why I dropped out of drama school!

it was definitely not what i expected why am i putting myself through this and i made the decision to move back home ah excuse me stop it hi everybody how are you i hope you're very very well so today here i am with a story time i've never talked about this on my channel before but i thought you might find it interesting to hear about people's different journeys and things and that people's journeys in acting isn't always you know straightforward and easy and normal and i'm gonna share mine if you don't know me by the way my name is amy i make a lot of search content here on youtube and i talk a lot about my interest in acting and then also sometimes about being an actor as well and obviously we're in a pandemic so i haven't done a lot of acting recently i've done a few auditions in lockdown and i wanted to quickly talk about backstage who are very kindly sponsoring this video so if you don't know backstage is basically all about casting for actors it's like a website where they basically list loads of auditions for actors and things and while a lot of theater is closed there is still a lot of screen acting and things still going on i get so many questions like how do you find auditions where can i find auditions how can i be an actor i have got an agent so my agents submit me for roles and auditions and things but i always keep an eye on backstage they have a lot of stuff that is like worldwide so for example they have loads of auditions for companies like hbo nbc amazon studios there's literally so much on there so it's great for at the moment while we're at home and there's options to like submit self tapes which is where you do your audition on screen that you like film and then send in but honestly they've got so many opportunities on there they've got like work from home jobs they've got voice over opportunities so it's definitely worth checking it out there's also things where you can like watch live streams with casting directors and acting coaches and fitness and wellness coaches as well so i am a backstage user myself i have my own account on backstage as i say even if you've got an agent it's great for being proactive in you know trying to get those jobs trying to get the acting work so i've left a link down below that gives you your first month for only five dollars so head on over as i say i will leave a link down below it's great okay let's get into talking about drama school just need to say this is no bashing to the school this is my personal experience so many people have different experiences than me and this isn't a diss to the school in any way i feel like i need loads of backstory and everything so basically when i was 18 i finished college and my intention was to go to drama school auditioned for art said gsa and mount view i really disliked art said as soon as i went in i was like you just got a vibe for somewhere and i was like this is not my place you know it's nothing against it obviously it's one of the best institutions in the uk but i was just like this is not for me audition for gsa which i always wanted to get into sadly didn't and then i auditioned for mount view and after my recall i then didn't get in but they suggested auditioning for the foundation to be honest when i look back i'm like i'm surprised i even got a recall because my audition was not good and i had a lot of growing up to do as well so then i went on holiday with my parents and i was like wait this is my first time in my life in september where i've been like i don't know what i'm doing i had no plan basically i worked at pizza hut i can't just not do anything i have to be in education i'd never not been in education and the idea of a september coming around and me not starting something new or being at school or something gave me like such anxiety and stress i researched the foundation course asked my parents if it was going to be viable to pay for it and applied so then i came back to england and i did the audition the audition was so strange like after i finished the audition it was quite it was quite a small group there wasn't loads of people there like there was for the ba course and also it was quite late in the year so i think that they had got a lot of people already on the course it was for like the last one or two places when i finished my audition i was with my mum in the car on the way back to blackpool from london and i got a phone call from the head of the course and he phoned me and he was like i just wanted to let you know that we loved you so much that we want to let you know that you've got in and we didn't want you to have to wait for your letter to arrive so i was like made up i was like do you know what i didn't get into the full three-year course but i'm on this foundation and the head of the course liked me so much that he called me to let me know it's gonna be great so then i had to move to london i'd never lived alone before and because as i say this was in the summer right before stuff was about to start so so many people already had their house insulted also because i wasn't on a full-time course it was only three days a week i had to still pay council tax and things basically in the uk if you're a student you don't have to pay for council tax but if i was sharing with other students i would have had to pay the council tax for a full house so it would have been a lot of money that 18 year old amy with no job in london couldn't afford so mountain view do these things i don't know if they still do them but it was like called an accommodation day so loads of people from all different courses who were going to be starting in september went down to mount view and kind of played some getting to know you games and then the intention was to pick some random people that you'd met 10 minutes ago and be like shall we live together and then go out into the streets to go and find a house or a flat or something by going to estate agents and i was like this is stressful so i did the meet and greet thing and my parents had gone with me and whilst i was doing the kind of getting to know you games and things my parents got chatting to some people who were graduates of that year from mount view so three people who had just done the three-year ba course and one of the guys had got a european tour so i was going off i needed somebody to fill his room so it was going to be good because the other two girls were going to be paying council tax so i wouldn't have to pay for everybody it was very close proximity to mount view the people i was going to be moving in with were like well established in the area they knew it they could give me recommendations and they were a little bit older so they could kind of keep an eye on me and things and it felt like the best fit so i ended up moving in with them and then i started the course it was definitely not what i expected i only include all that stuff because i think people might be interested in how you end up finding where you want to live and all that stuff so i started the course and it just wasn't what i expected to be honest i had had this goal for so many years of wanting to go to mount view and drama school and even though i wasn't on the full course i was still on kind of like a condensed course and it's definitely sold as like this will prepare you for the three-year course so basically as soon as we started they were like right you need to apply for the three-year course and do it right away basically so we all applied after having like maybe two or three weeks of classes our auditions were planned i auditioned for the next year's three-year course in november after being there for two months and to be honest in that two months i really didn't learn a huge amount the dance training was actually a lot better than i expected and i would have said the best thing about the course that i was on we've learned things like the audition dance that we were gonna do in the audition for the three-year course so it gives you a little bit of a leg up that's the whole intention that's why we paid all this money to do this course because our goal at the end is to go on and go on to the three-year course that's how it was definitely like sold to us the singing over the year sometimes was good sometimes not so great but the acting for me personally i'm a massive overthinker i overthink everything it's one of my worst traits and i'm so aware of it and it's always been a thing that i found really difficult with acting because i always my brain always tells me that i need to think of a better option so we were doing this exercise very very early on where we had to basically like pull imaginary things out of a box and my brain just couldn't kind of compute this i'm finding this really difficult to explain but basically like i was doing this exercise and i was overthinking so much that it was basically taking all creativity out of my head rather than the acting teacher kind of unpacking that and trying to help me through that said you'll never be a good actor if you can't do this you may as well give up and i just don't think you should say that to somebody ever especially not right at the beginning of a training course to an 18 year old who is just starting out in the world do you know what i mean my confidence was like completely sharp from so many things that happened like we were doing a dance class and i wasn't overweight like i'm i'm a little chunky now but i wasn't overweight at the time we were all sat down and the dance teacher was like amy you need to decide whether you're gonna put on more weight and be be the comedy actor or if you're gonna you know if you're gonna lose weight and you're gonna you know be a leading lady and she said that to me in front of the entire class when there wasn't even a discussion about castability it was just like just a general kind of debrief of the class and then suddenly it was like right so amy let's in front of all these other people talk about your weight which just felt so wrong to me so generally i just didn't feel the most confident on the course as i say my audition was in november i'd been there for two months i really hadn't learned a huge amount in two months you know in a course that's three times a week for two months you're not gonna have massive changes but i was like i'm on the course that's the next step to get onto the three-year i didn't even get a recall so i actually did worse than the year before one person in my foundation course got onto the three-year course one person the people who were in that course various ones of them have been in the west end since went on to drama school so it doesn't even mean that those people weren't talented and weren't weren't good i don't know i just think the whole thing wasn't very well planned out and then we all did our audition and then it was like right what did we do for the rest of the year because as i say one one girl had got onto the course and i don't know i feel like everybody then was feeling a little bit dejected with it i certainly was as well as well as that i also had to work in london full-time to support myself i had some difficulties with finding work at first i got like a transfer to a different pizza hull and it was horrendous the way that i was spoken to by the other staff members was just ridiculous i quit after a week because it was just awful and then i got a job in build-a-bear and i worked in build-a-bear like full-time it was crazy hours and then build a bear it was just making no money so they were like right you're down to three hours a week it's like how am i supposed to live of three hours a week i got a job at planet hollywood and we had to do like all these tests and things like learning the menu and i learned every item on that menu and we did a quiz and they said no one's ever got 100 before other than you and i was like i work hard and then after about a week of working there they brought me upstairs and they said listen we've hired too many people so because you are the last in you have to be the first to go so um you don't have a job anymore generally i was just struggling do you know what i mean it was just not going great for me the girls i lived with were fine but also i always felt inadequate one of my housemates was singing a song one day and i was like oh my god what is that is so nice and she was like i'm not gonna tell you i was like okay why and she said it's my song it's my audition song i sing it for everything and it's great for me and you're not allowed to take it and i was like no offense you're a graduate you're going to auditions i'm not at the moment i'm training i'm not trying to steal your song i don't know it was just always things like that it was like never easy i just really struggled a lot that year and as i say i was quite a young 18 year old it just definitely wasn't right for me i made some great friends on the course people that i'm still friends with now you know it wasn't all bad but it definitely wasn't all good and about like two months before the end of the course we were working on our end of year show and and i like got an awful part and i don't think that you should just quit something if you get a bad part but i was just like why am i putting myself through this and it was around that time that i also lost my job at planet hollywood so i had no job and i really wasn't enjoying mount view and i made the decision to move back home and go and live with my parents kind of re-evaluate reassess get some money together do some classes you know just generally kind of rejuvenate it just wasn't right for me and it just felt like a waste of money it felt like i was slogging through life to be at a school that i wasn't enjoying being at so i made the decision to to leave which is very not me thing to do like i'm not a person who really gives up on things and especially like an education thing or something that i'm like learning from or classes and things i've never really been a person to like just stop doing something i'll always see it through to the end it just wasn't what i expected and it just didn't feel like i should be putting myself through this stress to go somewhere that i didn't want to be i tried looking through my facebook to see if i'd done a post that was like guys i'm leaving london and i didn't do one of those posts but i did have a lot of facebook posts around that timeline really struggling with mountain view today really not liking mount view finally starting to like drama school again really struggling again it did show that i was very much in a place of of just not being happy and it just didn't feel worth it so i left before the show i did go back and i watched the show and i supported my friends and and yeah that is the story of why i dropped out of drama school i then went back home worked in a high school for a little bit in a finance department which is ridiculous because i can't count and i used to be in charge of all the money for all the school trips i don't even know how that happened but anyway and then i went off and i ended up going to london college of music in the end you know i know a lot of people who have been to mount view and done the ba course and have really positive things to say about it so this is just my experience as i say and you know those people have said good and bad things about it everybody has a different experience for me it just wasn't right and maybe if i'd have done the three year course it would have been different but for me the foundation definitely wasn't worth it i know foundations at some places are great so this also isn't me saying to never do a foundation course or anything just my personal experiences with it and yeah so that was my story i'd be interested to know if you've ever had experiences with that kind of thing have you ever dropped out of anywhere you know i felt really ashamed after leaving and it wasn't a decision that i took lightly and sometimes it helps to see other people have gone through those experiences you know i then took like two years away you know everybody's journey is different at the end of the day but screw those people at planet hollywood man all their fault i genuinely think if i hadn't lost my job at planet hollywood i probably would have stayed on but it was just like i had so much struggle finding work that year but anyway thank you so much for watching as i say go and click the link in my description down below for five dollars to sign up for backstage for loads of auditions all over the world and thank you so much for watching this video i hope that you're all well looking after yourselves and take care i will see you soon bye you

Channel: Amy Lovatt

Views: 31,153

Rating: 4.9654322 out of 5

Keywords: amy, lovatt, Amy lovatt, Amy Lovatt opinions, Amy Lovatt broadway, Amy Lovatt musicals, BACKSTAGE, backstage auditions, Netflix audition, drama school, drama school auditions, mountview, mount view theatre school, mountview experience, drama school experience, drop out, drama school drop out, university drop out

Id: 2p8aX9iXuuc

Length: 16min 24sec (984 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 25 2020