipating my nerves. I got lost in dancing to music I loved and reveling in the cheers of the crowd when it was over.
Suddenly, I wanted that. I wanted to sing in front of crowds that would cheer for me even if I couldn’t see them. I wanted to pump adrenaline through my veins by dancing and performing. I wanted to be a pop star.
In 1998, I formed a girl group with close friends of mine. We weren’t particularly picky about our members. I encouraged all of my best friends to sing with me. All told, at our height, we had something like 14 members, which is beyond impractical. Some of us were very, very talented. (I’m looking at Madhu Punjabi!) My friend Krystina Irving was a gifted choreographer, so she helped us come up with dance routines to match our chosen songs.
At first, we practiced just because, plunking out harmonies on the piano for fun. But my bat mitzvah was fast approaching, and we decided this would be the perfect venue for our debut performance. We settled on the Backstreet Boys’ “As Long As You Love Me” as a midtempo song with relatively simple but cute choreography. Madhu sang the opening verse, I sang the second, Krystina sang the bridge, and everyone else harmonized around the chorus and solos. Then we would gather around the microphones and slow it down with N Sync’s “(God Must Have Spent) A Little More Time On You.”
Practices were a ton of fun. We’d gather at my house on Saturdays. We started meeting with the choir teacher during the week so she could help us more with our harmonies. We decided on colorful button down shirts and black pants as our wardrobe.
I’m not sure how our performance came off to our audience that day, but I know I was proud of us. (Minus the fact that the DJ played the wrong version of “ALAYLM” with an extra music break in the middle for which we had no choreography, but who else is stressing over mistakes made 25 years ago? Certainly not me.)
One day, my mom took three of us to Meyer’s Doll Store, and we walked in singing. An older woman approached us to ask if we had a group. She was the owner of the store and told us she was looking for girls just like us - young, fresh faced, talented - to sing at an upcoming cocktail hour event she was holding to support the store. She asked that we learn one song, something older, beautyshop quartet style (I can’t remember specifically what it was, but something along the lines of “Mr. Sandman”). The rest of the program was up to us.
For the next few weeks, we worked to learn a few new songs. We couldn’t do anything too complicated as we would be walking around singing under the hum of a crowd nibbling, chatting, and not paying attention. Finally, the woman came back to hear what he had learned. She gave polite smiles and thanked us - and the next day, called to fire us from our first real gig. She harped on how young we were - apparently she hadn’t realized that when the three of us were in the store. She also worried we wouldn’t be heard above the conversational buzz.
I learned later that my mom really let her have it about how much she had disappointed a group of sweet young girls, particularly after she had made us work so hard. She sent us a check for $100 for our troubles.
Our first paying canceled gig! Look at us! Practically professionals! We put the money aside to buy my greatest ambitious purchase, handheld wireless microphones.
And then, we promptly broke up. We got a little sick of each other. Had some different ideas about our musical direction (which is an amazing statement to make about 14 year olds). I knew I was one of the only group members with real show biz dreams. But it was a lot of fun while it lasted.
Throughout high school, I sang in multiple select choirs (see another chapter for more on that!). I wanted to major in music in college in order to strengthen my voice, though I worried that classical training wasn’t really what I was looking for.
And then, my sophomore year of high school, I joined the St. Joe’s Theater Company. It changed my perspective and ambition. I knew majoring in music wouldn’t teach me the pop stylings I was interested in, but musical theater just might. And after my first show, I was hooked into that anyway. Acting was just as much fun as singing with added camaraderie.
Not to mention the doubts I had about being a pop star. I didn’t doubt my singing abilities. Some pop stars are amazingly talented vocalists, and some are mediocre verging on terrible. I dance well enough to not be the next Britney, but certainly to be more than Mandy Moore. (Not dissing Mandy- I’ve always loved her music. But she’s never busted out a dance move.) But was I pretty enough?
You see, I was a fat kid growing up. And not too many fat kids become pop stars, and definitely not 25 years ago. Even though I did lose considerable weight in high school thanks to a treadmill and paying more attention to my food intake, I still wasn’t thin enough for a career in front of the camera. I didn’t know if it was even possible for me to ever want to bare my midriff, let alone have Britney level abs.
That kind of thing isn’t as important on Broadway. But being able to sing your butt off is. As is intellectually getting into the persona of another character - so lots of using your brain. I could do these things well, scoring leading roles in high school productions.
Of course, the high school productions I was part of were smaller than most. Even at that, I had the privilege of working with some massively talented individuals who went on to major in Musical Theater at NYU, which became my dream. Except I knew, deep in my heart of hearts, that I wasn’t anywhere NEAR as talented as they were. I couldn’t belt. I could sing better in my car than on a stage. I wasn’t nominated for any local Papermill Playhouse Awards the way they were.
And yet, I still went for it.
I auditioned for four or five college musical theater programs, NYU, U Miami, and Florida State University among them. They all involved singing, a monologue, and a dance class. For the FSU audition, I even had to fly to Florida; U Miami sent a teacher up to Ripley Studios in NYC to view prospective students. These programs all accepted approximately 10 students out of several hundred applicants. As much as I wanted it, I felt that I wasn’t getting into any of these highly selective programs.
That knowledge didn’t make it hurt any less when my rejection letters came in. Or when my closest friends were accepted to their first choice schools and invented something called the “First Choice Dance.” One of them would randomly call out, “First Choice Dance!” at some point during the school day, and they’d all break out into it, except for me.
As luck would have it, there was one school I found that would allow you to major in Musical Theater without auditioning - Coastal Carolina University in Conway, South Carolina. (Surely this is worthy of its own entry at some point, too.) I attended for a year before reverse culture shock and distance from my family got the most of me and I transferred to Montclair State University in New Jersey, where I majored in Theater Studies and minored in Musical Theater. I scored zero theatrical roles in either of these places, though I did occasionally act in scenes for classes and work as an usher at some of our outstanding productions.
But I’d be lying if I said that graduating with a degree in theater without ever having been in a play felt like a good omen.
My biggest downfall as an actress was the audition process. My god, did I hate it. Generally, you stand as a lone figure in front of a panel of five or six people who have been trained by some demon to keep stoic faces verging on bored as they watch you try to emote as much as humanly possible in the space of 120 seconds you are often given. When you come in and greet them with a big warm smile, they look at you like you smell funny. If you’re funny, they don’t laugh. If you would move a normal audience member to tears, these people would still stare at you with cardboard faces, unmoved by your pleas to understand the terrible life situation you’re pretending you’ve gotten yourself into. When you’re acting in front of an audience, there’s an energy you feed off of, and the applause is intoxicating. And you can’t see their individual faces.
I always wished people would scout for acting jobs, coming to see you in your most recent productions, rather than hold these stupid, nerve wracking panels. I was always much better in a production than auditioning for one, and isn’t that what matters most?
So when I graduated, I didn’t run into NYC to audition at every chance I got, because I hated auditioning, and because it terrified me. Instead, I took a stint at working at Nordstrom's jewelry counter full time. I told myself that the retail job would allow me the freedom to pursue auditioning, but a) I didn’t truly understand how exhausting 40 hours a week on your feet would be and b) that was a total self-lie anyway - I never even looked for auditions.
Once, my friend Traice invited me into the city with her to go on auditions. I’m not sure if she intended for me to audition too, or if she just wanted me to see what the process was. We had to get on quite an early bus, and she lived a lot closer to New York than I did. Then we hustled to three or four different studios to put her name on audition lists. Professional theater audition lists had a hurdle I hadn’t even anticipated - the Equity Card. Actors’ Equity is the actors’ union, and you can only join if you’ve done a certain amount of hours of professional theater, leaving those actors who have yet to have a break high and dry. Equity members get to audition first at a scheduled time.
The rest of the acting plebs have to do this insane routine where they go to an audition location and put their name on an afternoon list with a disclaimer that explains how the day is going to go. It works as follows: Equity members get seen first at their appointed times. Lunch for the Panel of Cardboard Cutouts is 12-1. After lunch, they’ll see non-Equity actors in the order in which they appear on the list. You must be present when they call your name to audition. They will not call you on the phone or wait for you or let you come back later. If you aren’t there, you don’t get seen. In some cases, Equity auditions will continue after lunch, so you could be waiting an obscene amount of hours for your turn. In some cases, they might finish and start non-Equity before lunch, and if you’re not there, tough noogies.
To complicate matters further, chances are you don’t want to audition for a single show on a single day. If you’re already in NYC, you might as well line up a few opportunities. Thus the chances of missing your non-specific time slot were increased exponentially as you run from one theater to another.
Somehow my friend did make it to all three of her auditions. But at the third one for a musical called “Walmartopia” (we’ve all heard of that smash hit, right?), I had to wait for her in a lobby the size of a small, one person bathroom. I sat on a bench across from elevators and amidst something like 32 hopefuls… and I just waited. Knowing me, I wrote in my journal. And while that’s a pastime I enjoy greatly, sitting there sweating it out felt like a massive waste of time. Particularly as, well, how was anyone supposed to make any money while sitting around waiting for the POSSIBILITY to be seen by the Cardboard Panel for approximately two minutes and more than likely not get a call back?
In high school, my beloved choir teacher Mr. Brown told me that if you want to do ANYTHING else besides music, then music isn’t the career for you. At the time, it meant nothing to me. Singing was all I wanted to do. I wouldn’t mind running around to auditions and hocking my demo tape and singing at low key parties in search of my big break.
Now, only about five years later, this road looked a lot bumpier than I had anticipated. By now, I had graduated from college. A lot of my friends were getting jobs and making real money and moving out of their parents’ houses. No chance of any of that if I was really going to pursue acting and spend money on bus trips to New York and more-expensive-than-they-needed-to-be, less-than-healthy lunches and hours sitting on lobby floors waiting for the sake of waiting to do something I wasn’t even good at that was a humongous hurdle to doing something I really WAS good at and had a passion for. I also had a serious boyfriend who was moving from another country to be with me. I knew we’d get married someday and want to settle down and have a house and a family, and would any of that be possible with the instability of an acting career?
So one night, at a restaurant called Wild Rice in Metuchen, over a plate of Mango Chicken and Sticky Rice, I choked out a set of words to my mom that I had known for a long time, even though I had dared to rally against them - “I’m not good enough.” Not good enough to belt out Broadway showtunes, not good enough to even be part of a professional ensemble, not tough enough to handle all the dirt a pop music career could dig up and throw at you. I gave up. I threw in the towel.
Maybe I should have stuck it out longer. There are so many paths to acting and singing, and though I may not be Idina Menzel, I wasn’t the least talented hopeful out there, either. Had I kept at it, I could have scored parts in smaller plays and films, maybe scored roles in larger projects eventually. But how happy would any of that had made me? The constant running around, scrounging for money, uncertainty with the future, and close scrutiny by the public?
More than likely, I would have been miserable.
Although my decision that I wasn’t good enough made me miserable enough for a while. I had no idea what I wanted to do when I had this epiphany, so I started substitute teaching. Within months, I was handed a long term substitute position teaching sixth grade English. I had no teaching experience, no education classes under my belt, and no major desire to teach. But there would be stability in both scheduling and paychecks for a few months, and I’d be helping out some of my mom’s friends, so why not. I really wasn’t bad at the job, and I liked the students a lot. The teaching itself was… fine. It didn’t light any passionate fires for the vocation in my soul, but I didn’t hate it.
I kept subbing for a few years, ingratiating myself to schools and teachers in Edison, the town I grew up in, and doing a few more long term positions that weren’t more than a month or two. I was like a trusty Medemerge, a quick solution to a small cut that could have turned into a gaping wound if not treated. But it still wasn’t what I wanted for my future.
My mom was a middle school vice principal at the time, and I loved working in her building. The students and teachers respected me at a different level, and I got to have a quiet lunch with my mom instead of an awkward one in a faculty room where I didn’t quite feel like I belonged. Circa 2010, the school’s principal, who incidentally had been my eighth grade math teacher, offered me a six month position as a paraprofessional, working one-on-one with a high functioning autistic student. The boy’s schedule placed him in all inclusion classes, so classes with 17 or so general education kids and 9 classified special education students, which is the maximum amount allowed in such a class. Some of the general ed students, though, while very sweet, were very low academically and would go on to be classified in the next year or two.
Since my student didn’t need my attention 100% of the time, I had the opportunity to act like a second special education teacher in the room. I circulated, checking in with every student to see if they needed any concepts retaught or worded in a different way. The students all had a genuine desire to learn despite their individual learning difficulties. Because of this try hard attitude, I found myself being patient with them, and the feeling of successful triumph we shared when they made progress was really something.
One of the things I like least about myself is how quickly I get frustrated with my family. (Disclaimer - I don’t get toooo frustrated with my daughter, but I didn’t have her at the time, so she is Miss Not Appearing in This Story.) I think it stems from having high expectations of them, and then when they don’t know how to do something I intrinsically believe they should know, my brain and my heart collide. But in helping the classified students, I found a well of patience in myself I didn’t know existed.
And I loved it. I loved the deep breaths it forced me to take and the person it turned me into. I worked with some amazing teachers who wished I could stay with them in years to come, but I wasn’t certified to be an educator.
But those few months helped me discover a career I wanted to pursue. Relief!
Although not instant relief. In 2010, the climate surrounding the teaching profession was the opposite of 2023. There was an abundance of people looking to become teachers and not nearly enough jobs to go around. Why would a district want to hire me, someone who didn’t have a degree in education? I don’t know how many jobs I applied for after I got my alternate route certification, but I didn’t get too many interview opportunities.
My husband and I got married on October 15, 2011, but without my having a job, we were hesitant to find our own place to live and stayed with my parents for six months. Finally, someone talked us into getting on the property ladder with our wedding funds as a down payment. We shopped around and had a bid accepted on a small two bedroom house, a perfect starter home. But I was terrified about meeting payment deadlines on $80/day sub pay.
We took my parents to see the house to get their opinion on it. They thought it was perfect for us. We stood outside looking up at it, my fears creeping up into my throat.
“Look,” my mom suddenly said. “There’s a cloud over the house that looks exactly like a white feather.”
What my mom didn’t know was that my mother-in-law had recently seen a psychic who said her deceased husband would leave white feathers if he came to visit. It seemed like our house had Roger’s stamp of approval.
That night, I got a phone call about a job interview in Maplewood. I was never without a job again. It was still close to a year before I got my full time job that I’m still with, but the year prior wasn’t a struggle to find employment.
I spend a decent amount of time reflecting on how I feel about my job.There are some teachers who give it their all, dedicate an insane amount of time to designing intricate lessons, create and execute colorful, creative bulletin boards.
None of that is me. That doesn’t mean I don’t like my job, or that I don’t love it (though sometimes I don’t, but that’s super normal). I’m just not obsessed with it. Besides, my favorite part of it is building trusting relationships with young people, and then, once I have their trust and respect, introducing them to quality young adult literature and the freedom of expression writing can give them. My bulletin board doesn’t need owls and rainbows for all that.
There is one other major perk to teaching that some people would argue with me about, which is the amount of time it gives you to participate in activities you love. Yes, this is more of a struggle in some districts that heap a lot of work onto you, or in your first few years when you’re hashing out your lesson plans, but there are places where the pressure isn’t as pressing, where you can leave when the bell rings around 2:30, and you still have plenty of time to yourself.
This has become something I preach to young people about - finding a job that isn’t your whole life but that gives you time to live your whole life. When my school day is over, I have time to run errands before the crowds (although that’s not normally what I end up doing!). I can get in a workout before I’m too exhausted. I can laugh and play with my beautiful daughter. I can sing on Friday nights in my choir. On the weekends, I can act in projects a friend of mine creates. I can WRITE.
And, to be honest, writing is the passion I should have always followed. As good as I ever thought I was at singing and acting, writing is the creative force that truly drives me. I’ve kept a journal since I was 11 and written stories since before then. In the past decade or so, I’ve poured a lot of time and energy into the first novel of a trilogy that I have an awful lot of faith in.
So now, despite having a solid, stable career, I sometimes fantasize about the pursuit of writing professionally full time. One of these days, I’ll get my novel as finalized as I can and send it out to literary agents. Hopefully it’ll get picked up and published, and another career goal will be attained.
In other words, the pursuit of satisfying careers, for some of us, is never over.
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