Student Blog: Academic Integrity in Theatre

Academic Integrity isn't really something, I think, students think about often. It is just kind of something that is there and that professors want us to follow. I believe it is something important to uphold, especially as performers in this industry.

To me, academic integrity is being honest about your work, committing to a moral work ethic, and providing the best work you can do. I will say, I think academic integrity looks a bit different for musical theater students because it can be a bit hard to cheat or cut corners with our tests since, for me at least, most of them are performance based. I can’t really cheat when performing a song in class for my final, which is something I have to do every single semester. In that specific instance, academic integrity means just doing the work to the best of your ability. Now, we do have written tests at times in more lecture based classes like music theory and such. For those kinds of classes, I believe that academic integrity means students again do the best they can and are doing honest work. Now, we as students get busy. Things start to pile up. So sometimes, giving it your all and doing the best you can do, is sometimes maybe only 50%-and that is okay. Life gets hard. Things pile up. It gets so crazy so fast. Give what you can, and what you can give is enough.

I asked some of my friends and they all gave me a lot of the same answers about what academic integrity meant to them. They all told me that it means to stay focused on your career and soaking up everything that you can. Doing things like asking questions and utilizing professors' office hours, and things like that. Doing everything you can to prepare you to do the best you can do. I think this is a great way to look at this topic.

I try to maintain academic integrity by taking steps to be successful. I make sure that I go to a practice room and know my material for my voice lesson the next day or I stay back and ask questions to my professor when I’m confused about something, I did this a lot when I was in music theory and score study because music theory isn’t my strongest of suits, thank you Josh Harvey for helping me through all my struggles. I go to office hours when I need help, with academics and non-academic projects. I went to my voice teachers office a few times for help with auditions and for some other performances I had going on. I also uphold academic integrity by being honest with myself, and with my teachers. Sometimes, I’d walk into my voice lesson and be so real with my voice teacher. If I wasn’t doing too well or if I was anxious, I’d express that so my voice teacher knew how I was doing and how it was going to affect my work for that day. He was always very kind and understanding of that, which I always appreciated so much. Same for other classes. I had to miss a few dance classes this year because of panic attacks and other mental battles, and my teacher always understood. In these situations, being honest and truthful I think is always best. It let my teachers know that I wanted to do what I could, even if my best wasn’t always 100%. That is what academic integrity is to me, and that is how I try to uphold it.

Academic integrity is so important, especially in our career field. It prepares us on how to be professional in the future when we get out on our own and start auditioning/booking real, professional, paying jobs. In our field, we have to know how to take steps to ensure that we are doing what we need to do as actors to do our job in the best way possible. That is how we continuously work and book jobs. Having integrity in general not only helps us as actors, but also as humans. It makes people want to work with us. So, do what you can, do the best you can, and always, go do great things.