All throughout high school, I pretty much only left the theater to go to class, eat, and sleep. I spent all my time there, working on sets, sewing costumes, staging scenes, practicing choreography, and just spending time with friends. The theater was my life, and it taught me so much about myself.

Theater teaches you so many things, how to be silly, how to be serious, how to be confident in an audition, how to manage your time wisely, and how to be in front of hundreds of people. I learned so much, and so many aspects of theater prepared me for college, and just plain life.

Instead of staying the shy, quiet girl who couldn't make eye contact with people, I became the girl who isn't afraid to belt out into broadway lyrics at any moment in time, or sing her heart out in a car full of people.

Theater taught me to love myself, that I could be anything I wanted to be, and that it doesn't matter what other people think. Theater let me see myself for who I am, and who I want to be. I was allowed to be any character I wanted, which helped me find out who I wanted to be, and where I wanted to go.

Theater taught me that it’s okay to make mistakes, you just have to pick yourself back up and keep moving. But theater also taught me, that sometimes a mistake isn't a mistake, it’s a new discovery. Sometimes you sing the wrong lyric, but it works better than the original one. Sometimes you do the wrong choreography and it's better than the original. In these cases, mistakes aren't mistakes, they’re discoveries of something that works better.

Theater is more than just putting on costumes and acting out a script. Theater is about immersing you in a role, completely being that person and forgetting about everything else going on in your life and become that character. Theater is spending time backstage with the people you can rely on the most, the people who become more than just fellow actors, the people who become your family. Theater is a passion. Theater is a confidence booster. Theater is learning who you are and what you want to be. Theater changes lives and is an outlet to express emotions.

Theater gave me so much in high school, and I will never be able to thank it enough. But it wasn't just theater that gave me so much, it was the people in it that gave me more.

So thank you, to my old directors, my old cast mates, and everyone who helped me along the way. Thank you for giving me a family in the theater, for loving me no matter what, for helping me rehearse lines, practicing choreography with me, for being patient when I just couldn't remember that line and all the countless other things that you were all there for. Thank you for helping to teach me about myself, for giving me an outlet for my emotions when life got hard. But most of all, thank you for some of the best years of my life, ones that have stories I’ll tell forever, and years that I’ll never forget.