In which I wonder how the heck I got to this point

When I was in fifth grade, I remember telling my homeroom teacher Mrs. Noble that I was going perform on Broadway when I grew up. It was a sure thing and I was very serious about it. I think she expressed some good-natured skepticism about this idea which I promptly shot down.

My love of musicals continued unabated until high school when my mother got the brilliant idea of taking me and my friend C to a touring company's performance of Puccini's "La Bohème" in State College. Opera quickly displaced the musical as my genre of choice.

I entered my undergraduate years at Oberlin fully intending to have a performing career as an opera singer. I had many a thrilling experience there (including enough weird anecdotes about Obies to write a memoir) and some great performance opportunities. However, by the end of undergrad, and as I transitioned to grad school at IU, my singing technique was in shambles, my confidence was shot, and my performance anxiety had become almost intolerable.

With my arrival at IU, I still clung to the idea of having a performing career. I abandoned my up-until-then usual course of auditioning for everything in sight in order to get my technique back in working order and diffuse the performance anxiety. Still auditioned for cattle calls (the big open auditions for the university's six mainstage productions), but was only cast in a small role after three years (Although I did get to wear the BEST. COSTUME. EVER.) and an ensemble part almost three years after that.

Somewhere in all of this, I decided that what I really wanted to do was teach. The idea had actually been percolating in my head since my senior year at Oberlin, but I think I was in denial about it for many years. I had identified myself as a singer--as a performer--for so long that it was a very difficult and slow process to reconfigure what I viewed as a core aspect of my personality.

A few weeks ago, I was having a conversation with another singer friend in which he stated that he felt "called" to the profession. That sentiment struck me for some reason, perhaps because I rarely hear people outside of the Church use it in that way. But I finally realized that I did at last feel "called" to my profession as a teacher and that I was satisfied with that. Part of me thinks that all those years of angst over being a performer may have been necessary for me to realize that it wasn't for me.

So hey, I guess I finally know what I want to be when I grow up.