I am the Susan Lucci of graduate school.  More accurately, I am the Susan Lucci of Graduate Acting Programs.  In my senior year of college, I spent an entire semester learning how to audition for grad programs, what to wear to the auditions, what to say in interviews, etc.  I worked as a hostess at Evansville, Indiana’s lone fine-dining restaurant (that just happened to be located in a strip mall and share a parking lot with a Putt-Putt course.  It was humiliating to give people directions to the restaurant that concluded with “Just take a left at the giant fiberglass giraffe and you’re here!”) in order to make enough money to pay for the application fees to these grad schools.  I wasn’t quite sure WHY I should go to grad school, but that’s what I was being pushed towards, so I went with it.  I am nothing if not a joiner...

That February, I rented a car with friends and drove seven hours to Chicago to attend auditions for various programs.  Since I had only one scheduled audition and I didn’t feel like drinking at noon, I stalked the halls of the hotel, looking for drop-in auditions.  I believe I walked up to the audition monitors and said “Hey!  I want to audition for your program.  Which school is this again?”  My friend Patrick thought it looked fun, so he joined me on my rounds.  Before we were done, we had each auditioned for about 18 programs and had enlisted the audition monitor at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee to mail a poison pen letter for us upon her return to Wisconsin.  Joseph Beyer, if you are somehow reading this, now you know who sent you that nasty birthday card senior year.  And for the record, your tattoo is still stupid.  Our undergrad program was also auditioning people that weekend, so we stopped by the hospitality suite only to find, to our MASSIVE dismay, that the U of Evansville hospitality suite had a – GASP! – cash bar.  We beat a hasty retreat and went looking for other colleges that had a better idea of what hospitality meant. 

At one end of the hotel was a palatial suite.  This suite seemed so magnificent in comparison to the Evansville room that an image of that suite comes to mind whenever I try to mentally picture Versailles.   Seriously, there was a fruit and cheese table so sumptuous in its baroque splendor that it would have made the Sun King weep.  Patrick and I ran around the laden tables, stuffing grapes and crusty bread into our gaping maws like Dickensian orphans come in from the cold when a representative from the college came up to us and handed us pamphlets.  I believe she tried to engage us in discussion, but was likely put off either by our declarations of “University of Southern Whats-its-name?  Oh YEAH!  I TOTALLY want to go to school there!” or by the fact that we sprayed her with a fine mist of particulate food matter while exclaiming the aforementioned falsehood.  In any case, we were left in peace to feed for a moment. 

When we were fighting over a garnish radish and looking around for the bar which was -- even more horrible than the Evansville suite -- NOT THERE, the officious college representative herded us over to a large group of chairs, arranged in a circle.  Patrick was led to an empty seat far across the circle from me.  We stared at each other in dread of being separated, having been reduced to a feral approximation of our former selves by the presence of free food.  Then I noticed the average age of the people in the circle seemed to be about four years south of mine.  I looked at the brochure and realized I was in for a lecture about undergrad programs at the U of Southern Whats-its-name.  Great.  Totally useless and no free booze.  I was only minorly peeved until the college rep said “So, for the next hour you’re going to hear a little bit more about our school!”  I am not the kind of person who will endure a presentation on time-share condos for a free tropical vacation, and I am DAMN sure not the kind of person who will endure an hour’s worth of useless blather for complimentary crudités, so I immediately began to formulate a plan of escape.  Patrick just sat across the circle, staring at me, his napkin loosely clutched to his face to hide the fact that he was mouthing the words “Get me the F*CK out of here!”

My plan was thus; cough.  That was it.  The simple plans really are the best, no?  So, I started coughing.  Then I coughed louder.  Then, in an apoplectic spasm, I coughed so hard that it sounded like I was vomiting alveoli.  I staggered out of the circle, whispering “Sorry!” to the rep between bronchial heaves, effectively saving only myself.  Behind me I heard Patrick say “Oh God, Amy?!  I have to go check on her.  She’s not…well.”  He raced after me and almost punched me for leaving him behind.  Then, we did cartwheels in the ballroom and went out for pizza.  Tangentially, I should say that that’s the last cartwheel I can remember doing. 

We had one more round of auditions in Evanston about two weeks later; only this one had a brutal screening audition that culled one of my friends, breaking our hearts a little.  Yes, we all wanted to succeed individually, but we had just assumed that we would ALL succeed individually.  That trip wasn’t fun.  That trip wasn’t even remotely a nice memory.  No one had a good time at those auditions.  The one bright spot in the entire trip was the tiny diner near our hotel, overcrowded with spider plants and manned by a rounded woman with pitch-black hair and bright circles of rouge.  I know it’s stereotypical to love down-home waitresses, but this woman was beyond the cliché.  We were internally bruised from the weight of our impending graduation and all the anxiety we had about our future congealed around us on that weekend.  She knew we were uneasy and scared and dumb (as a bag of hair, actually, which is pretty dumb), and she called each of us “Hon.”  She complained that we weren’t eating enough and, when we ordered a piece of their Lady Baltimore cake to share, she cut a piece big enough that the four of us couldn’t finish it.  I think my friend Sheryl kissed her on the cheek when we left.  Or maybe I just HOPE she did.

I didn’t get in to any of the grad schools that I applied to.  Looking back, I’m pretty sure it was because I had no idea why I should go to grad school or even if I wanted to.  My then-fiancé (now-used-car-selling-ex-husband!) was in Denver, and I had always assumed I would move out there after graduation.  But I had been told that I should go to grad school.  I was listening to everyone but myself in all of this mess.  Consequently, my auditions were distracted and my application essays were largely comprised of the lone sentence, “I want to act.”  The fact that the highlight of my senior year was scamming free food in a hotel in Chicago should have been a clue, I suppose. 

On the way back from the second audition in our rented Pontiac, we talked about our lives.  Highway 41 is dark and rural most of the way down to Evansville and, as you go further south, every now and then you’ll see pipes sticking out of the ground in fields, spewing fire.  There were a million stars in the sky and the random spouts of fire from corn fields made us feel as if the world were ending, when it was just the world WE knew that was on its way out.  Never one to leave a moment of natural theatricality unexploited, Patrick put a tape of wretchedly reflective and mournful music in the stereo.  “So,” Sheryl said, “what will you do if you don’t get in to grad school?”  We were silent.  “Yeah,” said Sheryl, “Me, too.”  Then someone else, Patrick, I believe, said “You remember those smoke stacks at the steel mills in Gary that were on fire?  On our way into Chicago?  Someone once told me that there’s a guy at the mill whose only job is to shoot a flaming arrow over the tops of the smokestacks every morning to light them.”  We silently nodded.  “Well, that’s the kind of thing that I’d like to do, then.  If I don’t get in.”  I said.  “I want to spend the rest of my life amusing myself.”

I have followed this pronouncement to varying degrees since the last rejection letter came in (it was the same old story, I was #3 on the list and they only accepted 2 women…I was perpetually the runner-up.).  The times that I have given myself to it most whole-heartedly have been the best.  When I chucked the idea of traditional theater altogether and latched on to a brand-new improv theater in Boston, I was amusing myself.  I had no idea the vastness of happiness that one decision would bring me.  When I’ve made “practical” decisions about my career as an actor, I have wound up defeated, demoralized, and working for d**chebags on dubious projects.  It is in the moments of pure and utter whimsy that I’ve found my meaning.  It’s only when I lose the path that my way becomes obvious.

Susan Lucci finally won her daytime Emmy a couple of years ago.  I wonder what she’ll do now?

 --Amy Roeder is an improvisor, actor and producer based out of Chicago. She loves to hear other people's stories.