Well, it is done. I am officially no longer a student, again. The thesis has been completed, bound and handed in. On time. I am pretty proud of it to be honest. I have never written a paper of that magnitude. And I think it turned out, to use my dad's phrase, 'absolutely not bad'. I am certainly glad to be done with it. Its a little bit weird to be done with the course. I mean, it has completely consumed my life for over a year now, and now its done. My student card has expired, I cant even get in to the building any more. I am very sad to have lost my student discount, let me tell you. London is expensive! And of course now I have to head back out into the real world.
The end of courses is only the first of the big changes that have happened in the last couple of weeks. Right after turning in the dissertation I moved out of my beautiful apartment, and into a house with my friends. Ultimately the move is a good thing, the house is gorgeous and I love the people that I am living with, but it happened at a not so convenient time. After spending the summer slaving over my dissertation the last thing that I really wanted to do was move. I would have much rather collapsed into a puddle and slept for the next month. However I did not have that luxury. In the end though we got everything done. Cleaned the old apartment from top to bottom, hauled my stuff all the way across town, and got myself situated in the new house. The new place has been great, there are five of us living in this beautiful and huge house in South London. It is quite a trek to get into central London, but not insurmountable. And that wont really be an issue until I land my big west end roles and have to be at rehearsal every day, and in that case I think I can manage.
Things on the job front are going slowly. Meeting with my agent on Friday to see what is going on. In the mean time I have found a part time job waiting tables (which I think means that I am officially an actor now). I am also starting to look into voice over agents. Hopefully that will lead to some work in the mean time.
The other big project on the horizon (as if trying to support myself as an actor starting out in London wasn't enough) is figuring out my visa situation. At the moment I am here on a student visa, which will run out at the end of December. I have a few options that I am looking in to, different types of visas that I can apply for. My agent has some sponsorship slots so hopefully he can keep me here. But the other option is a new option that has been introduced this year. In previous years students could extend their stay through a post study visa for up to two extra years after their degree. Unfortunately they have just gotten rid of that (just my luck). They have replaced it with the post study entrepreneur visa. Basically I have to submit a business plan to the school. They will then pick 10 students from all of the plans submitted to endorse for the visa. So at the moment I am trying to figure out how to write a business plan to present myself as a freelance artist. The upside of this is that I am only competing with other non-EU students graduating from Central this year, which is most likely a smaller pool of applicants than the other visas. So hopefully my odds are good. We shall see.
Now it is back to the grindstone. Off to write this business plan. What I could really use though is a few days of vacation.... Maybe at Christmas!
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