Five. Six. Seven! Why Texas Arts Project is THE Place to Be This Summer

Five. Six. Seven! Why Texas Arts Project is THE Place to Be This Summer

I attend­ed TAP camp the sum­mer of 2014 before my senior year of high school. The expe­ri­ences I had and the peo­ple I met while there, have stuck with me to this day. It’s a great way to meet kids just like you all over Texas while spend­ing almost a month hav­ing great sum­mer fun as well as learn­ing some­thing new infor­ma­tion in the thing we all love to do!

For me, I was on a mis­sion to get pre­pared for col­lege. Senior year is either titled the “Easiest Year of My Life” or for any arts major: “The Most Stressful Nine Months of My High School Career”. Not only do we have to wor­ry about get­ting in aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly, but we must also pre­pare 3 – 5 dif­fer­ent songs with dif­fer­ent require­ments for more than 7 schools as well as fly all over the coun­try and wait two months longer than every­one else to see if we’re going to col­lege. Going to TAP camp allowed me to keep a mod­er­ate­ly sane mind­set while going through such chaos. I was taught to be pre­pared for any­thing that could hap­pen and any sur­pris­es that may throw me off bal­ance. I was also giv­en care­ful advice from those who had already gone through the process, not to take on too much. It seems easy to apply to so many schools so that you’re guar­an­teed an admit­tance but that brings a lot of expens­es and a lot of 16-bar cuts.

The most impor­tant thing I learned at TAP was to be myself. I’m sure that sounds incred­i­bly cliché but it’s also very true and so impor­tant. I was audi­tion­ing for the next four years of my life, so why would I present the peo­ple behind the table with a char­ac­ter? No mat­ter how many times I rehearsed my slate and songs, as long as I walked in there with con­fi­dence, I still aced the audi­tion.

Being at TAP camp also helped me learn what I want­ed to get out of a school. The sched­ule is very intense: get up, work­out, break­fast, work, lunch, rehearse, din­ner, maybe some fun, sleep and do it all again the next day. This assured me I was not inter­est­ed in a con­ser­v­a­tive school. When we went off-cam­pus or had free days, that made me think that I was inter­est­ed in a big school full of kids who weren’t only inter­est­ed in the arts. Thanks to TAP Camp, I’m at my dream school, the University of Oklahoma, and lov­ing every minute of it. If you’re unsure of how to take on this career, go to TAP Camp and soak up all that you can because it’s worth it.”

-Lena Owens (Musical Theatre Major, University of Oklahoma)

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