To those who wanted to be updated on what's been going on in my life especially with college, I am very ashamed to say that I have not been awarded the NAC Undergraduate Arts Scholarship. Ashamed.
I feel like being a SOTA pioneer there's this standard I have to keep up and it's just so many levels of personal disappointment that a local partial arts scholarship is something that I'm not even capable of achieving and pursuing theatre in college is something I won't be able to do.

I remember in the interview they asked me how I was going to fund the rest of my studies at Tisch and I told them "I just need this one boost, I just need to get the first year going and I am very sure I can figure the rest of my way. This one push is all I need." I believed it so much and now it's just something so stupid to say and I'm so embarrassed that I said it to 5 of the most respected figures in the theatre industry. And they know my name and face now. Fuck.
Two days later the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland emailed me saying they had awarded me a £13,500 scholarship for their BA Acting course, which doesn't really link to anything except that it gave me a bit of hope.

The past 12 months have been crazy, you know?
I saved up money to pay for my college apps while building my portfolio, juggled 'People' and producing 'The Woman In Black' while auditioning and submitting applications. Literally 9 hours after we bumped out of Sculpture Square I was on the plane to LA auditioning for more schools, 8 hours after I returned I was already rehearsing 'Those Who Can't, Teach' and a day after we bumped out I paid for my own ticket and made my first solo trip, auditioning for the last school in London, came back, and started intensive rehearsals for Under the Dragon Moon, while submitting scholarship applications. It's not that I didn't try. I auditioned for 6 schools, got into 2, applied to about 20 scholarship providers and got 0.

I REALLY, REALLY TRIED.
That's how it is guys, sometimes you fight like hell for something and things just don't work out. And after 18 months of work, I look at my portfolio, and it's so difficult to feel proud of it. A part of me wants to be in denial and blame other things but it is my fault I failed. I can't stop blaming myself for it and it's a huge struggle, it's a huge struggle to see all your friends off to college or happy where they are and then.... what? I dream of New York and Scotland and I've never been to both places, and I see myself in class with people I'm so excited to meet and when's that going to come true?

If you've actually read to this point, I hope you're not using this to fuel your fatalism or as an excuse not to try. Please don't give up. Sometimes what you wish for really comes true and it's really not in the way you imagined.

I was given the opportunity that so many people didn't get and it really pisses me to no end that I didn't grab it by the balls. I'm part of the 1% that graduated from SOTA and of the first few Singaporeans admitted into Tisch, maybe even BA Acting at RCS. I'm perhaps the youngest Singaporean to perform for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and under a New York theatre company at that. How many 19-year-olds can say they produced a show and organised a Frantic Assembly workshop for the local theatre community?
(Maybe a lot but that was meant to be rhetorical please don't answer it and I'm sorry I'm pretty ignorant about your accomplishments I am very proud of you don't give up)

This shit that I've gotten myself into, it's the ending of a phase of my life and the start of another.
I know I'm bloody young and have a shitload to learn. Hell, I turn 20 in like, 40 days. But action-packed and melodramatic as it is, 19 is the worst year of my life. IB was nothing compared to this post-high school bullshit. 19 is the year I am forced to acknowledge that when I fight under such high stakes and lose, I lose everything. 19 is the year I see people slowly and subconsciously start to give up on me: the sighs, the eye rolls, the flippant laughter, the ignored messages, the rejections. When I reach 20, I'm not gonna be starting at 0. It'll be way lower, and it's going to be a fucking long hard fight before I even break even, let alone reach 100. And I'm so so exhausted it sucks to wake up every morning.

One common thing said by everyone who consoles and comforts me is that I'll be alright because I'm strong. I'm truly grateful, guys. I know I'm hardy and tough and ferociously energetic but Vic is really broken at this point, beyond devastated, that it's taken her over a week to even accept that she probably won't get to go to college this year.

Sometimes I look at what I've accomplished, and I wonder, "why did NAC or any other scholarship provider, or even my parents not see that my education and career was not worth $100,000? Why do my parents keep telling me to give up and pursue law or psych or some field I'm not interested in and most probably will never be good at as a consequence?" and it really sends me into a vicious poop cycle. A part of me wants to believe "it's NAC's loss it really is!!!!" and a part of me knows that it is MY loss. I'm dispensable. But I've come to accept it's not about worth.

I believe all artists need struggle, and this is mine. (Do not quote Hitler I will slaughter you.) Right now I'm at rock bottom, and the possibility of me being shot deeper into the ground is still a very real possibility. And even if I keep going deeper and deeper, I'm gonna keep swimming. Down just might be a blessing, because it's only in darkness when the stars really shine. I can't bring myself to give up theatre and so this is the struggle I know I need and must overcome.

I read the 5 recommendations of me written by 5 directors, and they're all glowing, and they speak worlds of me, and I can't thank them enough for what they have written and done for me. I sneakily left them near my parents and I saw how their faces changed when they read each of them. Maybe there's hope.
I really don't want to give up immersing myself in theatre and a chance at drama school. I am halfway done moping and within the next two weeks I will need to work up the courage to ask my parents if they could pay for my first year of drama school. They already know I've been rejected by NAC, but they want to hear it from me just so they know they didn't hear wrong. And I'm fucking terrified they'll say "NAC doesn't even think you're worth the money so why should we pay for you?" because for the first time in my life I won't have a rebuttal. I'm cornered.

I don't know how to convince anyone, especially my parents, but I hunger so much for the theatre it's driving me insane. I know theatre is something I am meant to keep doing for the rest of my life because I have tried very hard to give it up and I keep coming back, and I don't want to resist something that makes me so delightfully happy and has the potential to change the world.

I'm really lost right now, but maybe I'll get back on track really soon. Wish me luck. Good luck to you too.