Throughout my life, I have always wanted to be a part of something bigger that I could enjoy, but also find some amount of meaning in. Through the encouragement of my friends, I found myself auditioning for the musical Mean Girls my junior year through my school's theater. After doing the show, I found myself enjoying the community I found there, and the one I was a part of building. Over the next few months, I found out the musical for my senior year would be Footloose, and many of my friends encouraged me to audition for the character Willard. Before I knew it, those few months had flown by and I found myself bowing on closing night. Despite the show being over, I realized how much the community I had found impacted me, and how much we impacted the people around us. Some of my friends auditioned for the show, most of which I would not have expected to. Looking back, I think the show we all put on helped other people find a community, and we also brought many people together to watch our production. Before our final show, all of the actors got in a circle and would throw in a shoe or hat if they wanted to say something to the group, and I found myself struggling for something to say. I didn't have to say anything, but I wanted to let everybody know how much I appreciated getting to know each of them, because while I had found a great community of people myself, I wanted to make sure that I could do the same for them. In the moment where I spoke to the group, I fully realized just how beneficial the theater community was to everybody else, because it was such an accepting, caring, and understanding group, and I made many friends through it. I think it provided an outlet for me to discover a new side of myself, where I could act and sing, which is something I had never done before- especially not in front of other people. Many other people who spoke talked about how they felt lonely or unfulfilled before they found the theater department, and it made me happy that they had made friends there. When I had first started doing theater, I was afraid that I wouldn't make any new friends or have fun experiences, but seeing a whole new group of people saying that they had made friends and fond memories, I knew that our show had benefited our community.