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M. Carey Thomas and I have something in common, a love of theatrics. It’s was evident to me the moment I stepped onto Bryn Mawr’s Campus that something inside me felt settled and reassured. There was a drive I felt here that was hindered other places, and the notion that my own expectations could drive my reality was unleashed. I’d walked onto a stage.

I have been on stages for years. I like performing. I like seeing what I can do with myself, but more than any other part of the performance process, I love rehearsal. I feel like the real magic comes from shifting in and out of the character you could be. A good actress doesn’t act things she isn’t; she finds the places in herself which match the scene, the context, and occasionally the script.

Walking into Bryn Mawr is like walking onto a set with something in progress. We are perpetually performing who we are or rehearsing that person we might become. We shift in and out of our romantic roles, within a sphere of forgotten or condensed time.

So much more is possible in a world like a stage. Our endless days are the plot of our being. Our failures are merely the stumbling blocks that spin heroines forward, and our successes can mean all that we dare to dream up.