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[0:00] Charlie Murphy: Hello, hello, and welcome to the Summer Break series of Mapping The College Audition. I'm still Charlie Murphy, your host, director of MTCA. That's Musical Theater College Auditions. Check us out at mtca.com. I hope as you listen to this, you're all having great summers. I am recording these in rapid succession in advance before our break begins. So if anything extraordinary happens in the Musical Theater College Audition world in the next few weeks, and you're listening to this live, just know that I'm stuck in the past. I'm not able to react to it, even though I'm sure you want my hot takes. Today, I'm going to dive into our first of four audio blogs. These will be newly recorded audio blogs, meaning they haven't yet been released on the pod for all four of these, ones I've written throughout the year.

But you may have read them already if you're a regular reader of our blog, or if you happen to be subscribed to our substack, you may have caught these. If you haven't yet checked out our blog or substack, please do feel free to check those out, and I hope you really enjoy this first of four audio blogs. This one is called A Tip to Chunk Up Your Process and Avoid Burnout. Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can. Here we go.

[1:16] Charlie Murphy: As I sit here in August to write this, though of course it's June as I'm reading this, with my to-do list overflowing, I'm experiencing a sensation that I imagine many of you are feeling as you read this, or as you listen to this, overwhelmed. How often in life do we feel this? Especially as parents, my girl turns four next week, she turns five in a couple weeks, I'll stop commenting on the things as I read it now, where you are managing not only your own life, but another person's as well. I certainly feel that as an MTCA director. It's not just my job to manage my own tasks, but to oversee the function of every coach and admin staff member on this team. And that doesn't just mean that are they getting their tasks done, but how is everyone feeling?

That kind of oversight can be exhausting and can easily lead to burnout. And after over 20 years of helping families with this complicated process, which has only gotten more complex over the years, I have seen a lot of burned out, anxious families. You look at everything you have to do, and it is just simply too much to take in. There are so many schools to research, and then prescreens to prepare. And is my spreadsheet up to date with all the latest information? And did I write all of those supplemental essays? And then, oh no, I need updated headshots. And did I ask my teacher for that letter of recommendation? Or was my mom going to do that? What about my transcripts? And that's before we even get to some of the most important things, like the artistic work itself.

Do I have the perfect material selected? And is my wild card wild enough? Do I have all my cuts in my shot list for the prescreens and the right outfit picked out? And all of that is just a quick slice of what this process can feel like. You can really drive yourself crazy staring into the abyss of everything there is to do over this whole process, and it can really paralyze you. In comes your old friend procrastination. In walks our old nemesis, anxiety. And now we're off to the races with more unproductive thoughts and all the ways we can spin our wheels without moving forward.

[3:09] Charlie Murphy: And here's the bad news. That devil whispering on your shoulder is right. You can't get all of it done in one swoop, not in one evening or even one long weekend. It is a lot of individual things to do, some of which take a significant duration of time and just can't be done well in a rush. And that's why I would always be suspicious of programs or services who say, we'll help you select everything you need for your prescreens and they'll be filmed in one week. They will? How? I mean, it certainly sounds enticing, but I don't see how that can happen in a productive and individualized artistic way. But now here's the good news. You can absolutely manage this process and get everything done in a thorough and complete way.

And I mean all of you reading this, whether you're starting your freshman, sophomore year and looking at a long horizon, or whether you're listening to this in the fall of your senior year, you can do this. And if you're thinking to yourself, well, not me, surely I'm too late. No, I'm talking to you as well. Whoever you are out there. Often I find when families start later in the process, they spend so much time worrying about what they should have done earlier and how behind they are that they neglect to move forward productively when there is still time to achieve a thorough process, if you're smart and strategic. So here's my big tip. And it comes in the form of an Arthur Ashe quote, which is one of my favorite quotes that I've personally found helpful in my life.

Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can. I'll say that one more time. Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can. I think this is one of the keys to what the kids call adulting. I'm not sure if the kids still call it that. Do they still call it that? It is such an important life skill to have. It encourages you to chunk up any given problem and approach it in the present with realistic resources at your disposal.

[5:03] Charlie Murphy: Let's break it down a bit. Start where you are. Don't worry about what could have been if you started a year ago or freak out about what's going to happen a few months from now because you feel late. Be in the present. Give yourself a frank assessment of what you've done and what you have to do. See if you can see the whole playing field. See the whole process of what's to come, but not be daunted by it. At this stage, you don't need to worry about achieving anything. You're just seeing yourself, where you are, and seeing what's in front of you. Sometimes it's helpful to remove yourself from the equation. If you looked at it like a character or a friend who was going through this process and they'd done x and had y to go, you might be able to see it a bit more dispassionately.

Try to remove the emotion and anxiety and give yourself an honest assessment of this moment right now. The great thing about this trick, if you can do it at the beginning of the process, but you can also do it again every few months as you track your progress, then you can continue to start where you are. If it's helpful, check out this previous blog on the different stages of the process, and here I've linked the sort of timeline blog that you've heard earlier on AudioBlog, and that is available on mtca.com.

[6:09] Charlie Murphy: Next, use what you have. What resources are at your disposal? If you're able to work with a team like MTCA, I genuinely believe it can be a game changer for you and your process to have expertise in all different aspects of the process, especially to supplement areas you may be further behind in. But of course, you have to be frank about what's realistic in your budget. This process is expensive even before you get to coaching, and you might not have the resources to use MTCA across the board or even at all. Okay, that doesn't mean you can't be successful in this process. What resources do you have? Are there cheap resources available to you locally that can help you? Everybody likely has a local library and the ability to get plays cheaply, and the internet is a magical place with a lot of free information, like this very podcast.

You may have to do some wading through some stuff that is less expert than others, but you can do it. And don't just think artistically in this phase. Look at your family as a whole and try to make a game plan of where your time and money are best spent. There are certain aspects of this process that a student has to handle. We're talking about artistic choices, essays, et cetera. But a lot of aspects can be broken up between family members. Is dad really good at spreadsheets to help organize all the requirements? Does mom love school-less research and wants to listen to episode after episode of the world's best podcast to be a first wave researcher? Who's going to do the scheduling? Who's booking flights and hotels? You can save yourself a lot of stress by making sure the family is clear with who is doing what and trying to break down the resources of who does them with the people who have those skill sets best.

[7:38] Charlie Murphy: Third, do what you can. To me, this is probably the most important part of the advice and the real reason for the blog post. This idea is also present in the old truism, a little bit of something is better than a whole lot of nothing. Or if you want a different one for my perfectionists out there, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Once you synthesize this advice into your being, it is like a talisman that will help you in so many areas. Break what you have to do into achievable chunks and then just get that little chunk done. If this is something you really struggle with, you can start by doing almost ridiculously small morsels. Put it in the to-do list, set aside the time in your calendar, and then get it done.

It could be writing one paragraph of one essay. It could be memorizing a few lines of your monologue really well. You can start really small, set aside the time for it, turn off your phone, and get it done. And then the feeling of checking off the item is now releasing those positive endorphins combating some of that anxiety. And then you keep going from there. In lots of small chunks, you'll notice that giant list starts getting smaller and smaller. And as you get more confident, you can even begin to grow those chunks a bit more. Maybe the chunk becomes work on my monologue for one whole hour without looking at my phone. And there will still be lots to do. That part won't go away. But you'll start seeing tangible progress toward your goals.

And I'll say this idea of like do what you can also doubles as great advice when we get to later in the process. There's just so much that is outside of your control that as those factors start creeping in, pre-screen rejections, bad weather, illness, injury, all those things, you can always go back to what you can control. Do what you can, focus on your job, and you'll be right in the pocket of what these schools want to see, an artist in progress wrestling with their artistic growth in an authentic and honest way.

[9:24] Charlie Murphy: I think this advice is helpful to this process and to so many aspects of life. The process is an elephant. It's enormous. But how do you eat an elephant? One chunk at a time. And first you need to see the whole elephant, figure out what tools you have to chunk it up, and then start with chunks that you can consume. I'm sure there's a less gross version of that metaphor too, but there you have it. Now go forth and conquer your process.