Student Blog: From Senior to Senior: A Letter to My 17-Year-Old Self

Dear 17-year-old Maddie,

Okay first off: take a deep breath. You need it. I know you do.

Second off: Hi! It is me, senior year of college Maddie. I come bearing news from the future! Some of it is wonderful, and adulthood is mostly great. However, it is absolutely nothing that you expected. 

I’ll start off with the bad news: You’re twenty now, meaning you have to file your taxes. Your back hurts all the time for some reason, and no matter how much you sleep, you’re always tired. You work three jobs and somehow you’re still broke. Some people suck, or you know them for years and they turn out to suck. 

And the worst part? You’re not getting your BFA in Musical Theater.

Calm down. I know you. You’re freaking out. You, the careful planner and dreamer and manifester, are probably breaking down with the fact that you aren’t getting a BFA in Musical Theater. And guess what? You turned out mostly fine. We turned out mostly fine. Because I’ll give you the good news:

We’re graduating a year early from Berklee College of Music with a Bachelor in Professional Music, concentrating in Drama, Musical Theater Writing, & Musical Theater Performance.

Okay! Now you can scream excitedly and run around in circles! And once you’ve tired yourself out, come back to this letter.

And now I bet you’re asking me a few questions:

1. BERKLEE?!?!?!? BERKLEE?!?!?!?!?!?
2. WHAT IS PROFESSIONAL MUSIC?!?!?!?
3. WE’RE WRITERS?!?!?!?!?!?!??!
4. WE’RE GOING TO SCHOOL IN THE SAME CITY AS Andrew Barth Feldman?!?!?!?!?
5. WE’RE CLASS OF 2024?!??!?!!?!?
6. WHAT IS GOING ON?!?!?!?!?!

And I can answer some of those questions out of order! To the Andrew Barth Feldman one: he dropped out our second semester. We did get to meet him though, and we totally freaked out and apologized for crying in front of him. He didn’t seem fazed and was really nice, but unfortunately, he did not fall in love with us. Sorry.

Also, yes! Berklee! Berklee College of Music! The school from that one Harry Styles fanfiction on Wattpad! The school we thought was too good for us at one point! We’re going there! We ended up applying very last minute but still managed to get accepted! Yay! And before you say anything, we belong here. Don’t ever doubt yourself and our achievements, we deserve to be here.

However, we’re here for professional music, not vocal performance like we originally intended. I realized as soon as we got here that we were never meant to do just one thing with our gift. (Too cheesy?) With our professional music major, we got to try hundreds of different things. Did you know that we actually like music law? Actually, with the amount of times we’ve watched Legally Blonde, this shouldn’t surprise you, but you love it! We also found one of our truest passions: creating theater for young audiences. Our passion for writing fanfiction about old Nickelodeon shows really shone with this one, because we really love this, and writing stories that talk to kids instead of at them. This might even be our job in the future…

Yes, we are technically a Musical Theater Writing major. Again, this shouldn’t surprise you with all the pages and pages of creative writing pieces we have in our Google Drive account. We realized this was a calling of ours at the end of freshman year when we wrote our VERY OWN SHOW! And what a joy it was to hear the audience laughing at our original jokes and our own stories. But don’t worry! You’re still a performer through and through, so that’s why we added musical theater performance to the roster. We’re also a Drama major because it just happened to fit with our courses for Musical Theater Writing and Musical Theater Performance, and we’ve always been an overachiever. (Fun fact: we showed this triple-concentration plan to our college counselor and she was so impressed with all the planning we had done.) This may not be the degree you originally thought you wanted, but it’s the degree we needed.

To answer your question about being class of 2024: yes, we are graduating early! Congratulations! We girlbossed so hard that we ended up finishing a year before we expected! It’s been a hard few years but I think it is so worth everything we’ve worked towards, and we’re so close to being done with our undergrad. And to answer your question about what’s going on, here’s a few of the best things that have happened to us within these three years (even if we don’t realize how good it is at first):

1. We landed a dream role. Our “Grand Plan” happened, and we played Annabeth Chase in The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical.
2. We landed our FIRST titular role as Judas Iscariot in ISCARIOT: the Musical! It’s a gay, new musical that premiered at Harvard (yes, THAT Harvard), and we got interviewed by NPR. We also got to meet some really cool people in the process too.
3. We work at a theater! Like an actual theater that shows plays and musicals, so we got to see stuff like The Play That Goes Wrong and Fat Ham for free! We also got to intern there and we found our love for dramaturgy. We got to read some cool plays and create really awesome posters for The Drowsy Chaperone and Yellow Face. Our words are gonna be on the walls of the Lyric Stage Company of Boston, baby!
4. We’re part of the only all-female/non-binary a cappella group at Berklee! It’s basically like being part of the Barden Bellas in Pitch Perfect, except we don’t hate each other and throw up. And yes, we have performed at the ICCAs.
5. This isn’t a theatre-centric job, but we’re technically a social media influencer. We work for Bumble and Amazon Prime. That’s so wild.
6. Also, DUH! This Broadway World gig is so freaking sick! WE GET TO WRITE FOR ONE OF THE COOLEST THEATRE SITES ON THE PLANET! OUR JOB IS THEATRE!
7. Here Lies Love finally premiered on Broadway, we got to see it during tryouts, AND we met Lea freaking Salonga. It was THE BEST THING EVER.
8. We’re making our on-screen debut AND playing our first antagonist role in Strictly Political, a sitcom at Boston University!
9. WE ARE DIRECTING! We’re assistant directing Harvard’s (YES, THAT HARVARD) production of Hamlet in November! It’s so FREAKING cool!

Everything’s just so crazy, and – yes, not everything has been a good crazy, but if we ran into each other in the street, you would not recognize yourself. (Maybe? Our hair is shorter, we have bangs, we dyed our hair brown, and we got these cool heart-shaped prescription glasses but I think we still look the same, actually.) We’ve grown so much these past few years, but I know that we still have so much to learn, even after we get our degree. But just know that these next few months will go by in a flash, so we need to enjoy them while we can.

Until then, I know you’re going to do great things, so just take a deep breath and know that you’ll get here eventually.

With love,
Hailey Madison Sebastian
Age 20

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