Aurora's Blog

I left off last time with Kevin telling me to fight for why he should pass me.

I will never remember everything I said. That moment is a blur. I know that I didn’t form any complete thoughts. All my sentences ended with me trailing off, or cutting myself off mid-sentence to say something else.

The few times I caught his gaze, he definitely seemed to be intently listening and caring – which is extra sweet of him since I was rambling (even more so than usual), and making even far less sense than I usually do. As I said, he’s one of those guys who truly cares about all of his students.

Most of my time during this arguing portion was spent looking anywhere but at him. Why does my brain do that? – Refuse to focus on the person I’m talking to, when I don’t know what to say? Does it think my answers are on the floor? They’re not.

I also couldn’t look at Kevin because my brain was doing it’s best to be in process mode and work everything out. I was feeling so many emotions at once. I definitely did not possess the ability to process them all. Shame, confusion, aggression, and whole lots more – absolute brain overload.

Not to mention I just thought, “Well, there we go. I did it. I ruined everything. In the span of six weeks, I’ve gotten someone to believe I was talented just to get them to completely lose all faith in me.” It was surprisingly kind of devastating.

Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. Before the evaluations, he’d told the class that if meetings went over 5 minutes to knock at the door. How could my 5 minutes be up? It feels like I’ve only been in here for 45 seconds.

I don’t – I can’t –

He told me he still wasn’t sure, and he’d have to text me later. Holy goodness.

Okay, so this feels awesome and awful at the same time. One the one hand, I haven’t failed! On the other, my fate is still up in the air! My stomach has been doing cartwheels for the past 48 hours (at least). My brain is incessantly chattering about every second of every scene, and every game, from the past 12 classes. Now that gets to continue.

My lovely friend Amanda gets her evaluation – she passes (not surprisingly), and we head for the airport. Since she is the great friend she is, she indulges me as I monologue about what I should’ve said and what he might be thinking, what I should’ve done differently in scenes, and on and on. She sweetly said that we needed to keep positive energy out there and hope for the best.

Sean, another brilliant friend in my class, texted me real time updates (since Amanda and I had to bust out of there so quickly to get to LAX). There was a lot of texting back and forth between me and Sean at the airport and for the rest of the night. I couldn’t think about anything but improv, and there was just so much to say.

I called my high school theater teacher, because, well, I call her all the time. I had promised her when I told her about my great midterm that I’d let her know how the final went. She was a total sweetheart, and was definitely pulling for me. She told me to call her as soon as I found out the final word.

I boarded the full flight, sat in my middle seat, and thought. And thought. And thought some more. I wanted to read, or respond to emails, or do anything at all. But I couldn’t. My eyes glazed over as I did my best to read a magazine article.

“When is Kevin gonna text me?” My brain kept screaming at me as I tried to close my eyes and sleep. “Why couldn’t you convince him? Learn to give a speech! Or just learn to improv so he’s not on the fence like this!”

This was probably the best/worst place to be when I got the no-news news. I was in the air, so I had no idea if I had a text. On the good side, couldn’t incessantly bother the people I love with “When is he gonna text me? When is he gonna text me? When is he gonna text me?” on loop in their ears.

When I got to the layover at SFO, I immediately turned on my phone. Any new text messages? Nope. Well, at least not the one I needed.

This is where I’ll pick up next time.