NYU Tuition

For years I’ve kept a magnet on my fridge. It’s the first thing I see in the morning when I pour milk into my coffee. When I left Los Angeles, this magnet, this dumb little piece of plastic that will outlive me was the thing I grabbed first as I packed up my apartment and headed to New York in search of an education. On this piece of plastic is a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt. It reads, “Do one thing every day that scares you.” For years that magnet on my fridge was simply that—a magnet, a mantra, a cool quote, but I didn’t live by it. I doubted myself. I chose safety over courage. Proof that words on a page can mean very little until an experience gives life to them.
It took learning of a tumor in my brain for me to wake up and take control of how I wish to spend my time on earth and find the courage to enter college at NYU as a freshman at the age of twenty eight.


I want to use my life with purpose. I want a full life. I want to continue to work hard, use the skills that this University has taught me, and I want to use my brain for as long as it continues to function. I want to see all that there is to see, understanding now that sight is a gift we take for granted. I want to give back and help others by paving the way for people to see that it is never too late to chase their dream, to get the education they wanted but were afraid to go after.


I am about to complete my seventh semester of training at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. I have been accepted into an exclusive study abroad program in Berlin that will help me to grow leaps and bounds as a performing artist and theater maker and I hope to spend my last semester of school immersed in European theater so that I can gather what I have learned and bring it back to the U.S. as a more empowered and confident director, writer, and actor. I believe that experiencing other cultures does something for the human soul that words alone and study alone and training alone cannot do, and studying in Berlin would be an incredible experience for me in my learning. Though studying abroad at NYU Berlin is less expensive than staying in New York for my final semester, at present, I have no means to afford the remaining cost of tuition. Even with a generous scholarship from my school, I am still coming up short, which means I need your help. It is an incredibly vulnerable situation for me to put myself out there like this and ask for my community's support. (There's that sneaky fear again.) But it is important that I don't let my pride get in the way of me finishing school. It would mean the world to me to have your support. Whether it be a dollar, a share to your facebook page, or letting people know by word of mouth, all of it makes a huge difference. Thank you. This truly takes a village, and I can't thank you enough for your support over these 4 years.

with much love,

JP