Recruitment season is in full swing, and I am once again reducing my identity to résumés and cover letters. The anxiety comes from choosing between job offers that haven't even been offered. And while I'd like to convince myself that I should focus more on getting a haircut and preparing for interviews, I won't be the Type-A failurephobe my school admissions committee thought I am if my mind is not already inundated with 10-tiered decision trees and 5-year forward scenarios.
What exacerbates the problem is the fundamental conflict between what I want to be and what I am trained to do. I want to be a musical theater director. No, I want to be a Broadway musical theater director. I want to win a Tony Award and have my name in theater reviews on the New York Times. Alas, an MBA hardly sets me on the road toward that dream. In fact, an MBA sets me on the opposite road, one could argue. And don't tell me that those paths could somehow converge. I've heard too many times that the creative and the managerial are two distinct and separate tracks. And while it's not uncommon for creatives to shift to management roles, the shift in the other direction is nearly impossible.
I keep coming back to this expression of regret: I should have just gone to drama school. The list of recent Tony winners suggest that to be a director one needs to have worked in the industry--as an actor or singer or dancer or writer, and after that, an apprentice to luminaries, or alternatively as a director in smaller theater companies. And what do I have going for me? A degree in economics, 4 years of sales experience in a petroleum company, and a $160,000 MBA. Great.
Last summer I tested a hypothesis: working in arts management is a synthesis of my management training and passion for the arts. The idea was that working in close proximity to the arts, albeit in an uncreative function, could be a satisfying compromise. And indeed it was. After all I worked in the largest arts organization in the world--in New York City, no less. Attached to every project I was involved with was a show, performance series, performing venue, arts organization, or audience member. And when I felt so removed from the art, I just needed to cross the street or take the subway for the chance at sitting in a darkened theater and becoming the avid theatergoer that I am. For what my summer is worth, working in the arts industry with art-loving people in the musical theater capital of the world was an experience of a lifetime.
Now that I am considering pursuing my summer job full time, the constraints of reality begin to emerge. For one, my partner is in Manila, and moving him to New York for us to be together necessitates his sacrificing a promising career. Since he's not a US citizen, he cannot easily apply for a job in this country. He can apply for an MBA in New York for easier placement, but that sets us back with more debt. Also, being admitted to business school is no certainty for him, and neither is the prospect of getting a permanent work authorization for me. At this point the decision tree and its branching options become more and more vague, which makes it even harder for the failurephobe to make a decision. Do I uproot my partner from his career just so I could live out a compromised dream for an indefinite amount of time?
Which brings me to my next question: is this dream of becoming a director worth it? Or rather, is this compromised dream--arts management--worth it? Given the exorbitant costs of the compromise, it seems like the costs are only worth it if I go for the dream--be an active participant in the creation of art--which might see me take a huge pay cut, start from scratch, throw away the very reason why I came to this country, and at the extreme become a struggling artist. For if not, all the costs would be paying merely for access to watching the Broadway shows I love--which a good friend told me will never love me back. So in that light, I now ask: is the dream--compromised or whole--worth it? Or is it just a childish folly--an aspirations narrative that kids make while growing up which in turn disillusion them when they finally do grow up?
What gives me solace, though, is learning about the careers of several successful people in the entertainment industry. The man who greenlit the most successful movie franchise of all time came from P&G. MTV's ex-CEO started in publishing. And Will Smith's creative affairs VP started in consulting. Successful careers, I gather, can also be less deliberate. When asked how they ended up where they are, most of them credit serendipity--meeting a friend of a friend who happened to have a friend who worked for so-and-so--and consequently suggest that we be on the lookout for those chance encounters, too. How can I have a chance encounter with a Broadway producer or director if I'm not in New York, I still ask myself. And at that point the decision tree calculus falls apart. We are talking, after all, of chance and serendipity.
In one of her talks here in school, Facebook COO Cheryl Sandberg suggested we subscribe to an 18-month plan; no further than that. You never know, she says, what will happen, whom you will meet, and who you will be beyond that. I've always been one to subscribe to medium-term, even long-term, career visioning. But this 18-month plan is not only alleviating my anxiety; it is also liberating. If that serendipitous encounter doesn't befall me, I can always apprentice locally, go back to school, or move to NYC. Or maybe by then my dreams will have changed.
So now I will cast as wide a net as possible, send out as many applications as I can, and book as many interviews as my schedule will permit. And when an offer comes--or doesn't--I will reevaluate my priorities and decide what to do at least as far as the next 18 months go. This rest-of-my-life angst is getting old.
